Dan Bekavac owns the Midway Poker Tour (MPT), and he won last week's Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) event for $193,000. It was his third time winning an MSPT title, and he announced that he is willing to start paying players who participated and won in a 2020 charity poker debacle.
Bekavac hosted an inaugural Midway Poker Tour $1,100 buy-in Main Event in October 2020 at a Chicagoland hotel. It attracted 266 entrants and started without any challenge.
Even so, things changed after players started realizing that MPT wouldn't give them their whole winnings. It didn't account for almost 30 percent of the prize pool, which was equal to $62,000. It paid back $12,000 out of this amount only.
Bekavac Starts the Payback Process
Bakavac stunned many people on March 21 when he won $193,000 in the MSPT Riverside. He later informed PokerNews that he is ready to start clearing the remaining payments.
The MPT founder alerted each affected MPT player through text and Chad Holloway his play to clear their winnings. Holloway is PokerNews' Executive Editor US, and he was in fifth place in the MSPT event.
Bekavac stated that he had promised to make every player whole despite it taking a long while. But his current position allows him to do so. Also, he admitted that winning aided in expediting this.
He said that anyone can contact Chad to confirm his statement as he contacted him in 2021 to plan this process. Holloway has discussed the MPT debacle many times, like a January 21 story that narrated about Bekavac participating in an MSPT event as he ghosts MPT players whose winnings he hadn't paid in full.
The MPT Scandal's Backstory
The Illinois Charitable Gaming Acts and Regulations rules allow the Midway Poker Tour to give out $500 in cash, and buy in on top to players who cashed despite their winnings. This tournament had a charitable element that was to aid in raising money for a 4. K.I.D.S. Sake non-profit organization.
Midway Poker Tour offered players precious metals which they would resell and earn cash. Several Illinois-based charity tournaments have used this law in its regulation for a long period. Besides, the state Attorney General's office visited MPT to confirm whether it had adequate on-site precious metals and if it could account for them.
The law doesn't allow players to resell precious metals on-site. So, many players had to retrieve their money at the off-site business. This inconvenienced some of them, but it was a better option.
When players tried to sell off their metals, they realized that MPT had purchased them at retail value or a steep mark-up. Unfortunately, they didn't have another method they would use to sell the metals at retail value or a steep mark-up.
Still, the players didn't manage to sell the precious metals at retail prices as Midway Poker Tour lacked enough money to make full payouts. Their metals weren't worth the money that MPT owed them.
MPT Silver
Bekavac appears to have agreed with unsettled players to complete their winnings soon. Also, he agreed to attend a PokerNews Podcast interview to explain his payback process in detail.
