Here’s some video from this afternoon’s attempted robbery at EPT Berlin:

Here’s a clip of an interview from German TV news:

A translation from 2+2 poster “B4RT3K” from the interview between the reporter and “Roman” the security guard in the video above:

Reporter: “We got one witness with us, Roman, you are from the security Team (Security-Kuhr), you were involved in this conflict, how can u describe what happened there ?”

Roman: “It was really scary, with how much brutality the gangsters were acting, I was just standing there minding my own business and securing the money, happy about the fact that the day was calm and nothing happened, suddenly there is shouting and screaming coming from the hallway and the people (gangsters) rush the cashier floor with huge brutality and even armed… it was really scary.”

Reporter: “You are injured, but you got to get hold of one of the gangsters, you were trying to get the money back from him… were you successful ?”

Roman: “Yeah, thank god, we were successful… we got a huge amount of the money back from the gangsters, one of the employees of the hotel helped me there, but we couldn’t secure the gangster because he got rescued by his friends.”

Reporter: “Which weapons were used ? We saw a machete, there were rumours about grenades, kalashnikovs, guns, pump-guns etc.?”

Roman: “I can only verify the machete and a hand-held gun.”

Reporter: “So you really tried to get hold of the gangsters even though u were unarmed and they were armed with guns?”

Roman: “Yeah, in the first moment I didn’t think of the fact that they will use the guns against me, and I just wanted to stop them from what they were doing in that particular moment.”

Reporter: “Brave.”

UPDATE: Here’s another PokerNews update with audio from a police spokesman:

Details are a little sketchy, but apparently at around 2pm CET (8am ET) a group of masked robbers stormed the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Berlin during day 4 of the EPT Berlin Main Event.

Here’s video someone recorded off the live stream as people frantically leave the area:

3:35pm Berlin time update from Pokerstarsblog.com :

“An armed robbery by six men took place today at EPT Berlin. Nobody was seriously injured. We hope to re-start all events at 4pm local time. A police investigation is under way. If you have video footage or photographs that could help the police, please contact the EPT organizers as soon as possible.”

UPDATE #2, make that 5pm local time for a possible restart.

UPDATE #3, the 1,000 Euro event that started today was canceled, while the main event finally resumed around 6:00pm local time, but the EPT Live webcast has been canceled. Also, here’s a breaking news article from Pokernews along with a video update:

Page 2 has some pictures during the incident:

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Let the heads-up fun begin. Ali Nejad and Leann Tweeden called out the pairings at Pure in Caesars Palace last night. Here’s a print-outable PDF of the official bracket for the 2010 National Heads-Up Championship, which gets underway today at 1 pm pacific.

Make your own picks via Pokerati’s bracket-tracker to see how our various predictions compare. We’ve got about nine five hours to come up with some sort of contest … a T-shirt is always standard, but I have to admit we’re running low on Pokerati shirts for really-really large men.

Big ups to @JessWelman who kept us posted live on Twitter, and @BarryGreenstein who accidentally sent a private tweet to Phil Ivey for all the public to see. (Gavin Smith plays small-ball; should walk into Ivey’s wheelhouse.)

The matchups are below:

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Our good pals at the Hard Rock wanna remind you that they have their $20,000 guarantee tourney tomorrow. They probably don’t want me to tell you that they had to add money to the prize pool the last time they ran this tourney to make the guarantee … but that’s good for you. There were about 60 players, and something like 9 got paid. (I got 12th-ish.)

Decent structure, too. 12k chips for $250 ($225+25) … with a $100 rebuy or add-on for 5k chips. (I didn’t take it. My starting table was soft.) Seriously, it’s not a huge tourney, but it’s a good one, with good payout possibilities. Starts at 6 pm. Details here.

And, of course, they’re always happy to spread 1/2 NLH/PLO … and they usually have enough people interested in dipping their toes into 4-card hold’em waters to make it happen. Just ask them to put your name on the list for the Pokerati game and they’ll be sure to accommodate. You can always text “pokerati” to 25827 and you’ll get a text whenever this game is running. I won’t be able to make it this week, but next week I’m back in action, so you probably need some practice.

UPDATE: Tournament didn’t make. Not sure where the fine print may or may not come in for “guarantees”.

