This post is to warn people about the practices of Julio Cesar Velasquez Mora and the casino he works for; Grand Casino Escazu (Costa Rica)

Julio is the cardroom manager/tournament director at the above mentioned casino. Last year he created a $1700 $250k GTD tournament which was to run in November. He proceeded to run satellites which also had seat guarantees. A horse of mine, Daniel Ivers, competed in one of these $185 satellites and won a seat.

Fast forward for October, and out of the blue, with only a month before the scheduled start date of the tournament, Julio cancels the tournament, giving no reason. It was clearly obvious that through that the lack of satellite action, the tournament would overlay hugely if it ran.

Daniel contacted Julio, who confirmed that he could of course get a cash refund for his ticket and that he would be in touch within a couple of days once everything is sorted. He hears nothing for nearly a month, and chase up messages are ignored.

Julio finally messages, stating that infact the tournament wasnt actually cancelled, but rescheduled, and that it would take place in April 2020, nearly 6 months later! Players therefore have no option other than to wait for the rescheduled tournament to come around and use their tickets there. Players complain but are pointed towards an ambiguous set of terms and conditions on the casinos website which effectively state the cardroom can do whatever they want and that players have no comeback.

Fast forward to January and now Julio cancels the tournament again. This time for good. He tells players to attend the casino where they will be able to receive a refund. Players attend and only receive $1500 and again pointed to this set of terms and conditions.

Julio was not at the casino to offer any sort of explanation for why $200 was being withheld. Daniel messaged him on FB where initially he was ignored completely for a few days. Finally, Julio tells him that because the initial satellites overlayed, this meant that the tickets were not worth $1700, and for this reason $200 was deducted from each ticket. Of course a ridiculous statement, when many players would have been in the satellites because of the overlay of both the satellite itself and high probability of overlay in the main event.

Kelly Minkin was supposed to be receiving 2x$1700 and 1x$1k ticket to promote + attend this event. Julio failed to even inform her the tournament had been cancelled, she found out via 3rd party. He then proceeded to ignore her for many weeks until the point she outtted him publicly on social media. At this point he returned contact, paid her in cash for the tickets and I believe Kelly deleted her posts.

We are unsure exactly, but we estimate there were 40-50 satellite winners. And therefore he has skimmed $8000-$10000 off the ticket value in total in order to both pay Kelly, and recoup losses that they made on the overlayed satelites

Whilst I dont believe Julio has done anything wrong legally, because his terms and conditions protect him from that, this is a terrible way to run a cardroom. Cancelling tournaments with guaranteed prizepools is bad enough. But to then pay players less than their ticket value is even worse. These terms and conditions essentially allow Julio to run satellites for target torunaments, then cancel the tournaments and withhold what would have been the fee, effectively collecting all of the rake without having to even run the tournaments.

I reached out to Julio via whatsapp and explained to him that just because something in stated in his terms, doesnt mean that it doesnt completely rip off the player. I urged him to reconsider the situation and refund players the full $1700 and look to change his terms, along with his operating practices going forward.

He was completely unprofessional, rude and childish. His initial response:
'you may have a point but including the time it took out of my day to read this wall of text, I may be sending you a bill, I will have to see what the Ts and Cs say'

He continued to stand by his terms and conditions argument, completely unwilling to address the morality of the situation. He also stated how only a handful of players were complaining and that most were happy. This would purely be because most of the satellite winners were local recreationals who didnt have an understanding of the situation and therefore trusted and believed what they were told by Julio and his staff.

He constantly tried to deflect from the topic by making non sensical arguments:

Julio: 'example: i win a $109 entry on party and tornie gets cancelled, I am given tornie entry right? right?'
me: correct. But when there is no tornie in the immediate future to replace it then its blatantly obvious that the course of action is to credit the player with $109 cash, not $100
Julio: 'ok, so I could have put a 50k gtd torney and forced all the satelite winners to play'

He also confirmed that it was himself who wrote the terms and conditions and that he was glad they were constructed in the way they were, so that they could protect him + the casino is circumstances like this.

Please avoid Julio and Gran Casino Escazu at all costs. He should not be running tournaments or cardrooms. The withholding of $200 per ticket is essentially a legal form of daylight robbery, and the cancelling of GTD ppool tournaments goes completely against the spirit of offering a guarantee in the first place. A prominent name in the community, who has a home close to the casino, who wishes to remain anonymous for now, would historically vouch for Julio and has now retracted this, stating that Julios actions are pure theft.


Cliffs:
- brick + mortar casino schedules a $1700 250k guarantee tornie

-they run satellites with seat guarantees which overlay slightly

-the tornie is a month away and the tornie director fears there will be huge overlay, so he goes ahead and cancels it

-players with tickets are told they cannot exchange for cash and must wait for the tornie to be rescheduled. It is rescheduled for 6 months later almost.

-3 months after the cancellation, the tornie director now cancels the rescheduled one also

-players are told to come to the casino and they will be paid their ticket in cash

-players attend and are only paid $1500 cash and pointed to terms and conditions which state tornie tickets are not cash and that the casino can essentially pay whatever they want for the tickets to the player, if the tornie is cancelled

I've played at the Sheraton a ton of hours for both cash games and tournaments, and know Julio and Daniel well. Julio clearly botched this situation and got in way over his head. However, I am pretty confident that this situation was incompetence (getting too ambitious with a prize pool guarantee and not having a plan if the guarantee isn't met) and there wasn't malicious intent.

I agree this situation was handled incredibly poorly but I would still trust the games at that casino going forward.

I do recall when the Bellagio found itself once looking at an overlay, it simply said the guarantee was off and let the players play for a lesser pool, equal to the aggregate sum of their entries.

I have no idea what the terms being discussed itt actually said, does OP have a copy ?

Fwiw, the Grand Casino poker room is quite nice and generally well-run. There are a lot of tourneys held there, but this one looks like a bit of over reaching without financial backing.

Perhaps, a better resolution than what OP describes can be worked out.

(I also have played at the Grand frequently, this sounds like a screw-up rather than any theft ..... at least so far. The reported refusal to pay the entry value is bothersome. For $200 per player, I would think there should be some goodwill value in honoring full value.)

So guarantees are only guaranteed until it isn't met, then they can just back out? sounds kind of fraudulent.

Happens frequently even in the US. Well covered in the fine print. While I agree it seems to make the guarantee meaningless but it is how it will is.

I was looking for something else and just happened to find this old post.
I think it's relevant to bump it as Julio scammed me about $2K. At first he said he would pay, then he stopped answering my messages.
I had known him for almost 10 years.
Other people from CR have said that he's a pos.