Cheating in poker has been a hot topic lately, with concerns over game integrity both from the live and online scenes. The latest controversy comes from Mike “BrockLesnar” Holtz, a well-known poker player and co-host of the PokerNews podcast, who shared his disturbing experience at the Resort World $800 Main Event. From players colluding at the tables to dealers flashing cards and players even stealing tournament chips, while a response and security at the venue has been a total failure.
What Happened at the Resorts World $800 Main Event?
“I want to make a video explaining what happened at Resorts World during the $800 Main Event. I played Day 1C, and at my table were two guys, either Spanish or Colombian, but I’m not sure of their ethnicity. One was in the 9th seat, and the other was in the 2nd seat. The guy in the 9th seat had a big stack, while the guy in the 2nd seat did not. Every time the 9th seat opened, it seemed to me like the 2nd seat was folding in a way where he was folding his cards and showing them to the 9th seat. So every time he folded, he folded his cards towards the 9th seat, and he could see them.”
Holtz explained that the suspicious behavior only occurred when the 7th, 8th, and 1st seats folded. “It’s pretty funky; it’s a weird hand motion to do,” Holtz added, deciding to keep watching. At this point, he noticed that the player started folding normally whenever the 9th seat didn’t open. “The 9th seat went on to win the tournament, by the way,” Holtz added, providing context to the suspicious behavior.
The third time it happened was in Holtz’s big blind, and Holtz muttered, “What the fuck, man.” He made the call and check-folded on the flop. To Holtz’s right was his buddy Patrick Leonard, who immediately said, “They’re fucking cheating, right? They have to be cheating.” Holtz responded, “Yeah, they’re cheating 100%.”
So Holtz called the floor over. The floor looked at them and said, “I don’t know what you want me to do about this. If they keep doing it, tell me.” It happened again—the same thing. Holtz began arguing with the players at the table. “What are you doing? You’re cheating us right now.” They responded, “You’re sore losers. You’re just sore losers.”
At the time, Holtz was playing with seven starting stacks. He added that it was an odd line of reasoning. “If I did that, I would be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. If I do it again, please let me know.'” Shortly after, the player in the 2nd seat got eliminated, and Holtz was moved to a different table. There, another player from the same friend group was sitting in the 1st seat, while Holtz was in the 3rd seat. Colin Robinson, a good professional poker player, was in the 2nd seat.
Two Players Playing the Same Hand
The guy who busted earlier in the 2nd seat, the one who had been sharing cards, walked into the Resorts World Poker Room behind his friend in the 1st seat. He was talking in a different language while cards were being dealt. Holtz continued looking at the floor and exclaimed, “Yo, get this cheating fucker out of here. Get him away from us. He can’t be here.” His friend, who was playing, received cards on the button, while the guy behind him stared at Holtz. Nothing was done to remove him from the poker room, and the staff didn’t seem to care.
Holtz continued, “Cards get dealt to him. He looks at them. The guy behind him is looking too. Then the guy behind him immediately just stares at Colin Robinson and me in the blinds and starts talking in a different language.” Holtz began yelling to the floor, “What is happening right now? What could possibly be occurring other than them cheating?” The guy behind him ran out of the poker room. The floor said, “What do you want me to do, chase him?” Holtz explained that they needed to tell the player at the table that he couldn’t continue to cheat and should be penalized. That all occurred on the first day of play.
Friends Share Their Experiences With Cheating at the Event
There was also an incident where a guy pocketed 10,000 tournament chips. Holtz’s buddy Brad Gafford was there and told one of the floors about it. They said they checked the cameras, but the cameras were never checked. That player got kicked out four hours later and had already been trespassed from the casino. His stack was removed when there were 30 people left, with 24 advancing.
Four hours earlier, the floor had been told he was stealing chips from the tournament. Holtz talked to Stan Lee the next day, who had been at his table. Stan said he thought the guy went north at one point. “I didn’t understand. The guy had 30K, then he had 90K. It didn’t make any sense.”
There were some other incidents. Holtz said, “I watched Stan Lee at the table. In a color-up, Lee gave the floor 500k in chips. The floor came back and gave him 100k. Stan replied, ‘Where’s the rest of my money?’ The floor responded, ‘Oh, I was going to give it to you. I got it. I was going to give it to you, but I just didn’t. I was going to wait a little bit.'”
Dealers Flashing Cards
Holtz added that dealers were exposing cards like crazy. He explained that one dealer was dealing from shoulder-height, making it easy for all players to see the cards. Holtz is in five different poker group chats on Telegram, and every single one of them during this tournament was criticizing Resorts World, the floor, and the staff. Holtz said, “It sucks because I like a lot of people at Resorts World. I think Justin Hammer’s a really, really nice guy. I think Leon’s a really nice guy. Leon wasn’t there for any of this. But I just think we, as a community, need to start doing better. Somebody has to do better. There’s no way we can just continue to be cheated.”
