After a great deal of outrage from many in the poker community regarding the conduct of the event, the Florida Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering has announced they are investigating the Hialeah Park Casino over a poker tournament it conducted in late August.
According to Nick Sortal of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, gaming officials in Florida were willing to admit that they were looking into the situation but there wasn’t much more information beyond that. “The Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering is aware of the potential issue with a Hialeah Poker tournament and is gathering information,” the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation said in an email to Sortal. While Florida gaming officials haven’t announced what stage of the investigation is at or how soon an investigation will be forthcoming, the alleged location has already made its statement.
Hialeah Park officials responded to Sortal with a statement that read “Hialeah Park Management became aware of the alleged incident through social media. An internal investigation of the matter found no evidence of any discrepancies in the manner in which the poker tournament was conducted nor any wrongdoing on the part of any of the poker staff.” Those officials did not respond to any further questioning from Sortal regarding the issue.
The situation dates back to a poker tournament held at the Hialeah Park poker room from August 25-30. The tournament, a $250 buy-in event with a guaranteed prize pool of $200,000 and a first place prize guaranteed at $60,000, was supposed to celebrate the second anniversary of the poker room. From the start, however, it seemed there were some issues with the way the tournament allegedly was operated.
The tournament would consist of five Day Ones from August 25-29, with two flights each day to pull in enough players to make the guarantee. Besides the 15,000 chips for the original buy-in, there were extra dividends offered such as another 5000 chips for a $20 donation to the dealer pool and 8000 more chips for another $20 donation as an add-on. The tournament seemingly ran well over the five Day Ones but, once the final day of the tournament was reached on August 30, the players began to notice some discrepancies.
According to a lengthy original post on the Two Plus Two forum from a poster tagged ‘Bob Bernstein,’ the numbers that Hialeah Park officials gave for the start of Day Two play – a prize pool of $215,002 and 163 players still in the event – did not match up with what was on the tournament clock at the event itself. How far was the discrepancy? Allegedly a difference of 696,000 chips was in play, way beyond what could normally be accounted for through various tournament actions (color-ups, pulling dead stacks, etc.).
Attempting to head off a bubbling situation, a shift manager from the poker room attempted to explain the discrepancies over Facebook and provided yet a third set of numbers which allegedly didn’t match either of the previous two attempts. The mystery deepened when the final table was reached and the entirety of the 10 player table agreed to a chop, with no information regarding the tournament nor its results being published by the poker room.
In the Two Plus Two thread, Bernstein elaborates on some of the alleged action in the tournament and was encouraged by some of the responders to contact Florida gaming officials. According to Sortal, those officials would not discuss who brought the complaint against Hialeah Park Casino to their attention.
According to Sortal, the Hialeah Park poker room is one of the most lucrative in the Florida poker industry. With 33 tables in the room, Hialeah Park pulled in well over $8.3 million over the last fiscal year, making it the biggest room in the Miami area. Attention from state gaming officials isn’t good for business, however, and if the Florida Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering finds anything out of place, you can believe that action will be swift and painful.
