I am crossposting this from mttc where I made this thread last night. I'm not really sure if this is an appropriate for NVG but mods can feel free to remove it if they don't think it's relevant to the forum. I am mainly posting it here to make sure as many people as possible are aware of how things are run at the Palm Beach Casino/Partouche Poker Tour should they ever decide to play there.
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Alright this is gonna be a bit lengthy but I need to write this down while I remember it all in clear details. This might not be a smart post to make by me, I might be burning some bridges, get unpopular with some people or even banned from the casino (this sounds absurd, but after you have read what I have to say it might not seem so far fetched).

For the last couple of days I have been playing the Partouche Poker events at the Palm Beach casino in France. In those days I have seen or heard about the following incidents:

1) Jordankickz and Tmay420 had signed up for day 1 but were removed from it because a bunch of pros including Matusow arrived last minute and decided to play day 1 instead of day 2 and since there was a cap on day 1 jordankickz and tmay got booted so the pros could play. The tournament director offered them a meal at a nice restaurant as compensation.

2) I have several times seen french players showing each other their cards as they mucked as the last person in the hand without the dealer forcing them to show. I have heard of several times during the tournament where non-french players have done the same thing and has been forced to show their hand.

3) A danish player went on break on day 1 with 43k in chips and had 33k when he got back. They had noted the chip counts right before the break and checked the cameras afterwards yet nothing was done about it.

Everyone else who has been here probably has their own story to add and while nothing of this is very relevant to the story it should give you an idea of what kind of casino we are dealing with.

So on to the incident in question that happened a couple of hours into todays sideevent. My table consists of Michael Binger, Jonathan (rookiekkqq), an unknown non-french guy and five french players.
A french player and the unknown is in a huge hand on a 2238r board. French guy leads out for 2k, non-french guy makes it 5,7k and the french guy makes to 13k leaving around 20k behind effective.
After non-french guy has tanked for a minute an older french guy calls the clock on him and the dealer agrees that he has sufficient time for his decision. Floorman comes over and without saying a word starts clocking him.
When there is ten seconds left he starts the countdown and I protest telling him that he should count in english instead of french since the guy clearly dosen't speak the language. Floorman goes "trois, two, one" and between the two and one the non-french guy throws in a pile of 5k chips putting the other player all-in. Other guy SNAPmucks putting his hand over the line and after five seconds or so the non-french player turns over A7o for a complete bluff, and this is where things starts to get crazy.

After staring at the board for like 5 seconds the french player now puts his hand BEHIND the line again and claims that the other guys hand is dead because he didn't react in time and the floorman counted to zero, which is obviously total bull**** since the floorman didn't say a word.

Me and Binger starts protesting but all of a sudden the four other french players at the table AND the floorman agrees that his hand is dead and starts stacking the pot up and shipping it to the french player. Me, Jonathan, Binger and the non-french guy all starts protesting loudly and appealing to call someone with more authority because the ruling is terrible and downright cheating. Four-five men in suits comes over and discusses the hand for 10 minutes in french (none of them speaks english) and even though we try to argue and protest they somehow rule that the french player now has the option to call off his chips AFTER seeing his opponents bluff! The guy calls with ATo (he was NEVER trying to induce with that trust me) and the river is a 6 giving him the pot.

At this point we are are absolutely furious and Binger says that it's the most obvious angle he has seen in 10 years of live play and that he wants his money back if they are gonna allow cheating in the casino. At this point EVERY table in the room is watching us and with Binger being the most vocal of us the floormen refuses to answer any of our questions and they end up escorting Binger out of the room.

