Want to become a member of The Tilted Jack? All it takes is a valid ID and $20 — or just $10 if you can refer yourself using the voucher below.
But before you become a member... you should understand our mission, our movement, our goals and organizational structure. Our regular club meetings (at doors open - 30 minutes before any scheduled event) are used as new member orientation. Arrive early if you are a first timer, and any time you have questions or suggestions, ask any staff member and they will help you out.
One time free! You may visit the club anytime, and your first TTJ event can be played without paying a membership fee. However, you will be required to pay a membership fee before participating in any subsequent TTJ events and your membership fee will be garnished from any winnings as a trial member.
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Membership includes a membership card which can be used for discounts at neighborhood merchants. Currently, JT Gyros, Mr. Goodcent’s Subs & Pasta, Amana Market and Dust Devils Motorsports offer 10% off your purchase if you show them your TTJ Membership card.
As a member of The Tilted Jack, you must understand how and why The Tilted Jack is different, as the responsibility of recruiting and educating new members will often fall squarely on your shoulders.
The Tilted Jack will be organized and registered as a federally recognized cooperative. The cooperative ownership aspect of our poker club structure is what makes TTJ the most different, and we believe 100% legal, under Arizona social gambling exclusions. |
Membership forms are available at the clubhouse, but you can also fill one out in advance by clicking and printing the following form.
Understanding The Social Poker Club Cooperative Concept
Our cooperative operates as a not-for-profit entity, providing a service and a venue for members that want to control their game in a legal, legitimate, bona fide social environment.
A cooperative organization operates “at cost”, not for profit.
Excess funds, also known as retained earnings, are paid out as annual dividends to all current and active members, or the membership votes on how to best use those funds for the betterment of the cooperative, our movement, or our club.
As a cooperative LLC, the organization is treated by the I.R.S. as a multiple-member partnership and a pass-through tax is accessed to each individual owner-member on any profits that TTJ makes. However,
A cooperative gives every member equal ownership rights.
Every member has an equal voice with equal vote on any and all matters related to the club, our movement, and our operation.
As such, the members of the cooperative currently have agreed to divest the organization of any profits by hosting monthly, quarterly and/or annual freeroll tournaments or other promotions. Thus, the winners only pay taxes on their winnings, and all members will show $0 income on their annual K2 forms issued to them by the cooperative.
Once we form our cooperative, a process with a one-year establishing period, all members will have the option of becoming an equal owner with equal voting rights as the founding members. Becoming an equal owner in the poker club cooperative does not cost extra. WIth ownership comes responsibilities, as outlined in the Operating Agreement every cooperative member must sign to become part equal owner in the club.
The cooperative can renew memberships perpetually for all members in good standing, which makes each membership effectively a lifetime membership.
The cooperative can retain, contract and hire professional staff members and retainers as necessary for the organization’s missions and goals.
We have fostered the cooperative culture in our organization since starting, and encourage the democratic, open books, completely transparent philosophy of the cooperative concept.
The cooperative will hold elections to appoint a board of directors and an executive committee. These are unpaid, volunteer positions.
All members have a bona fide social relationship through our unified belief that citizens in Phoenix, in Arizona and in the United States, have the right to organize and play competitive, professional poker outside of what Jack feels is a state-sanctioned illegal monopoly on the professional sport of poker, the ultimate stategic contest of skill, in the BIA casinos and gambling industry at large.
We have bent the ear of the Phoenix Council and are preparing a presentation for local, state and tribal representatives in our effort to suggest that the City of Phoenix step up and authorize a city- and/or state-sanctioned poker-friendly environment that benefits everyone, including the seven existing (plus one potential in Glendale) BIA casinos in the Valley of the Sun.
Simply put, with a stamp of approval from local government, a percentage of a poker clubs gross proceeds could go towards a levy or tax. A permit fee could be applied, and a license fee per table. If not Phoenix, then perhaps Tempe, or Gila Bend, Surprise, or Tombstone.
What is TTJ’s primary purpose?
TTJ’s primary purpose is to organize and assemble like-minded fans of poker and people who believe we have a right, as granted by the Constitution, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have the right to collectively operate non-profit neighborhood clubs specifically for adults who enjoy playing poker for money and fun as a bona fide social activity.
We seek to change existing laws and will do so by working with local city and state authorities to ensure that the cooperative poker club is 100% legitimate and free from harassment. The cooperative poker club is subject to taxation, oversight, licensing and permit requirements, open books and complete transparency.
If we can’t find a state representative that will sponsor our objectives and help us write a “Arizona Poker Parlour Bill”, then our goal will be to start a petition signature campaign to make the issue a direct initiative ballot vote in the next year or two.
The Poker Players Declaration of Independence states, in part, that we believe: Poker is the ultimate strategic contest of skill. It isn’t gambling in the same sense as games of chance offered by casinos. Poker is different. Poker is not illegal. Gambling is not illegal. The international sport of poker was a game of the people long before the gambling industry claimed it. For the people, we seek to free professional poker from the clutches of the gambling industry’s monopoly on our game.
All members of TTJ that believe in our primary purpose and should want to take an active role in helping us to achieve our objectives. Our members all work together to accomplish our primary mission by volunteering to work and serve on committees, donate their time or other resources, and assist in all areas of operation necessary to see our goals accomplished.
