You are actually making my point for me... I know the case won't be heard, Boyd/Marina/MGM would be forced settle it before spending a nickel defending it.

I work as a paralegal, our office tells companies every single day that they just have to pay off lawsuits rather than defend them because it is cost prohibitive to do so.

If the Boyd/Marina/MGM got slapped with 1,000 small claims lawsuits ranging from $600-3k are you really naive enough to believe they are going to vigorously defend all of them? if you are I have a bridge in brooklyn that i'd like to sell you.

You idiots that think Borgata is going to NOT do the right thing are morons. 100% they will whether Day 1a players get refunded is another question. It is dependant if others were involved which is highly likely. DGE has lead on this and Borgata cant do a damn thing until investigation is finished and DGE gives green light to Borgata

Using your hypothetical example, I'm pretty confident that the tournament would not be cancelled; it would simply be terminated at that point in time. Cancelled has a very specific meaning, and ending a tournament before its conclusion is not the same thing as cancelling it.

Since sports analogies have been introduced above, let's use one that also involves gaming. In 1994, the baseball season came to an end in the middle of September due to a labor strike. The World Series that year was subsequently cancelled. Betters who had placed future bets on which team would win the World Series received refunds from sports books in Las Vegas because it was cancelled. It didn't matter whether the team they bet on was in first place in their division at the time of the strike or whether their team was in last place and had long since been eliminated from any possibility of making the playoffs. The sports books didn't tell bettors who had bet on teams that were then in last place that they didn't deserve refunds because their teams had already been eliminated and the strike had no bearing on their wager; they simply refunded their money because the season had been cancelled prior to the naming of a winner.

Agreed. And people forget to mention that it's not just 560$ for most.
Alot of people did 2+ bullets. Add in travel , accommodations and food... Thats a few thousand for a tournament that ultimately couldn't be won.

They need to refund ALL buy ins.

Final 27 haven't been paid anything yet.

No one who was paid is gonna have to give back their $.

Interesting question though.. for someone who entered day 1B, got knocked out, then entered day 1C and cashed.. do they also get their day 1B money back too?

I would think so.

If the guy played in day 1A, 2, etc, then there was no "travesty of the game" for those in day 1B, 1C.

I think those knocked out in those days shouldn't get their money back.. their days (1B/1C) weren't corrupted.

This assumes there weren't MORE players who used the fake chips. If there were any in day 1B/1C, then everyone gets refunds.

I think they are gonna take a few weeks to watch the tapes and see if anyone else was in it. Why bring 2.7M in 5k chips (thats like 530 chips!) if there weren't multiple people in on it.

But you got a night's stay, the room wasn't "broken". Incidental costs are not something I think you will be able to recoup.. unless you go to small claims court, maybe. You ate dinner, you got a good meal and got good service... why should you get that back because of a cheater in a tourney?

The gaming commission only will care about the event.. not how much you spent on gas/tolls/rooms.

Simple really;
1) Remove the counterfeit chips currently in play,
2) Resume play.
Done.

I stayed at ballys and the place was a dump.

And I am sure there are plenty of people like me who don't care about a place to stay... I would rather sleep in my own bed. Just was good value to give it a shot.

I drove over 4.5 hours to get there for a tourney that never was going to end.

Anyways, I wonder how long before they make a statement.

Are you serious?


what of the guy who won the chips off of the cheater.. and if he then lost them to someone else... why should that guy be penalized.

you cant just remove the bad chips...

So Ballys in now supposed to refund your $? Borgata is supposed to pay for your stay at Ballys. There's zero chance either of that is gonna happen.

The only thing you are possibly going to get out of your hotel stay is bed bugs, and strange stains.

so the general consensus is that the Borgata will "do the right thing" and eat millions of dollars while they are setting the industry standard or president for cases of cheating like this moving forward?

Really? It seems to me there would be tremendous pressure from the industry to not do this for obvious reasons. More of a decision that invokes a "everyone loses when people cheat" message. The convicted cheater does a lot of time, and the players don't get fully/fairly compensated. I think the stage is already being set for this with the calls for the importance of more "players policing players" and such being thrown around. My opinion, hope I'm wrong.

Perhaps they should have a few different 5k tourney chips- with better designs, and randomly pick a set to be used for that event.. will also prevent chip dumping across events. I'm sure that's happened.

As an attorney, I would first want to look at the tournament rules, I would assume that there are provisions for a cancelled tournament. As a business, I think everyone is hard pressed to believe that the Borgata is going to eat 2.2 million because someone introduced fake chips in the tournament. I may be wrong and the Borgata may eat the 2.2 million if that happens I would be surprised. Time will tell.

My take is that the 27 left will divide (not equally but chip count) up the remaining prizes pool and everyone else is going to be out of luck.

Go ahead sue for your buyback, good luck, I know who my money would be betting on.

Borgada will pay everyone according to chip count. Unless you cheated. If you lost before cashing you will get nothing. If you cheated I would turn your self in now and try to cut a deal. Because you will get caught. Borgada is looking over every recording of play. Before they pay any one.

Why not?

P.S. I also needed to get a Penicillin shot when I got home from Borgata. Will they reimburse me for that to?

