Last week we reported about EPT Barcelona's biggest and most important events. Aside from all record-breaking tournaments, there were several interesting high stakes cash games running at Casino Barcelona during the poker festival. This might be the most intersting pot, though. On Wednesday, 27th September, Dani "Ansky" Stern wrote on 2+2 about how he was cheated out of €18k in a €100/€200 Pot Limit Omaha cash game.
Stern got himself involved in a three-way all on the flop holding three-of-a-kind kings. He claims that he, a Spanish man (AAxxx) and another player (unknown hand) decided to run run it twice before revealing their hands. The first board ran out Ks9s7x As 4x, and the second 7x 6x. The main pot was €36k, which Stern though he would get half of due to winning the second board with a full house, kings over sevens.
"This is when the chaos starts. The Spanish guy now claims that the casino has a rule that you can only run it twice in heads up pots, and that for multi way pots running it twice is forbidden. Because of this, he is claiming that running it twice is only valid for the side pot, and that only the first board counts for the main pot. At this point there is a huge crowd gathered, and there is lots of yelling in both English and Spanish. The dealer is a bit overwhelmed and is just kind of sitting there doing nothing, and the BB then walks away to go get a floor guy. He appears to be a local and to know the staff, but I will admit that is just my read of the situation and I don't know that for sure.
Eventually the floor guy comes over and takes stock of the situation and rules in my favor, saying that because we all agreed to run it twice, it was valid for the entire pot. Then they summon what appeared to be a higher up floor guy, who ruled against me. He said that because the house rule is that running it twice in mutli way pots is forbidden, that the entire main pot is awarded to the BB with AA," said Stern.
To sum things up, the casino manager referred to the poker rules and awarded both the side pot and main pot to the winner of the first hand. Little did it help that other players at the table complained loudly, accusing the Spanish man of not honouring their agreement.
"Juha [Helppi] was especially angry at the situation, and said he was going to take a picture. I'm not sure if he intended to take a picture of the player who was angling, or the floor, but either way the floor told him that if he took a picture he would be banned from the casino. Juha then asked the floor what his name was, and he refused to tell him. Juha asked several more times and the floor kept saying that his name was "poker manager." No one on the staff was willing to give their name or any kind of a business card, and seemed very intent on shutting all of the foreign players up," said Stern
Although the story has upset lots of people over the globe in the past couple of days, there are those who side with the Spanish man as well. A Swedish poker pro, a regular at Spanish casinos, wrote that the Spaniard (a well-known and respected player of the Spanish and French poker scene) doesn't understand any English and couldn't possibly have agreed to anything (running it twice).
He also claimed that the man had been in the same spot as Dani Stern earlier that week and lost the pot when the casino overruled an agreement. In other words, the man was well-aware of the Casino Barcelona's poker rules. Did he use this information to his advantage? Well, that's something we only can speculate in. The fact is, however, that Stern said in an interview after posting on 2+2 that he had assumed that the agreement was for the whole pot.
