opening an underground card room

[psandman]

One thing that is different than a regular cardroom is of course that you need to keep the room low key.

In most places the policce don't want to bother busting up poker games, but many times operators don't give them any choice. Things like noise complaints/parking issues get complaints from people who live in the area and the police have no choice but to take action. Keep things away from residential areas, don't tolerate players getting out of control loud and noisy.

Do not pretend like your business is legal. This causes problems, first your customers don't act with the proper discretion if you give them some bogus excuse to believe that the game is legal. Second if you convince enough people that it is legal other people start running games openly and that gets police attention.

Watch the money lending. Every underground room I played in had to lend money or stake players at some point to keep games going. Don't let it get out of hand and be prepared to write off some losses.

Keep out other illegal activity which may attract police attention, don't tolerate open drug use or drug sales, don't serve alcohol.