In mid-March, the Venetian hosted a $1,600 tournament. Patrick Leonard and Jeremy Becker made it to the final table, and little-known Spanish player Paul Lozano Martin won.

Despite the rather modest prize money, the tournament attracted increased attention from the community. A scandalous situation occurred on the final table bubble.

– Getting cheated and absurd floor decisions at VenetianPoker

10 left, FT bubble and payjump from 11k to 14k

Spanish pro jams 2.5BB on other table from SB, other spanish pro folds BB and slides his hand directly into the muck.

Patrick Leonard instantly calls floor saying that they are friends and chipdumping.
Floor is some new guy and comes over, basically says “well i cant make him call” and leaves without doing any investigating, allowing the deck to be shuffled and any evidence gone.

I'm on other table with 5BB at the same time and Jbex2417 raises my BB. I ask dealer for floor, dealer refuses to pause shotclock at all during. Second floor comes over to my table, i say other table had cheating accusation and it wasnt investigated properly, i need the clock paused and that to be resolved before I play my hand and potentially bust in 10th. Floor just keeps telling me “you need to play your hand” over and over while completely ignoring people from the other table chiming in and me trying to explain the situation. So I’m playing my hand, trying to see the situation on the other table, and trying to talk to this floor at the same time on a 20s shotclock.

I wonder why they keep missing their guarantees! An entire new room and still cant wash out the old stench

PadsPoker and Jbex2417
GL tomorrow, feel free to chime in if you felt I missed/misrepresented anything, may be petty but I’d appreciate if nobody tipped on a win tmr 🙃

– The floor guy said to me, What if he has 72o? – Patrick confirmed. – I asked if there was any limit to when they would act – raise 2bb, 1.1bb? He said they couldn’t do anything if the cards weren’t shown. By the way, this was a good situation for the chip leader to save the bubble. 5 players at the table, you can put pressure on opponents who are giving big bounties, etc. But this was clearly not the case.

I considered this option too, but the chip leader himself admitted that he simply had a bad hand, Eric Zheng said. Why didn't they even look at his cards?

Tournament winner and prime suspect Paul Lozano chimed in . "I would have folded that hand against every player at the table and I'm not going to talk about strategy at a poker table with non-professionals. I find it too much to talk about here, but I feel obliged to. On the other hand, accusing someone of something without proof seems ugly"

Okay, let’s say I believe you, Eric wrote. But do you think that when the accusations were already made, the floor should have conducted an investigation?

– I don't know, it's not my job. But in this situation there was nothing to be done. My 83o just went to the mac.

The story took an unexpected turn when Mike Holtz joined the conversation and revealed that there had long been a group of Spanish and South American players operating in Las Vegas who were constantly chip dumping and telling each other cards. Paul Lozano is also part of the group, and Holtz caught him ghosting last year.

– How exactly did you catch him doing that? – Pads asked. – These are very serious charges. I don't really like the idea of ​​​​sending all the dogs on the guy if there is a chance that he is innocent. After all, he has an important final tomorrow. He seemed like a nice guy, that's why I didn't make a big deal out of it. What if we are wrong after all?

He’s really impeccable at the table, Holz agreed. Then, he noted that he was watching his friend play on Discord that time and would chime in when decisions needed to be made in the hand. He was calling out plays and sizings on every street through his headset and mic. I have photos and videos I posted to the Vegas Regs Conference last May. 63 people can attest to that.

"I play with Paul almost every day," one commentator wrote. "I've never seen him do anything suspicious at the table. He's always respectful to his opponents and a pleasure to play with."

"He's a really nice guy, a really nice guy," Holtz agreed again. "But sometimes people like that turn out to be cheaters, too."

"This Paul has a private profile on Hendonmob," commenters noted. "This is all very suspicious."

– Their whole team is closed. One of them just won a tournament at Resort World, he refused to take any photos before the final table and after winning the cup.

Afterwards, Mike Holtz recorded a 10-minute video with a detailed story.

– I want to explain what happened at Resort World. I was playing Day 1C of the $800 Main Event. There were two guys at my table, either from Spain or Colombia, I’m not sure where exactly. One was on seat 2 with a small stack, the other was on seat 9 with a huge one. In one of the hands, seat 9 opened, seat 2 folded, and did it in a very strange way. He twisted his hand with cards as if he wanted to show his cards to a friend on purpose. A very unusual action, which you almost never see at the table. When it happened again, I started watching them closely. When other players opened, seat 2 folded completely normally. By the way, seat 9 ended up winning that tournament. The third time it happened, when I was in the big blind. Seat 9 opened, seat 2 folded, I called and check-folded on the flop. My neighbor on the right (Patrick) also noticed their strange behavior and whispered to me: “They are clearly cheaters.”

We called the floor, he said he couldn't do anything: "But call me again if they continue."

Naturally, this happened again. I couldn't hold back any longer and started arguing with them right at the table: "You understand that we see everything? You're openly pushing." The 9th box responded to this by saying that we simply don't know how to lose.

Seat 2 was soon eliminated, and I was moved to another table on seat 3. There was another player from their team on Box 1. At some point, the guy from Box 2 came to our table and stood behind his friend and the player on Box 2. They were constantly chatting in their own language, even during the hands. I demanded that this cheater be kicked out. In response, he stared straight at me and smirked, as if to say: "See, no one cares, you can't do anything to me."

In one of the hands, the 1st box opened from the button, and a friend behind him stared at the player on the 2nd box, after which they again began to speak in their own language. I could no longer hold back and began to shout: "What's going on? Where's the floor?"

The dude immediately ran out of the poker room, and the floor asked me: "And what do you suggest, run after him?" "At least make a remark to his friend." But nothing happened.

Friends told me that in another tournament one of them pulled 10k chips out of his pocket and added them to his stack. When the floor was told about it, he promised to check the cameras, but nothing happened.

In his emotional video, Mike also complained that dealers raise their cards very high when dealing. Commenters responded that this is a long-standing and widespread problem in Vegas.

"I've told dealers over 20 times in the last 3 months that they're dealing too high and I can see the cards just fine," Patrick Leonard wrote. "Why not deal 'on the table'? It'll solve a lot of problems."

“It seems that Europe is 10 years ahead of us in the fight against cheaters,” Holz was amazed.

"During the WSOP Main Event last year, a guy at our table told the dealer several times that he could see the cards," one commentator added. "She said, 'Don't look.' He got mad, of course, and she threatened to call the floor 😆

The winner of the tournament at Resort World was Juan Campayo Hernandez, who received $60,250. He is indeed not in the photo of the finalists or with the championship trophy.

Tournament finalist Joel Baker confirmed Holz's words : "I took 3rd place. I am 100% sure that the winner got information from friends who were often behind the backs of other players. I warned Kenna James ( Ed. – who took 2nd place ) about this, advised him to be more careful looking at the cards."

Kenna James also recorded a video on the hot topic:

– We played heads-up for over an hour, late at night. There was almost no one left in the room except for five of Hernandez’s friends. They stood around the table, closely watching the heads-up, constantly discussing something in Spanish, watching me and even taking photos. After one of the breaks, my opponent’s play changed dramatically. I’m not saying that I fell victim to outright cheating. It’s more of a gray area that’s closer to a violation of poker etiquette than to cheating. In any case, I fully support Mike, he raised a very important issue.