This seemed obvious once the pictures started coming in that showed us while no Haiti, the destruction caused by the 8th largest earthquake in recorded history made organizing a poker tournament an afterthought:

The official word, via @PokerStarsBlog:

The PokerStars.net Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT) regrets to announce that the 2010 LAPT Viña del Mar, Chile poker festival has been cancelled. The festival was scheduled to be held at the Enjoy Viña del Mar Casino and Resort from March 19-23, 2010.

All players who have qualified or bought-in to the event will be fully refunded their buy-ins and any out-of-pocket expenses*.

This cancellation follows a devastating 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chile approximately 175 miles south of Viña del Mar on February 27, 2010. The cancellation of the festival has been forced by the effects of the earthquake and in light of the rescue and recovery efforts now taking place throughout Chile.

Everyone at PokerStars.net and the LAPT offers their thoughts and condolences to all of those affected by this tragic natural disaster.

The LAPT sincerely apologizes for this cancellation to the players that had planned to attend the festival.

*Players should contact lapt@pokerstars.com with any queries

You gotta chalk natural disaster up to a bad beat, but man, the LAPT seems to really be having troubles getting off the ground (even with all the soccer stars they’ve got pimping). I could see LAPT dropping down from a projected #2 spot to a #4 in terms of prestige amongst the PokerStars tours … behind EPT (obv), NAPT, and APPT.

Poker 2 Nite has returned for their 2nd season, this time they’re on Versus, as Fox Sports Net had various restrictions on what Scott Huff and Joe Sebok could actually cover on the show, especially with online poker. Joe Stapleton is no longer the head writer, replaced by the people behind Wicked Chops Poker taking over the writing.

Segment one appears below, but stayed tuned for the special Pokerati mention in segment three on page 2:

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We saw it coming … Iowa is following in the footsteps of California, Florida, and Italy, pushing a measure to legalize intrastate online gambling. Poker, of course, included.

@BigRussPoker was unavailable for comment on whether or not he would be considering a move should the measure make it to law. But it’s an interesting concept, if this intrastate thing starts to take hold and spread … might you see some old-fashioned rounders traversing the country looking for the best action?

We’ll be seeing the brackets for the National Heads-Up Poker Championship soon (drawing party is tomorrow) … and with some help from KevMath, I put together a list of who’s going to be represented at the mini-tables in this made-for-TV event. The list isn’t complete — feel free to let me know if we missed any representatives that are already settled and we’ll update accordingly — but it does give an interesting snapshot of where things stand in the competitive online poker landscape-dot-net circa early 2010.

Totals:

Full Tilt – 21
PokerStars – 15
UB – 4
Victory Poker – 2
PartyPoker – 2
Doyle’s Room – 1
Bodog – 1
Betfair – 1
Expect – 1
bet365 – 1
Cake (Unabomber Poker) -1
Non-Poker (GoDaddy) -1
Unknown / Undecided / For Sale – 8

Should be interesting to see how at least a few of these unknowns end up. (Darvin Moon, for example, and Jamie Gold.) Click below for a breakdown by player …

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photo: Jim Schutze / Dallas Observer

Longtime friend of Pokerati and poker pro Gregg Merkow took a rough beat early yesterday morning when fire engulfed two of his restaurants in Dallas. A four-alarm blaze destroyed The Hurricane Grill and the Greenville Bar & Grill, owned by Merkow, along with Mick’s bar and Terilli’s, the Italian restaurant where the fire reportedly started. It’s one of the most historic blocks of Dallas nightlife on Greenville Avenue — and thus citizens are concerned about saving what they can of the buildings even after they burnt virtually to the ground.

More on the fire and its aftermath here.

Because we care about poker players, and due diligence, we’d throw our friends under the bus in a second for a scandalous hedline + Google juice, we couldn’t help but ask whether or not perhaps he’d been running bad lately and this fire, started at a time when the structure was safely empty, might not have been a nefarious play for insurance dollars. Turns out that Merkow didn’t even have insurance on these legendary properties that may or may not have helped launch a poker career.

While non-poker people in Dallas debate how that could be (and who should ultimately be responsible), one of the players in his regular 10/25/50 NLH/PLO game explained, “It’s Merkow. He’s a gambler.”

Our sympathy for his loss … sucks, dude. Merkow speaks with the Associated Press shortly after the fire that had nothing to do with poker here:

Our friends at CardRunners couldn’t have been more thrilled when I took down the team portion of the WSOP-Dream Team event this past summer — wearing their patch while doing so — but since then have been less than enthusiastic about my performance at the tables.

