Great idea. One question. What about those who can't make it back to finish? What if players have other commitments? Who pays for their travel? Any west coast players?
Hotel rooms comped?

Just blind off dead stacks that can't show and pay them as they finish?

Interested to see how this finishes. Still no updates?

Only if you slept with Lusardi...

Per the 10-Q filed for the quarter ending September 30, 2013:

Boyd Gaming has about $166m in cash and cash equivalents available.

Boyd holds a 50% interest in the holding company that owns Borgata. The other 50% is held by MGM.

Net revenues for the first 9 months of 2013 were $2.2b, of which $538m was from Borgata.

EBITDA for the first 9 months of 2013 was $513m, of which $103m was from Borgata.

Operating income for the first 9 months of 2013 was $239m.

Net loss for the first 9 months of 2013 was $33m.





So if you believe their financials, they are losing money. That said, they still have far more than enough cash on hand to pay out full refunds to all players, as well as paying the top 27 their prize money. I'd assume MGM would be on the hook for half of that as well. You don't need to worry about them, either. They've got $1.38b in cash on hand.

lol, you should learn how secondaries work.

Also, you bought a few months ago at 7.50. If Boyd wanted to raise 180 million how many shares would they have had to sell? Then when the stock runs up more than 60% They strike when it's hot and investors want to buy. Sound like a good idea to me.

Management should manage the company not the stock price.

Let me take a wild guess, did the analysts that raised their price target have anything to do with the secondary?

What did it say in the prospectus about how they were going to use the money? They had some high price debt they wanted to pay off? Without knowing what the money is for, it's hard to tell if they're smart or not.

Maybe if the stock goes back to $7.50 they can announce a share repurchase. Say maybe a 15 million share buyback! lol

But if Lusardi was dumping off counterfeit chips into other players' stacks (in order to disguise his cheating), then it is not the skill and luck of those other players that determined their fate; they were unintentionally colluding with him, and this affects the outcomes for everyone in the tournament. It sounds like Lusardi was at the very least playing very erratically, and at the end, trying to give his chips away.

I see where ur going but ur logic is flawed b/c only a select few at his tbl had the ability to win fake chips off of him, a chance that others didn't have.

Does anyone really believe Lusardi acted alone? Seriously?

If the Borgata believed they had found the only guilty party their spin-machine would be running full-throttle right now about how they caught him and everything is (and of course always was) safe and secure at the Borg's tournaments.

The simple fact that hasn't happened shows there is either some internal work Borg is doing that they don't want compromised, or they are being gagged by the NJDGE during an on-going criminal investigation.

Either way, talking about the fairness/equity of the tournament with just *one* cheater is naive and irrelevant. It wasn't one person. It may have only been two for all know -- but it wasn't just one.

An official engraving could be good too nice. Would be more expensive to engrave and deter to an extent.

Paulson chips do not have a "sticker". It is an INLAY. It is pressed into the chip at thousands (10-15 I think) of PSI.

LOLZ. was just about to post the un-bolded part of your post. glad I didn't yours was better.


The issue is pretty clear. Lots of state by state gaming regs were put in decade or more ago. At that time MTT's barely existed. Even if they did, outside of maybe WSOP, the concept of 1000 player fields and Million dollar payouts occurring every month in many states was not considered.

Thus "non-gaming" chips were allowed an many regs, like NJ.

"Gaming" chips you use in the casino to play blackjack and craps.

"Non-gaming" chips you use in MTT and are readily available from a variety of methods to individuals.

"gaming" chips are not readily to anyone other than licensed, regulated casinos that use them, and the licensed, regulated companies that make them.

We've started a thread to discuss this and other topics around measures to better secure MTTs. would be best to take those conversations over there so they don't clutter up the important work of this main thread which should be to out Poo Poo man's fellow scammers, and discuss settlement for players


Improved procedures for Live MTT organizers to avoid future cheating scandals

agree with both 100% Is there any serious question around if Lusardi acted alone ? clearly he did not, and clearly the others will be caught because Lusardi will tell the cops who the others are.

