If your into late night poker games at home with the buddies then this article is for you. Imagine hosting a poker game and a few hours into the game it's the fuzz and the famed cliche; 'Nobody move, hands in the air'! What would you do? One thing for sure is not to move.

Well that happen to Dennis Barcuch, 38, of Hobbs N.M.. As the host of a home poker game in february of this year and the following is the excerpt from the AP wire.

Felony charges dropped for home poker game Source: AP 5-9-2005 HOBBS, N.M. -- The host of a poker game raided in February for allegedly being high stakes will spend no time in jail.
Dennis Barcuch, 38, of Hobbs has pleaded no contest to gambling -- a petty misdemeanor.
Magistrate Judge Dianna Luce sentenced him to 180 days in jail -- all suspended -- and 180 days of unsupervised probation.

He's also been ordered to pay 67 dollars in fees and donate a hundred dollars to charity.
Barcuch had initially faced 18 months in prison and a five-thousand dollar fine on felony charges of commercial gambling and permitting his home to be used for gambling.
Officers with the New Mexico Department of Public Safety's Special Investigations Division raided Barcuch's residence February Fifth.

As poker becomes more popular more of these stories will become more common. It is the poker web's contention that if you host a home poker game we hope that you play for fun and if the urge to play poker for money arrises and your in an area where playing poker for money is illegal then we would say take your poker game to an Area Casino where poker can be played legally. After all we'd hate to see anyone getting in trouble playing the hottest game in the country. So from the Poker web to your poker home be safe and play right.

Please visit the poker web for information on last to the minute poker news and poker information. The poker web is the new generation of online poker site adding tremendous articles and news updates about what is current in the world of poker. The poker web will also be sectioning off a part of their website dedicated the World Series of Poker 2005 so don't miss out on all the latest up to the minute poker tournament news.

On a side note the World Poker Showdown or WPS is putting together a new Poker Cruise getting ready to sail in Dec of 2005. So if you missed out on the action for the first poker cruise don't miss the action on the new WPS Christmas in the Caribbean poker cruise.

Everywhere you look there are poker tournaments being played for a great deal of different reasons. Some poker tournaments are geared for free known as free rolls others are money tournaments. Another would be the for poker charity events. The forward is a brief history about poker and poker tournaments in general.

Poker, probably the favorite home card game in the U.S., is today a uniquely American game but far reaching into the European frontier. People associate it mainly with the settling of the Western frontier, but it has been linked to U.S. history since colonial times, when decks of playing cards (like tea) had to be imported from England and were subject to a heavy excise tax. It was, in fact, illegal to manufacture decks of cards in the American colonies.

While the origin of the game of Poker is widely disputed, it seems clear that playing cards were invented by the Chinese around 900 A.D. The Chinese probably invented card games based on games with paper money (which they also invented). Some historians, however, believe that cards are derived from Chinese dominoes, the game pieces simply made into thin cards instead of tiles. Cardplaying spread over the world, arriving in Italy and Spain from Egypt via trade routes by the late 14th century. Many early decks had just 20 cards. The Tarot deck was created based on existing playing card decks, adding 22 trumps to a regular deck. The suits of the Tarot are the same that early Italian and Spanish decks used: Swords, Batons/Clubs, Cups, and Coins. These were called Latin suits. Early English decks were Latin-suited, but they gradually adopted the familiar Spades, Clubs, Hearts, and Diamonds, suits that France began using on their cards about 1480 and we use today.

How did Poker get to America? By the rivers and railroads, mainly. The French who settled New Orleans learned the game of As Nas from Persian sailors going up the Mississippi. As Nas, played by Frenchmen, became associated with their French game of "Poque," a card game involving bluffing and betting. Poker also bears some resemblance to the old 3-card games of Brag in England and Pochen in German (Pochen means "to bluff.")

By the 1830s, a 52-card deck was in general use, and poker rules were slowly becoming standardized as rule books were written. The Old West took to the game quickly. It became the saloon favorite over faro, as sharp players discovered how quickly wealth could be won from it. The personalities of Western legends, guns, saloons and Poker all seemed to go together. Particularly the guns: Poker Alice (born Alice Ivers), a famous gambler and saloonkeeper, shot and killed a man who accused her husband of cheating at cards. Doc Holliday and Wild Bill Hickok, both of whom earned a living at times from cardplaying, frequently had to relocate after disputes over cards that they settled with bullets. For Hickok, poker would be the last game he'd ever play. On Aug. 2, 1876, in the Number 66 Saloon (some say it was No. 6, or No. 10) in Deadwood, South Dakota, Wild Bill reluctantly chose a seat he didn't care for, with its back to the door, so he could be in on the card game. While he played, a man named Jack McCall walked in and circled the table. He slowly walked behind Hickok's chair and shot him in the back. Wild Bill's cards -- a 2-pair hand of black Eights and black Aces, plus a 5th card -- became known as the Dead Man's Hand.

Poker, clearly, fit the aggressiveness of the West: a player had to keep his wits about him and exploit opportunity as it arrived. The game -- and the frontier -- was not for anyone without confidence. And it survived its clashes with the law. In 1910, Nevada made it a felony to run a betting game. The Attorney General of California declared that draw poker was based upon skill and therefore the antigambling laws could not stop it. But stud poker, he said, was based on mere chance. Therefore it was illegal. Naturally draw poker games flourished, and more emerged. In 1931, Nevada reversed itself and became the only place in the U.S. to legalize casino gambling, until 1978, when Atlantic City joined in.

Today poker is played in more variations than probably any other game. Its phrases are part of our common speech. We named a facial expression after it. It has its own World Series of Poker, when the best players compete in poker tournaments over14 days. While other games may have higher payback percentages, the irresistibility of poker -- the game so closely tied to the personality and demeanor of the poker player -- rules.

If anything is self evident about the game of poker and its respected poker tournaments is that online poker is here to stay and with all that the game stands for one thing is for certain, America and the world seems to have fallen in love with the game of Poker and all its poker cruises.