A couple of minutes after we go on break and I find Binger who has gotten his buy-in refunded and a ban from the casino (not sure for how long) simply for speaking his mind. When I return to the table after the break the french player is missing and I ask a floorman (they are still watching our table closely since me and Jonathan are not willing to let this go) why Binger and french guy are both missing.
He tells me that Binger has been disqualified (but gives me no further elaboration when I ask) and that the french player got a 14 minute penalty. I try to ask them what rule the penalty is for but they wont tell me but I keep insisting and shouting louder until finally one floorman whispers in my ear that it isn't for breaking any rule but for "unsportsmanlike conduct".
I ask them how they can give a penalty to someone they just ruled in favor of but they just keep on ignoring me. Conveniently enough they decide to break our table as the next because me and Jonathan were still speaking about it (even though we weren't even close to being next in breaking order).

It's also worth noting that Ruben had a hand that was ruled the exact opposite in the same event where his french opponent threw his cards into the muck on the river faceup and was afterwards allowed to call after Ruben said he had a bluff. I don't remember exactly how it went down though so hopefully Ruben will chime in and tell the story.

I don't really expect anything to come out of this but I feel like people should be aware of how (non-french) players are being treated here and I really needed to vent while it was still fresh in my memory. It turned out to be a long post so I might have messed up some of the details, if you have any clarifying questions feel free to ask.

edit: link to original thread and discussion: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61...r-tour-868424/

In my hand i minraised a JT423 board on the river (guy bet 1500 in 3 500 chips, i put in 3 1ks). He threw his hand open across the line in a way ppl frequently open fold. I now kinda flash my Q9 to JustLuck who's calling out show the bluff. It turns out the French guy thought i flatted and now wants to call my raise, the dealer is fine with that, I'm obv not. I make the dealer call a floor over and the first one says that his hand is still live and he's allowed to call but decides that doesn't make sense as the guy knows my hand. The 2nd floor now comes over and rules that I have to call the guys bet. I refuse to either pay or muck my hand and insist on a different ruling as I would just be setting myself and other ppl up for rly easy angle shoots. The third floor, who I'm pretty sure is one of the highest tournament staff instantly rules that villains hand is dead when he hears the story and I win the pot.

This entire showdown took like 10 minutes


Plz don't NVG this thread into French stink / suck whatever

What exactly was wrong with the other thread?

First of all putting this in NVG and letting as many prospective players at partouche see it is def a good idea...

Sounds like a terrible ruling and the general attitude of the french floormen sounds pretty questionable. Maybe next time you should all chip in and hire a french translator to argue your case?!

C'est la vie

It's because of crap like this I always wait until the dealer starts giving me the pot that I muck or show my hand when I win.

I'm french and think that sucks terribly,sorry for you guys.
In fact, I lol'd when I saw "Partouche" in the thread title...they have a bad reputation and I'm somehow not surprised at all they favor local players.
Also big casino chains have no experience dealing with poker so I would stick with poker clubs like the ACF or cercle wagram,cercle graillon etc

sick story, partouche got a shady reputation and this doesn't do it any better for them ..

I'm French and very surprised/shocked to read this. I often play live in poker clubs and their rulings are fair and trustworthy. However as far as casinos go, they've been allowed to operate poker games since a limited period of time so I'm less surprised to hear of weird rulings. You can't blame them for speaking French and not English in a French Casino on French soil though, and I would be very curious to know what was said during those conversations.
This whole story definitely hurts the French reputation as far as poker goes but keep in mind it is not representative of how things are run elsewhere in France

i've played a live event (dso france) in the Aix-en-Provence Partouche Pasino ("P"asino) and also noticed a couple of bad things. First of all, over 90% of the players were french (naturally) and, during the first 13 hours of play (after which i busted), not once have i heard "check/call/raise/fold/all in". Everthing was in french. The dealer was speaking in french, and one funny thing is that me and a friend were the only two romanians that signed up (from 550 entrants) and we were "randomly" seated on the 1st and 9th place of THE SAME TABLE. Yup, same ****' table.
Also, I was prohibited to leave the tournament area to go smoke a cig during play. I'm cool with smoking not being allowed at the tables, but how can one be prohibited to leave the tourney room to go outside ?

