Never played a charity event in my life. Cecause of covid, not many options. Local cardrooms are still closed. This was the first live poker I've played since March.

I thought charity events had to give some of the rake to charity, but I had no idea about the capped winnings.

Was everyone wearing masks? (not that that would eliminate the obvious risks of being in a room, with hundreds of others, sitting right next to them , passing around cards/chips for hours)

was there any mention of what the actual charity was?

This is your first post? Appears that you signed up to defend this scum bag. Dan is blacklisted and has somehow gotten away with running a club on Poker Bros. He's one of the biggest scum bags in the entire industry and has been thieving for years.

His time will definitely come, and honestly, I can't wait to see it. He deserves everything that's coming his way.

"Creative" =massively overpaying for "prizes" and essentially juicing some players ~30% more? How fair is it that some players get high premium coins they can actually get 35 for and others get things that are barely above spot?

This thread is amazing, hope things turn out as good as they can

No. The “creative” angle I was referring to is the use of precious metals instead of cash.

I was trying to figure out if players were supposed to know that they couldn’t get regular cash prices.

That players got ripped off on those coins is a totally different issue. That wouldn’t be creative but straight up theft.

I know what you meant. But the more creative way would be doing it in a way that was equal to all and prizes with an actual value equaling their prize. $35/oz maples are about $10 overpriced. What about gift cards valued at the actual prize amount or something? Unsure of the legality, but better than this attempt. Many players claim they didnt know about it.

This wont die down soon, Dan seems to be putting 'someone' under the bus stating that he was against the decision to purchase the silver in the waning hours of Sunday morning after their original plan was nixed by the AG.

It's a very good point as to what does qualify as 'a prize'. I'm sure that the local Meijer/Walmart would've been happy to process a bunch of Amazon gift cards. It's possible that they had already defined the prizes in their license application, which needed to actually be there for the impending AG visit on Sunday.

At this point it's hard to say that money is 'missing' as opposed to just not being used at 'face value'. Hopefully the charity does get as least a little after fulfilling any obligations to the hotel, The Feature Table and any other staff that helped out.

Hopefully this doesn't scar the future viability of charity events. Balancing fund raising with the true mission is a task. There are many many charities in Michigan right now that may not make it through 2021 without a new source of income should charity poker events continue to be on the shelf. Generating upwards of $15K a year in less than 20 days of 'work' allows the charity to focus on their goals in a better light. GL

Looks like players are being compensated through cash transfers to offset the discrepancy between the "retail" price and actual value of the coins.

Seems like good intention to fix things.... But I wonder if this runs afoul of the buy in + 500 cash payout regulation.

I agree. I'm not defending Bekavac complete crook and always has been. I'm just saying to pretend these other guys had nothing to do with it is BS. I'm sure they'll all play dumb and minimize their roles and blame it on Bekavac as the leader but they all knew exactly how the payouts were going to work and they didn't tell anyone. They're lying about not knowing. They even said the plan was to have some sort of illegal work around but never told anyone. Anderson, Trezak and Smith were in all the meetings. Anderson was with Bekavac trying to sell this tour to casinos and talking about it on the stream. ANd if you don't know how Anderson makes his money you're in the dark. A few weeks ago he had his Venmo account shut down for excessive transactions from PokerBros. He owes several people money. Then he started using accounts under his kids names to transfer money while committing wire fraud and getting PokerBros locked out of doing business in Minnesota. There is an investigation ongoing by the state. Then the last six months during a pandemic these guys flaunt it all in front of us on facebook with how big time they are with their pool house photos and all their home renovations and landscaping improvements from their PokerBros ponzi scheme. They should all get prosecuted. It took more than one person to get all these people here to Chicago and scammed.

Eveything I stated is factual and can be proven with a little bit of googling. Please debunk my post and prove me wrong oh wise one. Maybe you don’t the biggest central banks of our world own tons (literally) of gold? Maybe you don’t know JP Morgan is the biggest holder of silver in the world? Maybe you don’t know China and Russia have been buying tons of gold every year since the 2008 crash?



Or is it that you think gold has no role in global currency system? Even tho it at least partially backed every dollar the US printed up until 1971? 50 years into a financial fiat currency system with no backing is extremely short period of time in the grand scheme of things. Anything can happen and it’s impossible to gauge what we’d turn to if faith in currencies start to erode. What you don’t realize is the world went off a gold system so the US didn’t lose its reserve currency status. We spent too frivolously and should have paid the price. Instead we changed the worldwide system to keep the US in power

I truly think people are very uniformed about what true money is, not the money that’s printed willy nilly by our government and backed by the ‘faith’ of the our government. It’s easier when the citizens are in the dark and just blindly call anyone interested in real money a quack. That is until one day the system starts cracking. Then it could be too late to exit. That’s the irony of insurance. No one wants it until they need it. Then it’s too expensive to get and they’ll likely never need it again. Gold is just that, insurance if our financial system were to fall apart. Again, I’ll state again that 100% of fiat currencies have failed in the past going back as long as you want. Timing the crash is nearly impossible to do. But if you factor a small % of your net worth to your insurance at all times you’ll be prepared if there’s a financial reset in your lifetime

Only point of this post is to educate since clearly most people don’t know much about the subject and naturally conclude ‘this guy and his theory must be a quack’. It’s quite an interesting topic that I wish more people would research. This will be my last post post on the subject, hope I didn’t derail too much. I also expect to get further flamed but maybe one person will read this and at least consider what I’m saying to be worthy offer research

I see some validity but if **** really hits the fan, I think guns and ammo will have more value than a metal that doesn't really do anything for anyone during a time of complete chaos. I like real estate as a hedge against inflation and usd collapse as it provides cash flow while metals sit there and collect dust. But I'm not opposed to owning some metals, had quite a bit until recently myself.