What is a co-operative?
By operating as a non-profit cooperative, we believe The Tilted Jack defines the epitome of social gambling. And all we play is poker. No slots or other games of chance.
A cooperative (or co-op) is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit. TTJ plans to operate as a “service cooperative”. A cooperative gives its members equal ownership and equal vote in how the cooperative is run. Cooperatives are based on the cooperative values of “self-help, self-responsibility, democracy and equality, equity and solidarity” and the seven cooperative principles:
• Voluntary and Open Membership
• Democratic Member Control
• Member Economic Participation
• Autonomy and Independence
• Education, Training & Information
• Cooperation among Cooperatives
• Concern for Community
Why a cooperative?
We believe that the spirit of the Arizona Statutes on social and amusement gambling is that, as one Phoenix City Council Research Analyst summarized for me, “as long as it’s not run ‘for profit’, it should be okay”. We believe that as a not-for-profit organization structured as a cooperative, there will be very little chance (or interest) for organized crime syndicates to infiltrate our organization, and little or no chance of money laundering schemes to take place. These are the criminal elements which regulations making gambling unlawful attempt to thwart. The cooperative structure is self-regulating by its very nature, and as a socialist concept is the epitome of social gambling. Co-operatives are, in fact, a socialist concept. Won’t it be cool when our URL is TheTiltedJack.coop?!
Does operating as a cooperative make the club legal?
The concept of the cooperative poker club is too new to know the answer to this question, but the argument can be made that it is legal because it has open books, complete transparency, is democratically owned and operated and is not run as a business (non-profit). The cooperative concept takes away the influences or potential for corruption -- the reasons anti-gambling laws were established in the first place. The cooperative removes the single-ownership, profit-driven model of other clubs by giving every member the free opportunity to be an equal owner with equal vote as the founders of the club. Nobody profits from the gambling activity but the players, who as members, are all equal owners. The cooperative certainly makes TTJ more legal than any other club in Arizona today, and we believe less likely to be targeted for prosecution.
We have established a dialog with Phoenix Council members. We will also talk with State Representatives and the Mayor of Phoenix. We will consult with police, county attorney’s or state’s attorney general and the Department of Revenue. We will try to avoid the Department of Gaming, the police force funded 100% by the tribal casinos they are supposed to regulate and oversee, and instead rely on the Department of Public Safety at the local level or the Department of Revenue at the State level to oversee our own self-regulating, open and transparent operations.
We believe that a cooperative poker club operates within the social gambling exceptions allowed in the Arizona code, and that any prosecuting body that would indict us would be hard-pressed to prove any criminal or unlawful intent when hundreds, if not thousands, of individual member-owners can be called to testify before a jury of their peers as to our lack of criminal intent. We do not like the fact that BIA casinos rake the prize pools with impunity and attach all sorts of lucky-chance gambling schemes that diminish and impinge upon skill factors of the sport of poker.
Why fight for something you’re already doing then?
Because technically, while the non-profit cooperative poker club is definitely within the spirit of the law, it may still be targeted for prosecution, however unlikely that is.
We would like to see professional poker free of the gambling industry monopoly, whether it’s a non-profit or for-profit venture. The casinos can, and will, continue to offer poker rooms, but poker should not be lumped into the legal definition of gambling with the likes of keno, slots, 3-card poker, blackjack or any other game where there’s a built-in house edge.
Won't the casinos fight to keep control of poker, which I hear accounts for 1/3 of their revenue?
Whoa, a third? I heard 1%, and that that 1% is factored in some portion of the revenue brought in by the spouses or friends that also come to the casino for the games of chance.
The BIA casinos do have deep pockets. And they do have a deal with the State of Arizona. And it's what the people voted for with Prop 202 in 2002. But we contend that they have an illegal compact with the State, and that the State has a vested interest in the money they make from those compacts. Suffice to say they've got some muscle behind their money too. They are wrong, however. They do not own the sport of poker. And the State of Arizona elects to regulate gaming, not prohibit it. If it were prohibited by law, the statutes would explicitly read "Poker is illegal". Poker is not mentioned anywhere in the statutes. The fact that the State of Arizona elects to regulate the game of poker only for a select, racially segregated group is morally and ethically wrong and a declaratory judgement may be a viable option -- or TTJ might be able to (without being indicted for conspiracy) successfully craft a Memorandum of Understanding similar to what occurred between the State, DoG and tribes to allow "Jackpot Poker" to be deemed a Class III game with a percentage of proceeds that go towards the Arizona Benefit Fund and is subject to DoG oversight as well as the infamous Compact "poison pill clause".
Just as the gambling industry fought online poker at first, we believe that they will come around with brick and mortar establishments working together with Indian gaminb poker rooms. Poker clubs are a gateway from the home game or free pub poker players, to the casinos and the bigger format, higher stakes games with larger fields that only casinos can offer. The Tilted Jack is a neighborhood club. We don't want to compete with the casino card rooms. But we will bring them more players, ultimately. And we hope that perhaps we can work together with casinos in Arizona to do just that. Cooperatively!
