TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER

The Amateur Poker League Inc. was founded in Wichita last winter, and a competitor, The Poker Pub Inc., has operated at several Lawrence locations since February.

Both are planning to expand next month into the Kansas City area — with the rest of the nation to follow.

The first local site, an Amateur Poker League affiliate, will be the Side Pockets at 600 N.W. Englewood Road in Kansas City, North. The dealing is set to start there on Tuesday.

“It's going to catch like wildfire,” said Side Pockets co-owner James Doran.

More than two dozen Kansas City area bars and clubs are already scheduled to follow, with more than 30 nightly tournaments a week.

“There's more every day,” said Nelson Young, a co-owner of Tizers Restaurant and Sports Bar in Westport, a Poker Pub affiliate whose games will kick off on May 13 — a Thursday.

“That's our down time,” said Young. “We're trying to get more people back to Westport.”

Amateur Poker League founder, chairman and chief executive Dave Wallace has undisguised national ambitions.

Sales agents have fanned out to several states, and Wallace said games could be under way by June in Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas and California — with the rest of the 50 states to follow as quickly as more sales representatives can be hired and trained.

“We all want to be millionaires by December,” joked Wallace.

An Internet search found references to a few bar poker tournaments in other states, and an entrepreneur who was trying to set up bar poker games in Austin, Texas. But Wallace said he wasn't aware of any other efforts quite like his, other than Poker Pub in Lawrence.

“When I started this, everybody in the country was e-mailing me, wanting to buy a franchise,” he said.

The company sells poker, but nobody gambles.

Players join the Amateur Poker League through participating bars and clubs at no cost, and then play with chips. Players are strictly prohibited from wagering real money.

And that's what makes it legal.

The Missouri Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control earlier this year cleared the games to take place in regulated establishments.

“Based on their proposal and what they say they're going to do, it does not violate any state gambling or liquor laws,” said Joe Hodgin, the division's Kansas City District supervisor. “But we're going to monitor it.”

Both companies' card games have been under way at Lawrence locations for months, but Douglas County District Attorney Christine Kenney said she wasn't aware of it and hadn't heard a peep of protest.

Kenney said the law's three-pronged test for illegal gambling requires the activity to have an element of chance, prizes and “consideration,” which is a wager or some other expense for the players.

“Without one of those three elements you don't have illegal gambling,” said Kenney. “It sounds to me like it's been thought out very carefully.”

It certainly was, Wallace said Thursday, adding, “We have lawyers.”

Kevin Mullally, director of the Missouri Gaming Commission, also said his agency wasn't aware of the bar games.

But he agreed the setup probably would pass legal muster.

“The only issue I have with the Texas HoldEm phenomenon is from the problem gambling standpoint,” said Mullally.

“It's exploded and there's lot of young kids playing that game … at the grade school and high school level. That's fine if you're an adult. It's a concern when they're underage,” he said.

The minimum age for Amateur Poker League membership is 18.

Wallace, a Wichita karaoke bar entrepreneur, said he started the Amateur Poker League on a whim last November in one Wichita bar.

“I was so tired of karaoke,” he said. He said that after 10 years in the business, the region was saturated with his popular nightclub entertainment product, and he was looking for something new.

Wallace cobbled together some poker tables and a set of tournament rules for Texas HoldEm.

That first night, he said, eight players showed up. “My wife was furious. I spent a lot of money on it … lost thousands.”

But the next week 30 players showed up, and Wallace has been adding locations ever since. Today the League has 39 club affiliates in 16 Kansas cities, with 25 employees on the payroll and several job openings.

The Amateur Poker League's business plan is deceptively simple.

Every registered player gets an equal number of chips and is assigned to a table. Play continues until someone wins all the chips. Top winners get gift certificates and other modest merchandise prizes from the host bars — plus earning points toward regional and eventually a national championship.

Top prizes already being given away in weekly regional tournaments for local winners include Caribbean cruises and weekend getaways to Las Vegas. Wallace said the big prizes are donated by a travel agency that reaps advertising exposure. And he said he's working on several national brand name sponsors — beer, auto and casinos.

Host establishments — bars, billiard halls, fraternal lodges, restaurants and other venues — sign six- or 12-month contracts with Wallace and pay about $225 per nightly session.

Wallace supplies the advertising, game tables, cards, chips, rules, scorekeeping system and even a Web site, complete with game schedules and an online store that sells “APL” logo ball caps, visors and T-shirts.

Host sites enjoy a rousing business.

“These people make tons of money,” said Wallace. “Some of these bars were about to close,” he said, and now are hosts to poker crowds several nights a week.

The weekly poker crowd was a little too rousing for Wichita's Radisson Broadview Hotel. Corporate sales manager Kim Angulo said the hotel recently dropped the League games, which she said drew more than 500 people a night.

“For some places that might be a good piece of business,” she said. “But it wasn't the right kind of business for us. We're a full-service, upscale hotel, and the people who play those games aren't. Card players were putting their cigarettes out on the ballroom carpet.”

Kansas City casino executive Troy Stremming doesn't appear worried about the new competition. In fact, he said, his Ameristar Casino and Hotel recently received Gaming Commission approval to stage a similar non-gambling HoldEm tournament as a charity fund raiser.

And he sounded more than a bit interested in learning more about becoming a host site.