You Play Poker Here, You Buy My Pizza–Or Else!

In Hatfield, there used to be a pizza shop called Mama Maria’s. The owner was in the Daily Hampshire Gazette yesterday after being charged with holding a poker game and wielding a knife when some of the players broke his rules.

It was a simple and fair arrangement. They’d play poker in the shop on Tuesdays when the business was slow. The pizza man got no cut of the pot, he’d just get them to buy their food from him during the long games.

But players started breaking that rule and when a few of them decided to go take-out, instead of ordering from Mama’s menu, that was the last straw. The enraged pizza man chased them out wielding a knife, and then the cops came and he made the paper.

The cops said they can’t remember the last time anybody was charged with holding a poker game. “It was just so obvious, we had to put that charge in,” they explained.