If the tournament was OK at the hotel — if no police showed up to arrest them — what does that mean, the men wanted to know. Is poker illegal in the county-owned Salt Palace but legal everywhere else? Or, conversely, if poker is really illegal everywhere, what about church raffles and bingo and charity casino nights? If everything is illegal, predicts Colledge, "they'll have to triple their police force."

"They're going to have to make a decision, one way or the other, because it's so popular," he says. "Every week some new guy comes up with a (poker) tournament."

Meanwhile, the Diamond partners are planning to sue the county for lost revenues.

Tournaments like theirs really aren't gambling anyway, the partners argue, because of their rules: you pay $75 to play one "table" and $25 for each additional hand, but you don't win anything except the chance to play in the final round. There are chips involved, of course, but the chips aren't worth anything. And, technically, anyone can play in the final round, without ever paying an entry fee, "if there is room at the tables." Moore pointed to two signs taped to the sign-in table: "Understand that by playing cards with us that you do not expect to win any prizes of value," and "There is no purchase necessary to win any of our prizes."

The signs do not impress Salt Lake County District Attorney Dave Yocom. "Your motivation is to move on to win prizes at the next stage," he insists. The no-purchase-necessary is "obviously just a front," he says.

Texas Hold'em tournaments, raffles, slot machines, office pools, bingo, home poker games with betting, charity casino nights, online poker — in Yocom's reading of the law they're all equally illegal in Utah. The poker tournaments were the subject of a November meeting of county attorneys throughout the state, Yocom says. "We're concerned it's running rampant."

"Risking anything of value to win anything of value on a game of chance" is the way Yocom defines gambling. That "something of value" doesn't mean just cash, notes assistant state Attorney General Tom Roberts. "If you bet a can of spaghetti, that has value. If you're paid off in cans of green beans, that has value."

That's not how Dean Brown thinks the law is interpreted. "As long as you play for prizes and don't play for cash" it's legal, says Brown, a former Weber State University student, about the tournament he has run at Weber State's Union Building. As with most poker tournaments, there is no betting but there is a "buy-in," in this case $30 ($25 with a student ID). The WSU tournament is one of 38 listed on homepokergame.com, a list that also includes a Wasatch Poker Tour tournament held at the University of Utah Union Building earlier this month.