EPT Berlin Robbery

Posted by icemonkey9 on Mar 6, 2010 in pokerstars | 0 comments

Fortunately, first and foremost, nobody was seriously hurt. I was not on hand obviously, but I wanted to weigh in on the situation.

First, I am really happy to hear everyone is okay.  I know some of the media members on hand and they've all tweeted or reported back that everything is okay.

If you did not hear the news, the EPT Berlin event sponsored by PokerStars was the target of a German heist operation.  Guys armed with knives and machetes came in and robbed the casino and from early reports got away with 800k in Euros.  The events were disrupted and many people on hand are emotionally shaken.

In today's global climate it's somewhat surprising that something like this had not happened sooner. With lax security measures taken in European casinos, they seemed like a huge target with websites advertising millions of dollars flowing in for high stakes poker tournaments and cash games.  It's a little surprising this happened in Berlin and not a more economically challenged nation on the EPT tour, but it might be a taste of things to come.  We can't rule out something like this happening here in the United States, but certainly such an endeavor would be quite bloody with both security and robbers armed with guns.

Unfortunately I do not think this is a single isolated incident and the more desperate people become to survive, the more things like this are likely to happen.