Given Poo Poo mans idiotic decision making at Harrahs, posting 2+2 etc... I'd find it hard to believe that he was the master mind behind this.

cops need to build a case... they are not going to go make arrest as soon as Lusardi spits out a name. give it time

Other scammers.... if I were you I would run, run fast and very far away. only a matter of time. lifes gonna suck for you, but you made life suck for so many others, so gtfo*****

also still not clear on whats the sentencing guidelines are for this

.

first one sounds like a misdemeanor, 2500 counts of the other sounds worse. any NJ criminal lawyer types ITT and the take a guess of what sort of jail time they are threatening Lusardi with if he doesn't talk ?

my bad, i meant just MGM

funds were earmarked to retire debt:

http://seekingalpha.com/news/1180952...ndary-offering

I was there Monday and I heard same thing from one of the floor person. As per him there are different thoughts are under consideration by the
management , but it boiled down to
Refunds and a free roll. Sticky subject is what to do with remaining 27!!

That would be good news.

I don't think the final 27 will be happy with the outcome and I can say I don't blame them

I'm not sure who manufactures the chips for borgata tournaments but they all are a base chip with a sticker applied to both sides.

I know how they will feel!
But what I understood from the info the floor man discussing was that Borgata might not be able to continue the same tourney as it was deemed cancel due to illegal actions of one or more players. I don't think NJDGE will approve that.

TIB_KAOS:

During last Thursday night's "confessional," yjbic intimated that others are involved but he couldn't go into details (right now) "because it's complicated" and somebody might be "physically harmed" if he were to call out names in the thread. This is a standard line of BS when a thief gets caught, (i.e. "it's complicated"), but there's some reason to believe that Lusardi might have been telling the truth.

The main thing I'm hanging my hat on (that this is a multi-person conspiracy) are the number of fake chips. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200+ fake $5K chips were discovered in play on the tables when the tournament was halted. Additionally, Harrah's maintainance workers found another $2.7 million fake chips that he attempted to flush down the toilet. Numbers as high as $5 million in fake $5K chips have been suggested. (Who knows what the actual number is?) The point is that whatever the amount is, that's a lot of fake chips. I don't have my calculator with me so I can't perform "advanced math," but I have a feeling we're talking about thousands of fake $5K chips. Lusardi would have had to lug around a large suitcase to carry that many fake poker chips. Trying to manage a scam like this all by yourself would be a logistical nightmare.

Finally, there's the fact that this is an "ongoing" criminal investigation and the police and NJDGE (and the Borgata) are staying pretty tight lipped. All the signs suggest that Lusardi is talking and the police are running down leads. I could be totally wrong about this, (and it wouldn't be the first time), but I have a feeling more arrests will be made. This story aint over.

It's obvious he ordered exactly 1000 fake chips from that company in china. 1000x5000 equals 5million. Not thousands.

AK correct me if I am wrong. The chipsets used in the different event in the same casino is different every time! How did he know which design to order?

And this is interstate monitory crime! Should not FBI be on it by now!!?

Based on the photo that Edwards posted plus a few others I've seen, the Borgata tourney chips are Paulsons. The top hat/cane molding is their trademark.

riverph7:

That's what all this will ultimately turn on - whether the additional security measures sure to be dictated by the NJGCB end up killing large-field tournament poker. It will boil down to a question of cost. If new security measures to prevent this kind of thing from ever happenning again result in tournament entry fees doubling or tripling, I doubt if you'll have 4,800+ folks entering a $500 buy-in tournament with a $150 entry fee. (Maybe you'll get half that number.) Matt Savage seemed to express these same concerns during last week's Pokercast ... that the cost of additional security in tournaments could wind up killing tournament poker. One thing's for sure: If the cost of ensuring "game integrity" wipes out all the profits, (and/or the entry fee becomes truly exorbitant), there won't be any more large-field MTT poker. The cheaters will have killed the goose that layed the golden egg.

I agree with your conclusion !

But let's look it as it is. Would you play a fair game with less players or a game which can be easily compromise with larger pool of players?

This is the first tournament i know of that was canceled during it. How many big field tourneys have been run worldwide in the last 10 years?? Its a huge number if you count anything above 20k. Blah, blah, blah people overreact to a situation. Hopefully, regulators don't do likewise.

Bottom line is this guy got caught, he is going to jail for a long time, and he only won 6k.

I also would not say the tourney was massively compromised. An extra 1 percent of chips was put in play so the course of the tournament was not altered for 98 percent of players.

All you whiners looking for a free handout can throw out your garbage theories but that is the bottom line.