Widespread allegations of crooked dealing by employees of Houston's Legends Poker Room have emerged in recent days, including videos of one or more dealers appearing to manipulate the decks while shuffling by hand. Well-known pro Shaun Deeb was among those posting videos, including a version which, when its play speed slowed down, appears to display suspicious manipulation of the cards by an unnamed Legends dealer.
After posting a video clip that was too fuzzy for most of his followers to view, Deeb gave it a re-try early on Monday with improved results. In his distinctive, punctuation-free Deeb-ese, he declared, "I got a better quality video I have spoken to a floor person of legends who confirmed multiple dealers were fired for messing with the decks in the past month I am disappointed that no players were caught and the dealers were not prosecuted or outed so they can go do it elsewhere."
The video, though still blurry, seems to confirm Deeb's suspicions. Best viewed at 0.25x, it appears to show the dealer first inserting a small number of cards that he has seen the values of near the top of the deck, which is then followed by four 'push-through' riffles (one of which is partly obscured by the player doing the surreptitious filming). The fake card shuffling concludes with the dealer nullifying the cut, which would leave the entire deck unchanged from when it was first assembled by the dealer.
Many players have responded to Deeb's post. One called it "the worst, most blatant push-through shuffle I've ever seen." Josh Arieh said, "Stay safe out there! Winning on the square is hard enough! Cheaters are taking food off your kids table! Protect your livelihood."
No information has emerged regarding any player or players who may have been working in tandem with this dealer or others that Deeb claimed have been fired by the club.
Deeb's assertion regarding the dealers being fired but no other actions probably taken is unfortunately the likeliest outcome. Houston's Legends Club is in Texas, where poker is in essence an unregulated activity and no specific statutes or legal penalties exist to punish such alleged cheaters.
Legends Club has spotty history
The Legends venue, on Houston's west side, has been immersed in controversy since it opened. Legends founders David La and Ho Jun Sin first entered the Houston social-poker scene as partners in a room just a short walk from Legends which was first known as 52 Social, and which also included Johnny Chan as a co-owner. However, Chan soon sued La and Sin in 2019 over the ownership percentages, unauthorized use of Chan's name and likeness and embezzlement by La and Sin.
Chan's lawsuit was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, with Chan acquiring the club and renaming it as Johnny Chan's 88 Social, while La and Sin opened Legends Club just a stone's throw away. Chan's 88 Social went dark after a disastrous December 2021 "Winter Classic" series that officially made its guarantees but allegedly lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The club was sold to new ownership and operates today as Elite Social Club.
As La and Sin's new Legends Club opened, more details resurfaced about La's spotty past and were published within Chan's lawsuit. La played a central role in an early-2010s money-laundering scandal at Gardena, California's Normandie Casino. The scandal's fallout resulted in the casino's owning family being ordered to sell the casino, ending its 70-year history. La was a licensed key employee of the club, working first as the casino's manager and later as its CEO. However, La was stripped of his California license after bringing a high-stakes baccarat player known as "Sunny" to the club in 2013. Sunny won $2.5 million from Normandie, which went unreported as required by California's gaming laws.
The Normandie was shuttered by the Miller family in 2016, though it was soon purchased by Larry Flynt and reopened as Larry Flynt's Lucky Lady Casino. Meanwhile, La disappeared from the casino-gambling and poker scenes in any official capacity until his re-emergence with the 52 Social operation in Houston.
Legends Poker Room has also been the scene of violent incidents, including a 2022 attempted robbery that was ended by a brave security guard who tackled an armed gunman.
