Poker Game Ends Up In Court

September 14, 2008

Local establishments hosting poker games should take heed of this next report, for what can seem like a harmless game can always end up with someone in court. This is exactly what happened with the poker game held in Clovis.

The year was 1954, and the month was December. The Cattlemen’s Club was hosting a poker game, and it started out exactly like all of the other poker games that have been hosted there before. However, a young man named Ben Snure showed up from out of town who had sold all the livestock he had. He showed up at the poker game with $8,183 ready to play.

Snure had been drinking and told the owner of the club, Jack Skipworth that he wanted to get into a poker game. Skipworth called some players in Hobbs which was about 110 miles away. Snure called for fresh cards and they started playing. Snure played for 14 hours and during that time got a $2,000 draft from his bank account to stay in the game.

When all was said and done, Snure had lost it all. He took them to court and sued them all. Well, sure enough, he won. The jury found for him and so did the Supreme Court. They said that it seemed strange that Skipworth would get players from Hobbs instead of local boys from Clovis, and they felt that Snure had been had.

Even though Snure went looking for the game, he still had the right to sue to recover his losses, and he did just that.