Blf Social Club Poker Run
We run a friendly game of Texus Hold’em poker with two formats: Tournament Poker-run on the 2 nd and 4 th Wednesday of each month with an initial buy-in cost of £4, one Re-buy (if needed up to the first break) £3 and an Add-on (everyone left in at the break, if wanted) £3, gives a total maximum stake of £10.
7 charged with illegal gambling say it's just fun.Motorcycle club hosting ‘Working For Blue’ benefit poker run This Sunday, July 14, the Centurions are sponsoring a motorcycle poker run with all proceeds benefiting Working For Blue. Kansas & Missouri Poker Runs & Benefits May 10, 2019. Crews are a great way to play together online. Create your own Crew and invite your Social Club friends or join an established Crew and jump straight into the action. Community Content. A diverse world is ready for you to explore. In-game or on Social Club, share photos from your travels and discover content shared by the rest of the community. Challenge your friends in online poker tournament or just play cards in multiplayer for fun! It’s a good training for real live social poker and with real money. Deal cards, bluff and win a jackpot.
By DAN HERBECK
Buffalo News Staff Reporter
3/28/00
| BILL WIPPERT/Buffalo News Federal authorities say the Donato Social Club, center, at 188 Grant St., is a “front for a casino-style gambling business.” |
The FBI and U.S. attorney's office call the club something else: a front for a 'casino-style gambling business.'
Ultimately, a jury may decide, as seven men from Buffalo and Tonawanda - including one who is 76 years old - face felony gambling charges in connection with the club at 188 Grant St.
A federal grand jury recently indicted the seven men after a lengthy investigation that included the installation of hidden recording devices and video cameras in the social club.
Charged with conspiracy to run an illegal gambling business are: John 'Johnny Catz' Catanzaro, 57, of Norwalk Avenue; Donald Panepinto, 58, of Brighton Road, Town of Tonawanda; Frank 'Babe' Mambrino, 64, and his son, Carmen Mambrino, 30, both of Lovering Avenue; Joseph 'Peppers' DiGioia, 76, of Claremont Avenue; Annuncio 'Rod' Cannizzaro, 66, of Cottage Street; and Robert Chimera, 63, of Linden Avenue.
Prosecutors also have filed court papers seeking forfeiture of the building, a former children's clothing store located near Grant and Lafayette avenues.
'The indictment charges the defendants with running poker, ziganette (an Italian card game) and dice games, both on the premises at 188 Grant St. . . . and at stags run at various locations in the area, from March to early September of 1999,' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony M. Bruce.
According to law enforcement officials, the amount of money gambled in the club was in the thousands of dollars, and some of the figures involved with the club have ties to organized crime.
Blf Social Club Poker Runs
Catanzaro is a former Laborers Local 210 official who served prison time after his 1990 conviction in a no-show job scheme. In December, the U.S. Justice Department called him a 'made member' in Buffalo's Mafia family.
Despite the criminal charges, the social club and its members have some supporters among business people and residents of the Grant Street area.
Some of the supporters claim the FBI is trying to turn a harmless series of dice and poker games into something out of 'The Godfather' or 'Good Fellas.'
'We have some serious crime problems in this neighborhood - including drugs, panhandlers and prostitution. But there's nothing that goes on in that club that spills out into the neighborhood,' said Dwayne Robinson, president of a neighborhood block club known as the Ferguson Street United Residents Group. 'From everything I can see, they're just some older gentlemen who like to play cards.'
Three neighborhood business people made similar comments on Monday.
'To me, that social club is an asset to the community, not a problem,' said James Lorigo, who runs the Meating Place, a butcher's shop across the street from the social club.
'They took over the property and completely renovated it. They keep up the property. At night, the lights are on. These men, they keep an eye on things in the community. We have gangs roaming the streets around here at night - that's what the authorities should be cracking down on.'
Similar comments came from Ronald Charlton, who is renovating a medical building in the neighborhood, and Nick LaFornara, who runs a barber shop two doors away from the social club.
'I see prostitution and drug dealers openly operating in this neighborhood, and you're telling me they're hustling these old guys for playing cards? What about the casino across the river, making millions?' Charlton said. 'They're harmless, in my eyes. I'm 55, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone in the place who wasn't older than me.'
All seven suspects pleaded innocent in the case before U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie G. Foschio.
The government case is blown way out of proportion, according to defense lawyers Joel L. Daniels and John P. Pieri, who represents Carmen and Frank Mambrino. Carmen Mambrino owns the social club building.
