Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow has launched himself into the HPT Westgate Casino controversy with a ‘nothing to see here, shut the fuck up, go complain about the WSOP instead’ series of tweets today.
As reported on PokerTube yesterday multiple players at the Heartland Poker Tour stop in Vegas’ Westgate Resort and Casino accused them of favouritism after a select group of players – dubbed “Matusow’s boys” – were offered a late half-price entry to its $1650 Main Event, quite clearly in order to reduce the event’s overlay.
Matusow, who played the event, sees nothing wrong with what was done, responding to Dutch Boyd’s tweet with another deflection of his own…
The controversial decision to offer 50% off to certain ‘VIP players’ – launched by a ‘Trooper97’, aka Tim Watts, tweet – was quickly picked up on by some big names, Chicago Joey Ingram for one…
…with Ben Yu giving a detailed account of what happened when he tried to take up the cut-price offer, stating:
"The player directed me to staffperson A, who I saw shaking hands with a couple of guys. I heard another staff member tell this guy 'These are Matusow’s boys'"
… after which Yu was told “this offer is not open to you, these guys had a special promotion”.
Someone who did manage to enter for around 50% of the full buy-in was Darren ‘Lara’ Attebury, who recorded his own buy-in efforts…
The Westgate Las Vegas Casino defended their decision to offer the discount, but were met with a barrage of criticism…
The HPT themselves finally provided a comment on the controversy...
…while Tournament Director for the tour, Jeremy Smith, rightly distanced himself from the Westgate decision…
…with many players and others in the poker community defending his solid reputation on poker forums, Nick J on 2+2 stating:
"Jeremy Smith is one of the best poker directors in the game & anyone who knows him will testify to this."
Todd Witteles, aka Dan Druff on the Poker Fraud Alert forum, took to task the many people who were following Matusow’s line, explaining that:
“There have been some idiots on social media who have defended the Westgate's right to do this.”
He added, “As someone asked on Facebook, 'If the $1650 buyin is paid, does it really matter if half comes from the casino?' The answer is YES. This corrupts the entire concept of a guarantee”, going on to do the math behind the guarantee, the overlay and the full and ‘VIP’ reduced buy-ins…
…his conclusion being that:
“The $825 buy-in for the final 29 players went directly into the Westgate's pocket, as the prizepool remained at $500k the entire time! At whose expense did the benefit come? The 300 people who paid full price!”