Bar owner bids for Texas Hold’em

By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer | Thursday, December 22, 2005

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The owner of a small bar in eastern South Dakota wants state voters to decide whether a golf club is different than a deck of cards.

Last weekend, Todd Erks of Tea began circulating petitions for an initiated measure that would redefine gambling to allow Texas Hold’em poker tournaments.

Todd’s Place is near the Harrisburg exit on Interstate 29. Erks described it as a “meat-and-potatoes” bar.

Erks lost his beer license temporarily earlier this year, after Lincoln County State’s Attorney Tom Wollman said that Erks’ poker tournaments were illegal. “That was pretty clear to me, and it was pretty clear to the attorney general: It was a violation of state law,” Wollman said Tuesday.

Erks argues that Texas Hold’em tournaments are no different than billiards tournaments, dart tournaments, fishing tournaments or golf tournaments. All of them redistribute entry fees as prizes that are won in games of skill. “Why is a golf club different than a deck of cards?” Erks asked.

In Texas Hold’em tournaments, participants pay an entry fee, and everyone receives the same amount of chips, Erks said. Players in his tournaments can’t buy extra chips. “When they’re done, they’re done,” he said.

Erks said that Texas Hold’em tournaments, unlike other forms of gambling, are more skill than chance. “There are professional poker players who have made their living at it for 40 years,” he said. “That can’t be luck. I don’t know of any professional bingo players or professional roulette players.”

Wollman said it was possible that some of those tournaments could be illegal, depending on how they were conducted. But he added, “That wasn’t the issue before me.”

Lincoln County Commission, on Wollman’s recommendation, denied Erks’ request to renew his beer license earlier this year. It took Erks three months, but he eventually got the license back. “We fought and fought,” he said.

In the end, Erks had to agree not to host poker tournaments. “They watch me like a hawk now,” he said.

Erks registered his petition drive Friday with the Secretary of State’s Office. He got his first signatures over the weekend. He will need 16,728 signatures by May 2, but he hopes to collect more than 20,000. If he does, the new definition of gambling will be on the general-election ballot Nov. 6.

The initiative would change state law to stipulate that “the terms gambling, betting and wagering do not apply to any contest or competition in which the role of the entrants’ skill is equal to or greater than the role of chance in determining the outcome.”

The initiative lists fishing derbies, billiard and dart tournaments, golf shoot-outs and even chess tournaments as nongambling activities — along with, of course, Texas Hold’em tournaments.

Sioux Falls attorney Dan Brendtro, who helped Erks write the measure, said it would clarify the law. “I think there’s a hole in the existing statute about what is or isn’t gambling,” he said.

Brendtro said the initiated measure would have the effect of certifying as legal activities that already are happening all over the state. “This stuff is not some illicit form of gambling,” Brendtro said. “It’s good, clean fun, and it’s what’s been happening for decades.”

Initiative petitions online

As well as the petition to change the definition of gambling in state law, five other petitions are being circulated to put initiated measures on the ballot in November’s general election.

The other measures would:

-- Provide safe access to medical marijuana for certain qualified people. 

-- Revise certain provisions related to county zoning and conditional use requests. 

-- Increase the tax on cigarettes and tobacco products to dedicate the revenue for tobacco prevention and cessation programs, property-tax reduction, education enhancement, and health care, and to make an annual appropriation therefore. 

-- Change the school start date.

-- Impose a consumption fee on the retail sale of alcoholic beverages in the amount of one percent of the gross sales price of the alcoholic beverage.

Supporters of the measures must collect 16,728 signatures from registered voters by May 2.

For more information, including the complete text of the initiative, go to the Secretary of State’s Office site at http://www.sdsos.gov/bqstatus.htm

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com