Nobody was making big money on the gambling, said Pieri, who has known several of the suspects since he was a youngster growing up on the West Side.
'The government has told us they have 300 hours of audio and videotapes. It's very boring information about people doing nothing,' Pieri said. 'From what I understand, if there were a few hundred bucks on the table for the whole night, that would be a lot. A small part of that was put aside to pay for rent and food at the social club.
'The government's perception of 'Good Fellas' is something the government tries to enhance. I think you have too many FBI agents sitting around with nothing to do. They send them to go out and bust up a $2 card game.'
Not true, according to Bruce and Paul M. Moskal, spokesman for the Buffalo FBI office.
While declining to discuss specifics about the case, Moskal said illegal gambling operations have caused many problems in Western New York, going back decades.
'Much of the illegal gambling that goes on in Western New York does tie in to organized crime,' Moskal said. 'Illegal gambling, over the years, has cost society hundreds of millions of dollars. We're not trying to say every person who gambles is a criminal. At first blush, an operation like this might seem harmless, but we've seen operations like this lead to loansharking, extortion, gambling addictions. We've seen families ruined.'
Lorigo said some of the men associated with the social club told him that FBI agents are targeting the club in an effort to secure information about bigger organized crime operations in Buffalo.
'I can tell you exactly what happened,' Lorigo said. 'The FBI went to these guys and said, 'We want you to snitch on some other people.' I think they're disturbing the wrong people.'
Moskal declined to comment on Lorigo's remarks.
'The law is the law,' Moskal said. 'Congress makes the laws. Our job is enforcement.'
What if you want to start a small online gaming project based on quality reliable software, but do not want to invest too much into it? You are not going to do any marketing and attract a massive audience, so the profits will not skyrocket absolutely. How do you get a sustainable technical platform without a constant headache on the return of investment?
What a Poker Club Needs
Let’s say you have a couple of dozens of friends who enjoy playing Texas Hold’em on weekends and the community is growing. Or you are running an offline private poker club with regular tournaments and cash games sessions. Now you want to give it a tech touch – to make an online poker room for these friends or club members.
What would be your minimal requirements for software or technical solution?
- User management. You’ll want to add new members or exclude ones, approve and block users, and check user info.
- Tables and tournaments management to create new events and edit existing, if needed.
- Software/solution stability and reliability.
- Preferable poker games support.
- Good UI.
Every online poker club needs these essential features. If any of them missing, either club management becomes a mess or playing games in this club annoys more than entertains. And we all want to have fun first of all, don’t we?
Compromises and Their Costs
Blf Social Club Poker Runner
Many private clubs owners refuse to invest money in poker game software at all and tend to choose one of the compromise options:
- Running private tables inside a massive online projects
- Using free and/or open-source poker software
The first option seems the easiest one but it has serious disadvantages. In this case, you don’t really manage and own anything at all. You and your club members may be blocked, tables are closed, money is gone and you cannot do anything about it. Surely, it is not a scalable and reliable solution if you have a group of more than ten players.
Open source software looks like a reasonable choice if you have a person with programming skills in your team (or the skills), but it is only until you count the costs of customization and maintenance. You’ll also need to fix all the bugs and the technical issues by yourself, so the long-term handling of this solution will not be free and easy.
The last popular option, free poker software usually has too strict limitations: you cannot run more than one table or tournament, have more than 100 users, etc. Not to mention software quality issues that become critical problems sometimes. It’s okay for a high school students occasional cash games but no more.
What You Can Sacrifice Easily
Good news: you don’t really need a full package of turnkey online poker software to run a private club. There is a large list of popular options that you may sacrifice without losing any quality or getting gaming experience worse.
The main are the following.
- Payments processing. No need to waste money on payments integration and processing operations. If you have a limited number of users you may manage balance manually. It fits both membership subscription payments and occasional balance refills. In addition, the game will be considered as play money poker so it could be legal nearly anywhere.
- Games you don’t need. If people in your offline club play Hold’em and Open Face Chinese poker it’s not very likely that they would suddenly start to play 7-Card Stud online.
- Marketing tools like rake back, affiliates system, bonuses – you are not going to market your club, so why?
- API integration and any other integration.
EvenBet Solutions for Private and Small Clubs
As for our turnkey software packages, two options suit these requirements:
- Play money solution with client software to customer’s choice. Customizable option to run on a customer’s server. Available as royalty free and rented software.
Special EvenBet Poker Club solution. Basic multi-table software pack with mild limitations to be launched on our own server. Available with a very small setup fee and a monthly fee for maintenance.