Jagajeet Chiba: Poker Tournament Robberies a New Trend

When gun wielding bandits entered a popular poker tournament in Berlin during the Saturday afternoon hours, some of us were not exactly surprised.

I along with Gambling911.com have been reporting on various poker tournament robberies that have transpired throughout the United States in recent months.  They appear to be escalating in violence and, by the looks of things Saturday, these robbers are becoming more and more gutsy.

To think they would hold up a tournament while the event was being filmed. 

The EPT Berlin Poker Tournament organizers claim there was adequate security but no doubt there will now be some serious reinforcements.

The safest poker tournaments are online poker tournaments.

But for every day folks like EPT Berlin million dollar winner Kevin MacPhee, the risk may be well worth the reward.

Still, he feared for his life.

It was a pretty freaky thing to have happen, especially considering the poor planning of the tournament area... no exits, lots of panic, stampeding, screaming, crying.

"The EPTLive.com people shut down because of it, but we somehow were expected to play on," MacPhee continued. "I thought it was a little unfair to put that upon the players after something like that happens, especially without any player input on how to handle the situation."

With the world economy in shambles and an unbalanced distribution of wealth, crime is expected to go up.  What better targets than advertised poker tournaments where large sums of cash laying around is the norm.

In some ways, live poker tournaments are becoming more attractive to crooks than banks. 

Let's face it, most poker players are dum.

At the time of the robbery, most of the poker players still present began updating their Twitter accounts claiming there were 6 armed bandits when in reality there were only 4.  It only takes 1 of the 4 to shoot anyone they suspect of placing a phone call to police.  Never use your phones during an armed robbery. 

Poker pro Jon "pokertrip" Friedberg took "dum" to a whole new level, entering on his Twitter account: "Wish I was at EPT during the heist!!! Woulda been a great experience! Glad nobody got hurt."

Yeah I'm sure Evelyn Ng had a blast getting caught up in that heist Jon!

Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com