Armed Robbery at Seminole Hard Rock Casino Poker Room

The recent spate of robberies at cardrooms in the US has a new addition, the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Tampa, Florida, was robbed by an armed man who made off with an undisclosed sum of cash.

The Seminole Police Department of the Seminole Tribe of Florida is leading the investigation, according to news sources, and have also released CCTV stills of a man they are seeking in connection with the heist…

…describing him as ‘an African-American male, about 5-foot-4 and approximately 140 pounds’ and who was wearing ‘a black hooded sweater with gray sleeves, black sweatpants, sunglasses’, the suspect being armed with a handgun.

No shots were fired during the robbery and there were no injuries reported, the suspect exiting the premises and taking off on foot southbound along Orient Road.

One customer at the casino, Mike McCurry, told wfla.com news service:

“Good for him I guess, until he gets caught and then he is going to go to jail. Obviously there are cameras everywhere, there is going to be film. It is only a matter of time before they get him. It’s not a real smart play.”

The Seminole Hard Rock Casino is a well-known poker venue, last week seeing the Lucky Hearts Poker Open which saw a host of the game’s stars battling it out for huge prizemoney.

Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay has offered a reward of up to $3,000 for information that leads to the identification and arrest of the unknown suspect and anyone with information regarding the identity of the suspect is being asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-873-8477.

A fortnight ago the New York-New York Casino in Las Vegas was hit by a similar incident, an armed man again holding up the poker cage cashier and making off with an unknown amount of cash…

…while PokerTube writer Charles Retmuller also described an armed robbery at the world-famous Bellagio Casino in Vegas which saw a masked bandit make off with a reported $35,000 in cash – missing out on an even bigger payday, Retmuller writing that ‘just 30 feet from the Bellagio poker room cashier cage, high stakes cash game pro players were competing against one another and had a small fortune on the table.’

Legendary poker pro Doyle Brunson and filmstar James Woods were among those in the room at the time, Brunson tweeting…