The poker king shows his hand

The poker king shows his hand By Police Reporter SAM RICHES for The Advertiser BY his own admission, Joe Meissner has a "colourful" past that could also explain a police raid on a poker tournament this week. Patrons and organisers were perplexed at the manner in which about 40 police officers stormed in and raided what allegedly was an organised and sophisticated illegal gambling event. STAR Group, Drug and Organised Crime and Avatar, the anti-bikie taskforce, were all involved in effectively taking over the Carrington St venue, in what many players felt was "ridiculous" overkill. Mr Meissner said yesterday he had received a "half-pie apology" from Avatar yesterday. "They said they were misled, that they had misinformation because of some of the names of players on the list," Mr Meissner said last night. "Now they're talking about sending us infringement notices." According to Mr Meissner, it's irrelevant that he has been involved in "sports, politics and gangsterism". That could further explain the involvement of STAR Group and the organised crime branch. "It's no secret, but I don't see what relevance it has," he said. He is open about his past – which includes jail time for attempting to steal submachine guns from an army base in the 1960s, heroin charges and the infamous "love boat" saga. There's allegations of political bribery and a fascinating collage of all things underworld. "There's hundreds of pages on Google on Joe Meissner, you could write a book," he said. "They want to call me a standover man, let them do that in court." These days, Mr Meissner says he is happy to just play "high-stakes poker all over the world". The poker tournament raid was described as "heavy-handed" by Opposition gambling spokesman Robert Brokenshire yesterday. About 40 police raided the Italian Club on Wednesday night. "Surely a simpler and smarter solution would have been to contact the organisers, tell them the event appeared to be illegal and that it had to be cancelled," he said.