And as every other live problem out there, dont ****ing do a thing before the dealer/floorman says who won etc, sit still and wait the 3 more seconds.

Floorman comes over and without saying a word starts clocking him.
When there is ten seconds left he starts the countdown and I protest telling him that he should count in english instead of french since the guy clearly dosen't speak the language. Floorman goes "trois, two, one" and between the two and one the non-french guy throws in a pile of 5k chips putting the other player all-in. Other guy SNAPmucks putting his hand over the line and after five seconds or so the non-french player turns over A7o for a complete bluff, and this is where things starts to get crazy.

After staring at the board for like 5 seconds the french player now puts his hand BEHIND the line again and claims that the other guys hand is dead because he didn't react in time and the floorman counted to zero, which is obviously total bull**** since the floorman didn't say a word.

Pretty absurd.

if i understood correctly, the guy showed his A7o before the dealer take the cards of the french player. i think this is normal if his hand is considered dead....

Just wanted to chip in with something, I think that in at least some of the european casinos, there are weird unwritten rules, maybe even only applied when it helps the locals.

was in casino del barcelona month(on vacation and we were obv foreigners) or 2 back, it was hyperturbo SNG night so I decided to play one, first few hands I get nothing and I see normal play, people raising PF etc.

Weird hand came up where I was in Dealer or CO position, and EVERYBODY limped, this was a HT SNG where everybody had around 10BBs at that time, it was also 10max so there were like 8.5 or 9.5 blinds in the pot.

I look at my cards and see pocket nines, I announce "raise"(was planning to just stick it in), dealer goes "no you can't raise", I was like wtf but there were 5 locals at my table and they all looked like "ofc he can't raise". I thought it was a weird rule about multi-limped pots or something and decided to just setmine I guess? And called.

I get knocked out a bit later and go watch my friends. Only 1 is left. I go away a bit from the rail and tell my bad beat story to another friend(local minraised UTG, I reraised LP with KJo(he was raising so much of the time, and nobody had ever contested him, he called with 4 2 and flop came K 4 2 and we stick it in). Saying this because I was telling this while the next weird thing occured, had I seen this happening, I'd have stepped up and made sure something was done to compensate my friend.

It was the bubble with 4 left and blinds at 50/100. My friend is in the BB with around 550 left before posting. it folds to SB(also a local) who shoves, my friend asks for a count, the dealer counts, and he says it's 250. friend had Q8o and calls. Board is run out and SB won the pot. Dealer decides to count again for some reason and now says to him it's 400 and he needs to give 400 in chips to the SB. He does this and gets knocked out in 4th place.

Seeing that, I felt like the first hand was not a weird ruling and just a way of keeping the tourists in check. Decided not to play a second one then, which I would have otherwise.

Sorry to hear about this.

I'd like to see a thread on this in B&M too. I don't read this board much but I do read B&M and I'd like to know where cheating occurs in B&M casinos. It sounds like there was blatant cheating going on here, and even if you don't want to call it "cheating" there were certainly terrible floor decisions made if the incidents occurred as described.

Can you get Michael Binger to post what happened and why he got banned?

or Binger and OP can call in to do a Poker Static segment would be a good scoop for Phil Galfong

ugh, **** like this makes me puke.

nothing worse then being unjustified and not being able to do anything about it because the law (in this case the floor men and their own ruling) is corrupt as hell, mentally ******ed or simply doesn't know any better.

Partdouche imo

cliffs to op?

Let me guess - you are American and you assume that the French are against you? Seems like the correct ruling to me and you are just continuing the boorish American behavior stereotype.

+1

edit: for the record im joking, b/c you know OP isn't American.

like my good friend Harry Dunne once said, "the french are *******s."

Was at casino today, it's hardly surprising that the American kids wearing hoodies/shorts/headphones etc get the worse end of rulings, especially as some of the regs are going to be playing there week in week out.