Haha what are you talking about? When did I say I expect ballys to pay for my stay.

I was making an example of travel and stay for a tourney that can't be won.

As in people who did stay at borgata ... Fire 3 bullets ... Made the drive regardless of how far or close... These are the reasons why it's easier to just issue a tourney refund.

2 many variables. All 560$ should be refunded to ALL players or else you will get the mess of lawsuits from players who feel compromised.

So people that played before Lusardi weren't cheated? I agree and disagree with this.

I don't know if it's possible, but maybe it is, say there were one or two tables (or more) that weren't effected by Lusardi's extra chips in the same flight. Maybe the butterfly effect never reached them by some quirk of table breaks and balancing tables, the chips were contained. In essence perhaps some players in his flight were also never exposed or cheated either--like the folks in other flights.

Yet, most feel because they were in the same flight as Lusardi they are deserving of a share or reimbursement. Odds of this happening may be small I don't know. Or maybe not, if Lusardi, because of break order didn't move tables much (or at all), players weren't lifted from his table (because he kept busting people) and individuals were instead being sent there the exposure could have conceivably been quite small.

I think it's fair to suggest, that's hard/impossible to track or quantify so if there is some sort of restitution all should share in that from that flight. Well, that means the people who played on other flights and were equally unexposed are not being treated fairly in terms of restitution.

Secondly, because the extra chips weren't in play in their flights they had arguably less of a chance to make the money. We know if we play a rebuy and somebody keeps digging in his pockets for rebuys, his table has an advantage of all those extra chips in play. We understand that nature of the tournament and it's luck of the draw if you get Negreanu at your table who is willing to rebuy 20 times. There is no similar understanding with this tournament that the playing field might be so grossly unbalanced, and one table might have a huge edge. Sure, their risk for busting was greater but so was their advantage in chipping up. If given the choice many players might be fine with a bad player digging into his pocket throughout the tournament to replenish his stack. I know I would.

In essence, yes, there were unexposed by the cheating of Lusardi (if he had no compatriots), but they were disadvantaged by Lusardi's presence on other days. The playing field wasn't even.

I think these are arguments I haven't seen made to include all players in whatever consideration is made by Borgata.

(I have no personal stake, either a piece of another player or of myself in this)

The reasonable rule going forward is to pay out by chip chop if a tourney is canceled after the money and refund everyone if a tourney is canceled before the money.

Of course, there was not a known established rule before this (although rules may be written in certain places.)

So even if they were to refund money if cannot be a precedent going forward. The casinos cannot be placed in a situation where they have a ton of risk otherwise they won't run the tournaments.

But people need to be realistic there are so many big money tourneys per year. The WSOP dailys have 35k first prizes and this is the first time I can remember a tourney being canceled with a significant prize pool. So everyone is overreacting to this situation.

Hopefully, we can generally keep things the way they are with just a little more controls in place.

Ok, so let's say everyone was cheated? If so, who cheated them? I think everyone would agree it was the cheaters? Correct? Everyone is saying class action? Let's say this happens, a class action suit against Borgata, what does Borgata do? They sue the cheaters? Who is more at fault, the cheaters or Borgata. I think the answer is the Cheater(s). So the players prevail, percentage of fault is determined and Borgata is liable for zero and the Cheater(s) 100%. The players get a huge judgment against the Cheater and guess how much will end up being collected?

Now, how many lawyers do you think will take this on as a contingency case?

Again, my prediction, if you busted, you will get nothing and there will be some type of chop for the remaining players.

Time will tell.

yeah this was what I was thinking. Corporation refunding 2.2 mill because someone tried to cheat someone else. not happening.

They should look at tapes of:

- hallway/casino. see who else talked and met with the cheater, see if they were in the tourney. Bring them in for questioning.
- poker floor, see if any chips were handed to buddies

Reviewing the tapes isn't as much for the payout bit, it's finding who broke the law, or aided in cheating. Maybe someone handed him chips on breaks or table swaps, or when he walked to the restroom.

I don't see how the Borg would have to assume any loss here. They can argue that they did their part in protecting the players by stopping the tourney and the following joint investigation caught the cheat.

All the more reason why you wont see more arrests in this case!

I'm not a lawyer, I never passed the bar I always stop in and have a few beers.

That being said I can tell you what the Borgada will do. Whatever DGE tells them to do and nothing more. Why? Simple, if the players don't like it, the recourse is to appeal DGEs decision. Legal action against the Borgata would be the wrong venue.

Now this isn't to say that in the future, they won't use the marketing arm to make some good offers to the players involved if they deem that DGEs decision has created bad will they need to correct.

Does that sound like sound reasoning to you?

In addition look at the Harrah's camera footage in the hallway of the floor of his room to see if any activity was going on there. While this happened at Borg, that doesn't mean the chips couldn't have been handed out prior in his room at Harrah's where he kept them (or even stolen as he claimed).

Wonder how long it'll take for him to break and give up whoever else was in on this. If he cracked and poured his heart out on 2p2 prior to arrest, I can't imagine it would be that long.

Edit: Hah, looks like DRKStar beat me to it.