Dan Bekavac Nineteen months after a controversial payout debacle involving shorted silver , players from the Midway Poker Tour have been made whole by co-founder Dan Bekavac , who over the past few months has won two mid-major tournament titles.
PokerNews has confirmed directly with affected players that they were either made whole or consider the matter settled.
Back in October 2020, the Midway Poker Tour hosted an event in Illinois and had to operate under the Illinois Charitable Gaming Acts and Regulations (230 ILCS30) , meaning organizers were only able to pay out $500 in cash atop the cost of the $1,100 buy-in. As such, players only received $1,600 in cash no matter their finish with the remainder of their “prize” would be awarded in precious metals.
The planned loophole was that those metals could then be bought back on-site for cash, thus making the players whole. Unfortunately, organizers wound up overpaying for the metals and that lost value was passed along to players to the tune of approximately 30% of their advertised prizes. To top it off, no one was on-site to buy back the metals as originally planned.
During the fallout, Bekavac vowed to make players whole. Those plans seemed to stagnate in 2021 , with Bekavac fanning the flames of discontent by showing up to poker events throughout the Midwest to play while players remained shorted. “It was always in my head that these people need to get paid.” In November 2021, Bekavac did reach out to PokerNews via email stating:
“Things are getting much better for me financially, within the next 45-60 days max I should be in a position to pay out the 8 guys that didn’t get paid from the Midway Tour.”
In March, Bekavac won the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) Riverside for $193K , at which point he began making players whole. Between March and last weekend, each affected player confirmed Bekavac had contacted them and made satisfactory repayments, which occurred before Bekavac won the MSPT FireKeepers for $252,090 and his record fourth MSPT title .
In a podcast interview with PokerNews , Bekavac stated: “I reached […]
Click here to view original web page at www.pokernews.com
