Hustlers Under Fire for Canceling Tournament Due to Overlay

Hustlers Casino Cancels $350 Main Event with $250,000 GTD

The $350 Main Event at the  Larry Flynt’s Grand Slam of Poker Memorial Tournament series was supposed to take place between July 31st and August 8th at the Hustler Casino in Gardena, California. To meet the ambitious guarantee, they planned a total of 12 Day1 flights.

However, there was one big problem. After the first four Day1’s, only 123 players entered the field. That means there was only a mere $43,050 in the prize pool - and thus, there was a $200K overlay!

Casino management decided to go for the controversial move and cancel the event. Evidently, the online poker community did not take kindly to that. What is the point of a tournament guarantee if it is not guaranteed to be paid out?

YouTube poker persona, poker player, and Texas poker club owner Doug Polk agreed with the angered fans. He pointed out that he and his co-owners at the Lodge were willing to swallow $625K in losses for overlays this May.

At first, Hustler Casino general manager Shaun Yaple tried to shift blame to the nearby Bicycle Casino. The competitor venue decided to host their famous Legends of Poker series at the same time as Hustlers did their Larry Flynt memorial festival.

However, after some time, he reversed course. After consulting with Hustler Live co-owners Ryan Feldman and Nick Vertucci, Yaple made a new announcement. Players will be refunded their buy-ins. Also, those 9 players who still remained in the field at the time of the cancellation would play out the rest of the tournament Monday for a $27,000 prize pool.

The other five events on the series’ schedule have been completed. They had a total of $165,000 in guaranteed prize pool money combined.

Recently, Hustlers has gained a big following among poker fans thanks to their high stakes, high production live streamed cash games. They even hosted a big stream with internet superstars and world-known poker players back in May this year. Hopefully, they will manage to salvage their reputation and put out great poker content even after this fiasco.

Attempted Robbery at Hustler Casino

Hustlers had quite a week. Only days after the blowback they got for canceling a tournament because of the large overlay, they had to deal with a much more serious issue.

There has been an attempted robbery at the casino. One person has been shot.

An unspecified number of robbers attacked two security guards delivering cash to the gambling den in armored trucks. The perps did not get anything, but one of the guards had been shot. The suspects still remain at large.  Thankfully, the victim lived through his injuries.

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