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When Holtz first mentioned the guy cheating at the table or the next table where the guy ran off, the dealer started calling him names. The dealer said Holtz was a crybaby. “Oh man, you’re combusting,” the dealer continued. The floor watched the whole thing and told him during the break to chill.
“Still, a dealer should never talk to a player like that. They should be fired on the spot,” Holtz elaborated. They soon had another dealer, John, who was exposing cards. Holtz called out the cards, saying, “Black face card, red queen. What’s going on right now?” The dealer had no reaction. The floor was watching this, and Holtz kept saying he could see the cards. The fifth hand happened, and Holtz could still see the flashed cards. The dealer eventually said, “Dude, are you saying you see cards? If you see them, you should say something.” This was after Holtz had been calling the cards for the past five hands consecutively.
Holtz called a floor and explained he could see all the cards the dealer was dealing. Instead of the floor telling the dealer to stop and change how he was dealing, the floor sat behind Holtz and watched to see if cards were flashed. The floor said he couldn’t see anything, but Holtz kept calling the cards.
He saw the under-the-gun player being dealt a black three and announced, “Black three.” The next hand, it was a black three. Face card. The floor told Holtz he couldn’t see anything. “Who has the black three? Who has the black three?” the floor continued. “This is f****** crazy, man. Please help me,” Holtz pleaded. The floor just responded that they couldn’t see anything. Meanwhile, the under-the-gun player slowly flipped over a black three. At this point, Holtz exploded. “There are way too many nonsensical things happening at Resorts World.”
Holtz mentioned that one of the players from the original cheating group had been caught by Holtz ghosting someone at the Venetian on GG a year prior. He felt like a pariah at Resorts World. “I felt uncomfortable and unwelcome when playing there,” Holtz shared. When he walked out of the room, he could hear the staff openly talking shit about him as he left after being cheated.
Keeping Integrity and Security in Check
Holtz explained that, prior to this, he had held a meetup game at Resorts World and didn’t have bad blood with the casino. Rather, he felt experiences like this needed to be shared for the integrity of the game. Holtz added, “Every dealer in poker needs to learn how to deal like the European dealers do, where they deal face down. You can’t expose it. There’s too much pitching up in the air.”
What scares him, Holtz said, is that he’s one of a small group of players actively speaking out. He added, “Unless we as a community can all come together and say, ‘Fuck this bullshit, stop cheating us. We want an environment where everyone is safe. Everyone feels safe and welcome. We want more people in poker.’ You know what happens when they see cheating scandals over and over again? People don’t want to play poker. Do you want to kill the game? This is how we kill the game.”
Holtz explained that he feels like he has burned some of his social credit by being so vocal about this and related issues. “I don’t want to be known for this, but in order to protect the game I care about, I feel that I must defend and bring light to issues of cheating, security, and integrity. I think poker can have a very, very bright future. It’s a fantastic game that we all love. I just, I just want to see us be more protected,” Holtz added.
Wynn’s Approach to Security and Others Chiming In
Holtz shouted out the Wynn and explained that multiple times he’d seen someone do something suspicious there. Wynn checks the cameras, calls them out, and gives abusive players a round penalty, a five-round penalty, blind dodgers, etc. The Wynn is on point, Holtz explained, and whatever they are doing should be the standard to uphold the security and integrity of the game. “Thank you guys for listening,” Holtz concluded. Leonard, who Holtz mentioned playing with at the first table, shared…
Leonard and Holtz agreed that they have both had to warn dealers multiple times that they were flashing cards and that sliding cards instead of pitching them might help avoid flashed cards. Be sure to check Holtz’s full post above, as it has garnered a lot of support for sharing his experience. Many players agree that security and integrity in relation to cheating could cause the growing live poker scene to falter and have chimed in with their similar experiences.
A rising battle for integrity and security is emerging as this year has already seen its fair share of controversy within the tournament scene. PokerStars cracked down with new rules after the Main Event GTO controversy involving winner Jonathan Tamayo. This follows a recent controversy with ACR-sponsored players Ebony Kenney and Nacho Barbero using GTO Wizard in an online tournament. GGPoker vowed not to allow banned online players to compete in live WSOP events. Stay tuned for all stories related to integrity and cheating, as well as general poker news updates.
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- Read more: Nacho Barbero and ACR Are in the Middle of Another RTA Scandal
- Read more: PokerStars Announces New Rules for Live Events, Are the Rules Enforceable?
- Read more: WSOP Controversy: Is Using a Solver and Helping a Player During Live MTT Fair?
