This week, Mesbah Khaffaji allegedly spat on a dealer after loosing a hand. I actually just reread this sentence and it sounded like it could be straight from an episode of CSI but anyhow. It seemed that with all the pressure and stakes that accompany a player to the table emotions can sometimes get the best of them

This was no more evident than Sunday night in Bell Gardens when poker player Mesbah Khaffaji allegedly spat on a card dealer after losing a hand.

The Casino was Bicycle Casino, located in Bell Gardens, and Khaffaji was taken into custody by Bell Gardens authorities after spitting.  The player reported lost a hand on a Texas Hold Em’ No Limit table.

This was not the first time that Police Sergeant Brendan Kirkpatrick said that and incident such as this has occurred.

“Is it often? No. Does it happen? Yes,” remarked Kirkpatrick, to the paper the L.A Times. “People get heated. Large sums of money lost, people can’t control their emotions.”

While emotions can run high during an intense game of poker, people who play online poker in the USA enjoy a certain degree of anonymity and privacy that helps prevent this sort of thing from happening. Many internet poker sites do offer an in-game chat feature, but players who lose their temper and begin to abuse the chat system will quickly find themselves disconnected.

There’s a new kid on the poker block and this time the kid really is a kid- she’s a 7 year old girl who seems to have become so adept at poker that she already knows over a dozen variants and even featured in Card Player Magazine.

Alexa Fisher's passion for poker began when she was only three years old when she saw it being played on TV. Her dad had also been using playing cards and chips to teach her how to count so she had become adept at the rules and basic strategy of Texas Hold’Em by the time she was five.

Alexa took a trip to this year’s WSOP where she made acquaintances with Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey and Johnny Chan. Poker legend Barbara Enright even took Alexa to Serendipity 3 where she treated the budding poker star to her very first Double Frozen Hot Chocolate. Many of the top pros saw her as a lucky charm and she even gave out some autographs.

While not attending elementary school, she learns as much as she can about Badugi and double-flop Hold’Em. Alexa has learnt the rules to the poker played at the WSOP and outlasted half the field at a charity tournament for Home for Pets.

It seems the fate of US poker players boils down to deciding whether poker is a game of skill or luck and the courts seem to be holding the cards. If judges come to the agreement that the game is a game of skill and not chance then the anti-gambling laws that apply in many states will no longer have any sway.

Most poker players will attest to the game being one of skill, requiring a good ratio of memory, math skills and the ability to control your own behaviour while successfully reading that of others.

Kevin Raley, 44, an engineer and avid poker player from Colorado, argues this point by saying that while he has always been naturally gifted at mathematics and maintaining a good ‘poker face’, reading people is a skill that he has had to acquire and that he is better at it now than he was 5 years ago. To become better at something implies conscious effort, practice and consistency and Raley’s growing winnings reinforce this.

He has now decided to take this one step further. He was arrested a year ago for having a $20 buy-in Texas Hold’em tournament but was later on acquitted by the jury. Raley is now returning to court to convince the Colorado Supreme Court that poker is indeed a game of skill. Most US states only consider poker to be legal if it is played amongst friends where nobody apart from the players make a profit. Colorado is one of the 37 states that don’t constitute poker as gambling.

In a recent review of Raley’s case this month, a judge stood by the notion that poker still relies mostly on luck and that while a good player does require some skill, these players will always face possible defeat with the turn of the next card and poker is therefore predominantly based on luck.

This honestly sounds like the premise of a B grade Hollywood movie.

In a weird turn of events, a convicted conman has been told he must win at poker or face an intensely long jail sentence.

Samuel McMaster Jr has been found guilty of about 26 felony counts of fraud of masterminding a securities scam. In an odd twist of events, he’s been ordered to pay back his victims, and he’s going to use poker to do so. Whilst the payment plan does not involve the judge directly stipulating that he must play poker, it seems it is the only income he now has as he’s been banned from the securities industry.

The state of New Mexico is letting him travel out of state to numerous poker tournaments so that he can win the $7,5000 a month he needs to pay his monthly instalments as ordered by the state.

"We do have the unusual case here where we are agreeing to delay sentencing for a period of time to allow Mr. McMaster to set a track record as to whether or not he can pay back $400,000 in restitution," said lead prosecutor Phyllis H. Bowman.

The best part about this whole fiasco is that the cunning conman stole the money from his clients in order to fund his online poker habit. Now in an odd twist he needs to play the game in order to stay out of jail.

Matthew Casterella, a 29 year old poker pro who hails from New York City survived a jump off the Tappan Zee Bridge on Monday is a pro poker players who has won more than $`1.7 million in tournaments in the past 5 years.

The poker pro was listed in a fairly decent condition on Tuesday after he was pulled from the Hudson after leading from the middle of the bridge into the river.

He's pretty lucky," state police Investigator Matt Manza said. "I guess he just landed the right way."

According to state police, Casterella stopped his 2007 Acura just northbound of the middle of the bridge where road workers saw him get out his car and climb over the railing.  He jumped into the rivers where has was however immediately rescued fully conscious and alert by local members of the fire department boat units.

Manza said Casterella was seen trying to swim against the current in the water before he was rescued. He is being treated for “bumps and bruises” at Westchester Medical Centre in Valhalla, the investigator said.

Casterella was believed to have financial difficulties

It’s been said by experts that when a couple of millionaires come to Ford Sorth federal courthouse on Wednesday to start the bidding on the Texas Ranger baseballs club, it’ll be just like a high stakes poker game.

"It's like poker," said Dallas lawyer William Siegel. "It's very much like a poker game."

And just like a poker game, Nolan Ryan and Chuck Greenberg will have the opening bid.

Bankruptcy judge D. Michael Lynn who is presiding over the case has set the rules that whoever bids will have to up the ante by around $15 million over the offer.

"It's a lot of strategizing," Siegel said. "It may not go up 15 (million dollars). It may go up 30."

Any baseball fan knows the game is happening as much in the dugouts as on the field.  And in the auction process, it's the same. Be prepared for possible backroom deals to cause surprises in the courtroom.  Especially when its time for someone to go all in.