The landlord of the San Antonio Poker Palace, the Texas social-poker room at the center of a controversy over an unpaid, six-figure bad-beat jackpot in April, has sued the owners of the now-shuttered club for at least $250,000 in unpaid rent, maintenance fees and additional costs associated with upkeep of the venue.
News of the lawsuit filed in a Texas District Court in San Antonio was first published by the San Antonio Express-News, which also reported that the club quietly closed last month in the aftermath of the bad-beat jackpot controversy. On April 6, the room's owners and management declined to pay out the room's advertised $100,000 jackpot when a qualifying hand occurred, citing minor infractions in the bettting sequence during the hand that in actuality had no effect on how the hand played out.
Anecdotal reports suggest the club, one of several social-poker clubs in greate San Antonio, lost much of its cash-game traffic in the days and weeks that followed as customers refused to patronize a venue that did not honor its guarantees.
Texas clubs operate in an unregulated grey area, and without a proper regulatory review, there would be no way to adjudicate whether the room's withholding of the $100,000 jackpot was done for valid reasons. In regulated states such as Nevada, the NGC has ordered jackpots to be paid out regrdless of whether minor betting infractions occurred, if these infractions did not materially alter the wagering in the jackpot hand.