No, please don’t. If you want to chat about gold and silver as investments please do so in the BFI forum or via PM.

What kind of precious metals guy doesn't use gold for big payouts? Paying in silver is like paying in change for ****s sake.

This reminds me of the time I joined a fantasy football league where I didn't know the commish personally. He tried to pay out at the end of the year in Home Depot gift cards lol.

Update: I went to a reputable coin dealer this morning and was offered $660 for the coins, so about a 34% difference in price. But at least the coins are real.

I saw some people say they were paid the difference on cashapp. I sent a facebook message to the poker page and they told me to send them an email with my info. I sent them an email with my info right away asking for $300 and they haven't responded to the email.

Hey Couchsock, since you are so fond of precious metals maybe you would be willing to buy from the winners at full price ? I don’t think so. Bottom line these players got screwed. I guess if you are a resident of Illinois you would be aware of the charity rules, and the chance it could go sideways, but there is zero chance anyone from out of state would know.

Dumb question. All the other local charity deals (at least RCG and CCG, I've never played Windy City) pay out cash well above $500. Are they breaking the law or am I missing something?

All things equal I'd prefer metal over paper$.

However, in this example, it seems like the metal is being severely underpriced to winners. Eg a $1k winner is being paid $700 in silver. Not a fair exchange rate.

I'm also highly skeptical of what is going on wrt to the legal and tax side. Whose silver is being distributed to winners? How was that silver "priced" with respect to the tournament buy-ins? If this were fair, there would be no spread. But it seems like the silver is being priced at $35/oz and then given to the player at lower, this is a SCAM. Finally and very important, is the original owner of the silver reporting that conversion/sale to IRS - I highly doubt it? VERY suspicious

some of these guys are so incredibly stupid. they make a big show of the illegal poker games they host and you know 99 percent of them are too dumb to file taxes on their profit despite a gigantic paper trail of money.

as for the topic on hand i don't understand how the op or anyone else just accepted being ripped off by 30 percent on their payouts. you could easily have looked up the price of silver when they told you what the coins were "worth"

But what can they really do about it? Obviously calling the police won’t do anything here. And it was stated earlier that regulators or people from the state showed up, checked that their was a receipt of the purchased metals then left. Someone had to have had made them aware there was a shortage on money owed. It’s an awful situation to be in, stomping your foot and demanding you be paid in full isn’t going to get you paid

I think we're mixing topics a bit .. which typically leads stretches and hyperbole.

1) I've read nothing to indicate that the Players failed to receive the $1600 in cash (money) they were entitled to.

2) Was the $208K (or whatever) the 'proper' amount of the prize pool that should have been used to purchase the metals? If so, then the fact that the charity overpaid for the metals may not have been in the scope of the scheduled inspection by the AG personnel. While the AG and charity may 'need' to have another meeting to see if there's any recourse/issue with the Dealer I'm guessing it was a can of worms that the AG folks didn't want to address or get roped into without further home office instruction. IMO they were only there to verify that the charity did, in fact, have 'prizes' in the calculated amount.

3) With comments about these 'make up' cash App payments floating around I would have to believe that whomever is offering them up may get looked into .. and hopefully is not the charity directly.

4) Granted we all love the English language, but we need to be careful not to mix terms too often. There's a lot of 'where's the money' comments out there, but I'm thinking the money/cash isn't where the focus should be. It's right where most of the comments are leaning .. that the 'value' of the prizes don't match up to the money/cash that was spent on them and any issues related to that decision/process.

A) Did the charity get taken advantage of? It sure looks that way. Did the Dealer violate any trading laws in the process, no one has really come forward with enough knowledge of that trade as of yet.

B) Were the Players shorted value? For sure, and unfortunately their gripe has to start with the charity, the license holder of the event and then evolve from there.

I'm not trying to sympathize with Midway here, I'm just trying to keep the focus where there can actually be 'work' done. That's why this stuff can take months to simmer to the top.

From the outside looking in, I think the Players actually held it together pretty good under the circumstances. You'd have to talk to Chad or others to find out who the voice(s) of reason were. "We can all just throw our hands up or we can play for what's on the table." Once the AG left the building and they knew the metal was 'theirs' to chop up you either cut a deal or play for it. GL

LOL

I can see some sort of premium being charged over spot for coins that have intrinsic value. But a bulk of what was given to the final table appears to have been 100 oz industrial bars. There is not reason to get 11 dollar over spot for that crap. That makes the 30 percent rake even higher on the guys who got bars. They should all find an Illinois attorney and sue everyone. This all likely violations of the Illinois Consumer Protection act and the people are entitled to treble or punitive damages. Plus likely the attorneys fees and costs.

Shouldn't the main issue here be whether or not it was stipulated somewhere publicly that this was going to happen? Beforehand I mean.