So … they strongly suggested I work on my game. “If you ever want to be taken seriously as a player you have to actually improve, Dan. You can’t go burning through your entire bankroll trying to learn PLO,” said a CardRunners representative about three steps removed from Brian Townsend. “And stop talking all this garbage about Isildur!”

So I agreed — at least to the part about my advancement in poker. I had to start by writing “I will not raise with weak starting hands against strong players in middle position” 100 times in permanent marker on a whiteboard, and then had to promise to study the video lessons available via TrulyFreePokerTraining.com.

A little Google-translate suggests there’s a lot more to this case than just a guy in Florida getting carried away with online poker money transfers. Apparently the detainee, Michael Schuett, is an accused fraudster in Germany who has been on some sort of run hiding out in the USA. A German website exists for the sole purpose of outing this man’s alleged crimes — USAG24-Betrug, or, in English, USAG24 Scams: As Michael Schuett Still Cheating.

The basics:

Preface
You might wonder why there is this page. Well, I also have the services of Michael Schuett, alias adopted USAG24 Inc. and has been cheated a lot of money. Meanwhile, there are quite a lot of people who feel the same way.

The people who have resisted and have published their case as the Internet, were then put massive pressure from Michael Schuett and most have agreed to the cancellation of their websites. This of course happened after agreeing a settlement, for example, was paid some money from Michael Schuett so that the matter is created from the world. Most of these people have only received a fraction of the lost money again and had to return the sites to take from the net.

Thus Michael Schuett is still continuing its Betrügerein. I will not comment on such a comparison and the money had already been written off as dearly as I will have to deal with this person any more. However, I would keep everyone else from dealing with that person and any company business.

Your USAG24-dupe

Now for all we know this is just one disgruntled ex-colleague. But he’s had a twitter feed set up for the past three months just to track the whereabouts of this one person. @usag24betrug has three followers.

And here’s a half-hour lifestyle documentary on Michael Schuett, apparently chronicling his move to Florida:

Very strange. Might online poker sites be a victim of a fraud here? Or just tangled up with the wrong guy? I’m still not sure what to make of it all, but I do get the sense now that this situation may turn out to be about more than online poker …

Still making sense of it all, and how this is different from other poker-related money seizures and charges against Canadian Douglas Rennick … but it looks to be something big, and a new level of poker prosecutions.

Here’s the story from the Naples News:

Feds investigate Naples man in money laundering probe tied to online gambling

It may or may not be coincidental that the the Feds have arrested Michael Olaf Schuett’s for money transfers directly related (allegedly) to online poker just as the state is taking a closer-than-ever look at the game with eyes on its revenue potential. It’s also not clear if Schuett’s been charged with anything yet, or is just being held because he is a foreign national flight risk with felony charges pending.

Here are some plausibly relevant names, and highlights that jump out at yours truly:

• Michael Olaf Schuett, or Schütt, is the guy they’re after. He’s a 29-year-old German whose visa expire in April. A federal judge has ordered him held in Lee County jail without bond.
• He lives in a pretty sick oceanfront condo.
• He’s been married only a month to a 28-year-old woman he’s known for only nine months. Her name is Jennifer Sherman.
• Feds allege that since opening accounts in 2007, Schuett has transferred about $70 million to 23,000 people, mostly Americans and supposedly online poker winnings.
• The giveaway was dozens of checks being received daily via Fed Ex.
• People cashing checks sent to them from Schuett claim they are online poker winnings.
• Secret Service is the law enforcement agency involved.
• Agents are seeking to execute search warrants and seize allegedly ill-gotten property, such as fancy cars and watches.
• The complaint lays out a web of money transfers between businesses and banks and players.
• Lots of American and Canadian banks in play. Key company serving as go-between: Bluetool Ltd. out of Germany.
• Supposedly no direct allegations in the complaint against any online poker sites, but the Naples News reporter was able to connect them to transactions from Full Tilt, PokerStars, and Absolute.
• Three specific players — Corey Drury, Darren Elias, and Derek Dubois — get named as receiving money through Schuett’s legally questionable operation. All three have public profiles on BluffMagazine, PocketFives, CardPlayer, and PokerPages.
• As banks became hip to the set-up, Schuett tried to create a new accounts to hold the money, claiming to be a real estate investor — a story the banks didn’t buy.