Venetian CEO Poker Tournament Main Event Furor

[PokeReader]

Generally consumer recompense in a bait and switch is refunding of purchase price. Ergo, in this case, I believe individuals would be entitled to their buy-ins. However, I am not specifically familar with Nevada law, and cannot say for sure that there are not any statutes that deals more particularly with gambling and false adverting.

[RR]

[ QUOTE ]
This whole fiasco reminds me of the old Oleans tournaments, where the tournament director was skimming money off of the re-buy tournaments to feed his video poker habit.

He was getting away with it no problem, when one day someone counted up the prize money and noticed the discrepancy.

He was canned as soon as they figured it out. I don't know if anything else happened to him, and I haven't heard from him since. I can't remember his name either.

Maybe someone out there remembers this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I remeber this well.

[Bonified]

[ QUOTE ]
What I really don't understand is that if they have been doing this all the time, how has it not blow up yet?

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT, this amazes me. Three times before and no one complained, at least not loud enough for most people to hear ? As players, we need to be more vigilant and to protect ourselves better. Having said that, kudos to the people who have brought this to light now.

[Kevmath]

Looks like the name was David Hirscina, at least from what I was able to figure out over at recpoker.com . This was in 2002 I'm assuming.

Edit: More details from
RGP in 2000.

[JPinAZ]

[ QUOTE ]
Serious question..
Can these people take money from a person, write a check to the charity and get the TAX DEDUCTION for themselves?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes they can. The IRS only allows whoever actually gave the money to the charity to take the deduction. If you collected money from your friend/coworkers/whatever to donate to a charity, only you'd be able to take the deduction.

[JPinAZ]

From the WhoIs record for ceopokertour.com:
[ QUOTE ]

Registrant:
CEO Poker Tour

6039 Collins Avenue
Miami Beach, Florida 33141
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: CEOPOKERTOUR.COM
Created on: 16-Jul-05
Expires on: 16-Jul-08
Last Updated on:

Administrative Contact:
Peraza, William william@reachon.com
CEO Poker Tour
6039 Collins Avenue
Miami Beach, Florida 33141
United States
+1.3057614371 Fax -- +1.3057614371

Technical Contact:
Peraza, William william@reachon.com
CEO Poker Tour
6039 Collins Avenue
Miami Beach, Florida 33141
United States
+1.3057614371 Fax -- +1.3057614371

Domain servers in listed order:
NS.PROPAGATION.NET
NS2.PROPAGATION.NET


[/ QUOTE ]

The contact info page for reachon.com (an email marketing company) lists william@reachon.com as the customer service email.

And that address for ceopokertour.com?

http://www.kafka-franz.com/maison-grande-condo.htm

[Quicksilvre]

Good god, the Palms tournaments were insane. There's $20,000 missing from the the $1,500 tournaments. And then, for whatever reason, they added $13,000 to the main event (when 21 players showed up.)

Incidentally all of the tournament records seem to be here, for anyone who wants to see for themselves:

PokerPages database

[BogusRogus]

[ QUOTE ]
I even sent the CEO Tour a follow up e-mail about being unhappy about the misleading # of entires that Maria told me on the phone of 150+.I remember her giving me some BS about cancellations,CEO's that had other obligations,whatever,it was total non-sense,and I am absolutley mortified about being hustled now!

~stephen feraca

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah - Scrushy, Lay, and Kozwolski had to cancel.

[doublejoker]

It's happened many more than three ties before; these were just examples posted by twoplustowers. I'm sure if you checked every last tourney they would all have similar discrepancies as these...


Here is a summary of the 4 Tournaments reported thus far....

Palms CEO Event:

wow in that one they collected $55,800 and paid out just over $40,000? this is insane? Why has this not come to light sooner?

CEO Poker Tournament
Event #1 - No Limit Hold'em
October 23, 2006
Palms
Tournament Schedule
Buy-In $1,500 + $300
Prize Pool $40,105
Entries 31



Taj Mahal Main Event:

i found it. Here are the numbers; they collected $225,000 plus juice from 45 players; here is the breakdown...


