COUNTERFEIT CHIPS Law enforcement and casino officials believe
Lusardi is alleged to have been involved in cheating in Event No. 1 in the Winter Poker Open by introducing at least 160 of the counterfeit chips into play, a value of 800,000 in tournament chips. The tournament featured a $560 buy-in with 4,814 players for a total prize pool of more than $4 million. “This is the first time we’ve had anything like this happen in our 10 years in business, and it’s the first time I’ve seen anything like this in my 27 years in gaming,” Borgata Senior Vice President Joe Lupp told the Press at the time.
The result for players? After initially suspending
the tournament, play was then cancelled altogether with three tables of 27 players remaining. Investigators believe 2,143 players who did not cash in the top 450 may have been affected by the counterfeit chips and were refunded their buy-in. Those in the final 27 received the remaining cash – $19,323 each. Lusardi was an early leader and cashed for $6,814.
SECURITY CONCERNS
Initially, a few players had noticed some of the fake chips and rumblings began about something being wrong with the tournament. Nick Guagenti, of Columbus, Ohio, has been a mid-stakes grinder for about 11 years, traveling throughout the U.S. about 175 days a year playing cash games and some tournaments.
“It was pretty hectic on the first day. Along with the
noon event, we weren’t allowed in the tournament room for hours. While waiting, no one really knew what was happening, but I had a bad feeling,” Guagenti tells Casino International. “When we were finally let in and told of the counterfeit chips and that they were postponing it until the next day there were a lot of different emotions.”
For Guagenti, who is married and has a 1-year-old
daughter, the cheating and suspension of the tournament was personal. He was second in chips and the resolution may have cost him thousands of dollars in winnings. Despite this, he realizes there was nothing else the casino and Division of Gaming could do, but believes incident like this go on more in the poker world than most people realize.
“On the first day there were a lot of questions
from the players. None were answered as they were beginning their investigation,” he says. “My first reaction was: ‘Yeah, so what. I suspect that a lot of tournaments are compromised from time to time – just not with counterfeit chips.’ On the following day, when we were told that the tournament was to be canceled, there was a lot of anger and disbelief. I was in shock. I’ve been playing a long time and hadn’t been in many spots with that much financial equity.”
Organizing a poker tournament can be a bit of
controlled chaos at times. Slipping a high-value counterfeit chip into a tournament may seem easy, but with cameras everywhere most criminals would be deterred. Matt Savage, longtime tournament director and executive tournament director for the World Poker Tour, believes the case in Atlantic City has made the industry take notice and focus on security. He also believes players themselves can be a big part of policing the game as happened at the Borgata.
“Players and tournament staff have become more vigilant and I think that is important. Of course, we all hope it is an isolated incident, but we all know that the fact that he [Lusardi] is being prosecuted is likely a big deterrent for a crime that in the end didn’t even pay off as he had hoped,” he says. “Players must be vigilant. If they see something that does not look right, speak to the tournament director away from the table. They are playing for a lot of money and so they need to look out for themselves also.”
In recent years, many casinos and tournaments have been using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in casino chips to track them and identify fakes. Savage believes that while the technology certainly works, it is not always an option for most casinos.
“I think the idea of RFID is not feasible for most
casinos and I’m not even sure how well it would work. I’d like to think that the major majority of poker players are out for a fair game and tournament, and hopefully we have seen the last of this type of behavior,” he says. “This could have happened anywhere and so I do not hold Borgata 100 percent responsible and I am happy that there was a resolution.”
OCTOBER 2014 35
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