BEDFORD WEEKLY MAIL BEDFORD, INDIANA FRIDAY, OCT. 19, 1900 Certain Signs of Poker. A judgment convicting Thomas ROBERTS of visiting a gambling house in Bloomington was confirmed Tuesday. In deciding the case the Appellate Court held that, under our present statue, a single visit to a gambling house constitutes a misdemeanor, and also incidentally defined the appearance of a poker game. The court said that the statute was changed at the first session of the Legislature after the Supreme Court held that a single visit to such a place did not constitute "frequenting" gambling houses, and that the evident purpose of making the change was to cover the offense of occasional gambling, which must therefore be held now to be a crime. ROBERTS was arrested by two policemen, who found him sitting with several others at a round table over a saloon, where part of the company had cards in their hands, and there was money on the table, besides poker chips that were evidently in use. ROBERTS and his companions swore that it was only a friendly game of "seven up," in which the chips were used as counters to register the points in the game. They explain the money on the table by saying that it was the change from a bill which had been given in payment of a luncheon for the party. It was insisted in ROBERTS' defense that in the face of such direct testimony, the defendant could not be convicted on the circumstantial evidence furnished by the appearance of the room and the table and the attitude of the parties. In affirming the judgment of conviction, Judge WILEY said that the presence of six or seven men sitting about a round table with a cloth cover at half-past 1 o'clock Sunday morning, with cards, money and poker chips on the table, some of the men having cards in their hands and poker chips and money in front of them, and a pile of chips in the center of the table from which the person who occupied the room occasionally took a chip and dropped it into a drawer of the table, furnished evidence from which the inference that the room was a gambling room could properly be drawn, no matter what the persons said about it.