EVENT: No-Limit Hold'em Championship Event 6
ROUND: N/A BLINDS: N/A ANTE: N/A PLAYERS LEFT: N/A

BUY-IN $5,000
TOTAL PRIZE POOL $155,200
ENTRIES 45
FINAL RESULTS: May.24 VIEW STANDINGS: May.24
PLACE PLAYER PRIZE/CHIPSPOY POINTS
1Michael Santoro$69,8400
2Charles Minter$38,8000
3Bianco Benedetto$23,2800
4John Aglialoro$15,5200
5Angel Modica$7,7600

There is $70,000 missing???? Acually more than $70,000 I beleive the buyin was $5,150 not $5,000.


Venetian $1,000 Event:


I just checked one of the $1,000 tourneys fron Venetian; in this case they charged a staggering amount of juice as well. They collected $1,075 x 174 players ($187,050) and paid out $158,339.


EVENT: No-Limit Hold'em Event 7
BUY-IN $1,000
TOTAL PRIZE POOL $158,339
ENTRIES 174

1Bryan Watkins$49,085408
2Mike Leah$28,818340
3Aaron Krebs$17,417272
4Mohammad Hamid$14,251204
5Giovanni Rigolli$9,500170
6Charles Denton$7,917136
7Darcy McLeod$6,334102

Venetian Main Event:

$2500 buyin

$100 to Venetian
$150 CEO "site fee"
$125 CEO Charity
$75 Venetian staff


234 entries at $2600 ($608,400)

Final prizepool of $503,100

BUY-IN $2,500
TOTAL PRIZE POOL $503,100
ENTRIES 234



This really is out of hand Players cannot have any reasonable chance when they start out 20% in the hole.

The entire entry fee of 2 players per table is removed from the prizepool.

[stephenNUTS]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I even sent the CEO Tour a follow up e-mail about being unhappy about the misleading # of entires that Maria told me on the phone of 150+.I remember her giving me some BS about cancellations,CEO's that had other obligations,whatever,it was total non-sense,and I am absolutley mortified about being hustled now!

~stephen feraca

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah - Scrushy, Lay, and Kozwolski had to cancel.

[/ QUOTE ]

I expected a retort like this which is pretty funny,but even if you account for 10-20 MORE WS Crooks(beleive me there are thousands),where are the OTHER 130+ players/CEO's she promised were already sigend up at the TAJ,after she basically called me/e-mailed everyday about pre-registration and "limited seating due to the intense demand"?

Yeah Right!!!

Another thing bothering me now is that MARIA specifically implied to me when I asked her about "elligible" players(in other words,do you have to have proof of being a CEO,or run a company to be eligible,and she told me at the TAJ....anyone could basically play,BUT at the Venetian,you HAD TO BE a corporate officer,businees owner,titled public officer of a WS firm,etc...........just MORE BS,as they would have taken the $2600 from ANYONE who walked up with CASH and a Venetian players card,whether they ran General Electric,or had a tin cup and an accordian on Las Vegas Blvd.)

This whole thing is and ALWAYS was a SCAM,and they are using charity,staff donations,fineprint, etc,as a way to make some pretty decent monies off most players naivity,along with total mis-representation of the actual costs of each event/series as they occured.It is QUITE obvious now,that this was not just the TAJ and Venetian ,but every series they ran ,in all diff. casinos as well it seems

Dont these [censored] money hungry casinos do background checks,or at least look into the whole structure/payout #'s with a little more intensity before something like this occurs,esp. when the word CHARITY pops up?

Can "WE" just walk into the Venetion,call ourselves the "$500+ $300+200+$100 1st Annual Poker Champions of the World Tour" ,and any legitimate casino would say "sure Stephen,just as long as we get OUR cut,do whatever you like sir"?

Where is the Nevada Gaming Commission in thse spots,and do they even care or get involved?

It CANT possibly be good press for the TAJ or the Venetian,or the whole poker tour scene in general,as players(esp ME) will be scrutinizing the these events with a keen eye to the max IMO .

Reading some of the basic math with regard to pool size-payout ratio posted by others here, leaves these crooks with a nice chunk of money in each event of each series,at least diuring these most recent A/C and L/V stops as posted above?

WOW,I am so stunned because ,as this gets deeper and deeper, more and more crap is dug up each time I sign in!

~stephen [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]