Casinos are often known for the varied entertainment options they have. Sometimes they are concerts, but sometimes they are sporting events like boxing or Mixed Martial Arts. In Delaware, that “fight night” attitude spilled over into the casino itself as a fight in a poker room resulted in one of the pugilists being arrested for felony assault.
Bad Things Happen After Midnight
According to the Delaware State Police, officers were called to the Delaware Park Casino at around 2:30 in the morning. The report was about a fight at the poker room but, once they responded to the call, DSP officers didn’t find anything going on. In fact, the alleged combatants – and we are not talking about battling it out on the felt – were back in the poker room and weren’t mixing it up any longer.
The troopers began their investigation and found that one of those involved, Taylor White of Newark, DE, had gotten into a verbal altercation with another player (who was not named). Instead of letting it go there, White allegedly pushed it into a physical confrontation by repeatedly punching the victim in the face.
This was not just a small beatdown, either. The duo continued to duke it out, knocking over a poker table before others stepped in to separate them. Once the police completed their investigations, it became apparent that the victim was injured seriously enough that he was sent to the hospital to check out his damage. White, on the other hand, was arrested for assault in the second degree (a felony in Delaware) and criminal mischief. His bond was set at $10,500 and White appears to have bonded out at this time.
Do You REALLY Want to Fight in a Poker Room?
Yes, poker can be a maddening game. It can drive preachers into Tourette’s levels of verbiage that would make the saltiest sailor blush. But you really must consider a few things as to whether you REALLY want to have a knock-down, drag-out knuckle buster in the middle of a poker room.
It isn’t like you are fighting in a back alley or abandoned warehouse. You are fighting in the middle of a well-lit room, with plenty of security around that is probably more versed in physical combat than you are. Putting this public scrutiny aside, there is also one other thing that you are not going to find on the street – the “eye in the sky” or the surveillance cameras. You can be sure that, in the above situation, they tried to play it off until Five-O got to examine the video footage.
The normal SOP for poker rooms and casinos in a situation like this is to ban the people who were fighting, whether they instigated it or not. Poker rooms and casinos are wont to have physical altercations on their property – it is not good for business, unless it is inside the squared circle or The Octagon. Thus, when there are people who are physically squaring off on their property, the casino (and poker room) is sure to enforce some sort of ban, even if it is for a brief time.
Knowing these things (and utilizing your natural intelligence), you can see that having some sort of physical altercation in a casino or poker room is probably not a clever idea. The moral of the above story is that, even though it may seem like the right thing to do, fighting in a poker room is a bad way to try to settle some differences. How about just stacking the guy (or girl) on the felt?
