A Different Battle for This Poker Winner

(Photo: Shrtpoker.com)

It should have been the win which set him up for life, but for Glenn Chorny it turned out to be a completely different kind of ‘set-up’, one which cost him over $1million of his $3million EPT win from 2008.

Now the Canadian pro is heading to the courts hoping to win back the cash which he paid to Philippe Rouas and the Frenchman’s ill-fated Poker World Society Inc.

Chorny hit the headlines when landed the massive 1st prize at the 2008 Monte Carlo Grand Final of the European Poker Tour - $3,196,354 – defeating the likes of Luca Pagano, Antonio Esfandiari and Joe Hachem along the way.

However within a year, and despite some good results in further events, Chorny had been talked into investing in Rouas’ grand plans for a social media poker site – PokerBattle.com – described as a “lifestyle, retail and gaming brand.”

The Frenchman’s offer of 10% of the company (with Rouas boasting of $2million a day profits) for a 7-figure investment must have appeared very appealing to Chorny – with the likes of Chris Ferguson, David Benyamin and the Mizrachi brothers appearing at a ‘launch party’ in Cannes at the Partouche Poker Tour along with media attention from all the biggest poker sites and magazines.

Rouas’ plans included a series of Poker Battles to promote the site, with several big-name pros as ‘Warriors’, the likes of Chino Rheem and Noah Schwartz joining the Mizrachis and others.

As Chorny was to find out though, the website and poker community plans of Rouas were to come to nothing, leaving the Canadian $1million out of pocket. His lawsuit, filed this week in Marion Superior Court in Indianapolis, seeks to claw back his investment after alleging years of run-arounds by the Frenchman – whose company is apparently is still registered in his name today.

According to Chorny, he was eventually told by Rouas that the company had been sold for $2.5million in 2015 and he would receive his 10% share of that, but he claims he has never received a cent of the money and has subsequently discovered that Poker World Society “ceased operations in late 2009 or early 2010,” according to court documents.

Rouas has had success at the poker table – some $400,000 in tournament earnings – but has also been in trouble off the felt several times. He lost a judgment against Bob Evans Farms in 1997, a Coca-Cola distributor while Rouas was in charge of a packaged meat business, which cost him a $740,000 judgement.

Three years later he filed for bankruptcy after another online venture, Anebel.com, failed to work out.

Chorny’s lawsuit in the Marion County Superior Court will be heard by Superior Court Judge Cynthia Ayers and the case reconvenes on September 1 in Indianapolis.