It’s been a while. If I haven’t met you yet, glad to know you. They let me write stuff here now and then. Like I said, it’s been a while, but I plan to be back as much as I can.
If you don’t remember me, you can find my articles listed on the BrownwoodNews page under columnists. Some of them are pretty good. I recommend them.
There’s one there, if you can find it, titled “A Hundred Years from Today.”
It seems like it’s been a hundred years since I wrote to you.
I’ve been busy, which is every excuse by everyone every day – but that doesn’t make it less true. Somewhere in this rambling discourse you may discover what I’ve been doing.
Today I took a walk across our revitalized Downtown, and things have changed a lot since I was writing to you twice weekly… and they’ve stayed the same a lot too. It was warm and humid as I made my way with little Merle on his leash. Downtown Brownwood has become an example nationwide for successful downtown revitalization. Right now, as I write this, there is a conference going on at our new Event Center discussing that very thing. People are traveling from all over everywhere to check out what is happening here.
The eateries, little pubs, shops, the theater, the murals and revitalizing energy can be seen everywhere. People, as I’ve told you before, are longing for Mayberry – a walkable, cool downtown with friends and community.
So… back to me being busy. I was on a walk this morning, but I didn’t leave the new Royal Card Club until 4 a.m. We kicked off the first day flight of our $10k Guaranteed Royal Poker Championship yesterday with a 6 p.m. flight. Then some players stuck around after and played No-Limit Hold’em until the wee hours of the morning.
I couldn’t help, as I walked across downtown, hearkening back to books and articles I’ve read about frontier Brownwood, buzzing with hope, business, and even (gasp) vice! There were brothels, public houses, and more. There were gaming parlors all over downtown. Most of the parlors were not the things of the movies, of Tombstone and shootouts and smokey violence. Those things are mostly for movies. Maybe there was some of that, but that stuff happened in living rooms and hotels too and in front of the courthouse too. Mostly, the parlors were communal meeting places, where free humans met to enjoy themselves, talk, do business, and just relax. Think about it, if there were shootouts every day, every month, even every year, most people would never have gone in there. Let’s leave the movies to themselves.
Poker has been legal in Texas for a very long time. There are two main rules:
1. It has to be in a “private” situation. A home, private membership social club, etc.
2. The “house” cannot take a rake (a percentage of any gambling action.)
And here we are again… The cards are dealt, the chips are stacked, and the air hums with that old-timey mix of excitement and camaraderie. The Royal Card Club, our new poker joint at 104 S. Broadway in revitalized downtown Brownwood, Texas. It’s a place where locals like me, Steven McCrane, Kim and Robert Clark—folks tied to this town’s bones—have built a clean, fun, safe, lively spot for poker players to gather. It’s not just about the game; it’s about community, same as it was back in the Old West when card rooms were the heartbeat of frontier towns.
As I said, the old gaming parlors weren’t just (or often) dens of vice; they were social hubs, stitching together communities in a land where trust was as scarce as water. Poker, a game of skill and nerve, built bonds that helped settle the West, turning strangers into neighbors over a shared table.
Fast forward to our own time and over the last 8 or 9 years, Brownwood’s downtown is waking up from a long nap. What was old is new again. More and more people are eschewing the chain stores, chain restaurants, and cardboard-cutout service outlets for a renewed “small town”, home-owned, family oriented and community conscious, comfortable and enjoyable reality.
And you might have heard the ads, or seen the banners, or heard the murmurs. Here in downtown we’re in the midst of the Heart of Texas $10,000 Guaranteed (minimum) Royal Poker Championship, running from Thursday the 12th, through Sunday the 15th. 5 “Day 1” flights are running, at least one each day. For example, Day 1A was yesterday, and 3 players “bagged” their chips to carry them forth to Day 2 (which kicks off Sunday at 2pm. It seems complicated, but it isn’t. Day 1B is today (as I’m writing this) at 6pm. At least 3 more players will bag chips. Tomorrow, Saturday, we have two Day 1 flights. One at 1pm and another at 6pm. We have one final super-last-chance-turbo flight Sunday at 9 a.m., with the final contest DAY 2 starting Sunday at 2pm and playing through to the winners!
The Royal Card Club, with its membership model—$10 a day, $30 a month, or $200 for a year—keeps poker legal, no rake, just like Texas law demands. We’re not just dealing cards; we’re dealing in connections. Central Texas poker players used to drive hours to Austin or Oklahoma for a game, taking their dollars with them. Now, we’re keeping that energy local, drawing players from across Texas to our revitalized downtown. This tournament will likely have a $50k to $100k economic impact to the Downtown Brownwood economy.
Out-of-towners are here, renting rooms, buying dinners, going shopping. Spouses are walking around downtown and visiting shops during the day.
Poker has been here in this town forever.
It’s like the old parlors, but cleaner, safer, with better chairs. You sit down, play a hand, tell a story. Maybe you’re not living in the Old West, but you’re building something—a community, a memory. A hundred years from yesterday, things are likely to be different, but I wager many things will remain the same. People are looking for good and safe fun, a clean, well-lighted place to meet and commune and maybe rebuild something special.
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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear on periodically on the website.