Joe Giron/PokerNews
Mark Kroon filed his challenge to Wisconsin’s poker-for-money ban a year ago.
A Dane County judge is scheduled to rule on Aug. 12 whether poker should be legalized in Wisconsin.
The odds seem stacked against the plaintiffs, Cross Plains resident Steve Verrett and Madison bar owner Mark Kroon, who filed their challenge to the state Department of Justice a year ago.
But forgive Kroon if he likes his chances.
On July 13, the 54-year-old owner of Players Sports Bar on Madison’s east side wrapped up a six-day run in the World Series of Poker’s “Main Event” in Las Vegas, where he finished 43rd in a field of 6,420 players. His deep run in what amounts to the card game’s Super Bowl earned him a cool $164,086, minus the $10,000 entrance fee.
“It was amazing,” says Kroon, who was back “flipping burgers” at Players last week. “It was almost like a dream.”
But Kroon says the experience also solidified his belief that poker should be legal in Wisconsin.
“I wish I could go in front of any judge and tell them what just happened to me [at the tournament],” he says. “Nobody can just sit down, get lucky and win. It’s just not the case.”
Indeed, the Aug. 12 ruling by Circuit Judge Richard Niess will likely hinge on the skill-versus-luck debate that has riled poker players for years.
Poker, when played for money, is considered illegal in Wisconsin, though enforcement is lax. The state constitution doesn’t specifically mention poker, but it bans most forms of gambling outside of tribal-run casinos.
However, the ban relies on a separate statute that defines a “bet” as a wager between two parties that’s “dependent upon chance even though accompanied by some skill.” And there’s the rub.
In court filings this spring, the plaintiffs presented testimony from Robert Hannum, a professor of risk analysis and gaming at the University of Denver. Citing a study of more than one billion hands of online poker, Hannum concluded that skill “predominates” over luck in poker “in the long run.”
The state countered that Hannum’s testimony ignores a simple truth: In any single hand of poker, even a bad player can get great cards and win. From that short-term perspective, “chance determines the result,” the state said in its June 11 response.
This isn’t the first time Kroon has bristled at laws affecting the game he loves. He was a top online poker player in the 2000s before the federal government outlawed it in 2011. The same year, state DOJ agents warned him to stop hosting poker tournaments at Players.
The latter episode spurred him and Verrett, president of the Wisconsin Poker Players Alliance, to raise $10,000 from local players last year so they could hire attorney Stan Davis and force a judge to rule on poker’s legality in Wisconsin.
Verrett said in an email that “we like our chances” in court. And he recently wrote on a Facebook page for local players that he and several partners are preparing to open a poker room — which exist in states with more lenient gaming laws like California and Ohio — on the city’s east side if the judge rules in their favor.
Regardless of the ruling, Kroon says he’s still not sure what he’ll do with his World Series of Poker winnings. No poker rooms or rooftop terraces are planned for his humble tavern.
“We’re definitely going to do something fun with it,” he says. “But basically I sign the check and hand it off to my wife, and she takes care of it.”
