The Mid-States Poker Tour is moving right along this year. When we last checked in with the tour, Billy Gallegos had won the MSPT Black Hawk in Colorado and Ron West took down the MSPT Venetian Poker Bowl VI in Las Vegas. But before it gets busier with numerous state championships on tap, we can look at the MSPT’s visit to Iowa this month.
The MSPT Riverside at the Riverside Casino in Iowa is a well-known and well-liked stop for MSPT players. It brought the players out once again. And it ended with someone in the winner’s circle who owes a debt to poker and quite a few players in the game.
Starting Strong
The MSPT Riverside Main Event kicked off on March 17. Players had three starting flights from which to choose. The buy-in was $1,100 per entry.
Day 1A put 140 entries on the board. Day 1B added 382, and Day 1C put another 572 entries into the mix. That brought the total to 1,094 entries, creating a prize pool of $1,059,680, more than double the guarantee. It has been the trend for the mid-majors tours to blow right past their guarantees this year, and the MSPT is a part of that trend.
When the tournament staff counted remaining bags of chips, it showed that 125 players would return for Day 2 of play on Sunday, March 20. And the goal was to play for the win.
The bubble burst fairly soon into Day 2, giving the final 117 players at leats $2K for their troubles. Early bustouts included Ravi Raghavan and James Gregg. Much later in the day, Mo Nuwwarah departed, as did Jason Crews. And with the final table so close, Rob Wazwaz busted in tenth place for $14,835.
Much on the Line for Final Table
When the final nine took their seats, Jamie Allen had the lead, and Miroslav Semanisin was close behind. Dan Bekavac was in third, followed by Jeff Fielder, Cero Zuccarello, Joe Landazzi, Chad Holloway (longtime poker reporter and editor), and Joe Hindman. Steven Sullivan sat on the short stack.
The double-ups then began. Zuccarello doubled through Allen, Fielder through Bekavac, and Holloway through Hindman. Bekavac then busted Hindman in ninth place.
Fielder stepped in to oust Landazzi in eighth place, and Zuccarello took over the lead after eliminating Semanisin in seventh. Fielder was back on the right side of the cards to take out Sullivan, and Allen busted Holloway in fifth place.
Allen doubled through Zuccarello and then busted him shoretly thereafter. Allen stayed on a roll and eliminated Fielder in third place. Allen took 19,175,000 chips into heads-up play against the 8,175,000 of Bekavac. But the latter doubled through Allen twice and then a third time to take the lead. Bekavac won soon after.
Dan Bekavac is a name that rings a bell. While this was his third MSPT title, that was probably not the reason for his familiarity. He actually started a new mid-majors tour, one called the Midway Poker Tour. It was a tough time to start it, in October 2020 with the pandemic still raging, but Bekavac was determined. He wanted to start a tour that treated players like they’d never been treated before.
Bekavac succeeded.
He rented some ballrooms at a Chicago-area Sheraton. There was a charity component. Players had been itching to get back to live poker, so they turned out for his event. With 266 entries, the prize pool came to $258,020 to pay the top 31 finishers. Day 2 brought those players back with a minimum payout of $2,300 and more than $55K up top for the winner.
When those in-the-money players returned, they found out that they were being paid partly in cash and partly in “precious metals / collectables.” Bekavac didn’t show up for Day 2. Needless to say, the day didn’t end well for anyone.
Bekavac ultimately told Chad Holloway (see above), in his capacity as a PokerNews reporter, that the tournament wasn’t exactly cleared with the state. As for players, they were supposed to meet a person outside of the Sheraton who would buy the gold and silver coins from them. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, either.
In the end, Bekavac never issued a wholehearted apology. The weeks that followed saw some of the players receive partial payments, but there was never a full settling of the debt.
Meanwhile, George & Company (completely unrelated to poker) sued Bekavac and his company – Bekavac Trading Company – for trademark and copyright infringement and other charges regarding a dice game. George & Company accused Bekavac of copying their LCR dice game.
Bekavac, however, decided not to respond to the lawsuit, resulting in a default judgement against him…around the same time that Bekavac cheated players at the aforementioned poker tournament. The court awarded George & Company statutory damages of $450K for willful copyright infringement and $2M for willful counterfeiting of LCR. That was in December 2020.
Several months later, Bekavac secured an attorney and filed a motion to set aside the default judgment. He claimed that due to his extensive travel for poker, he wasn’t aware of any of the court filings until the default judgment. He said that he closed Bekavac Trading Company and destroyed all merchandise at the plaintiff’s request. The two parties entered into a settlement agreement for approximately $40K..
Bekavac missed the first payment. And his attorney quit.
The US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois set a September 2021 hearing date. Bekavac didn’t show up. Somehow, he convinced the judge to set another hearing. Per the transcript, in which Bekavac appeared remotely, he said that he missed payments because Amazon was his only source of income and suspended his account.
Long story short – (haha, just kidding, too late) – Bekavac did pay more than $35K by the court date and promised not to miss any further payments. The court was not pleased, however, with his consistent claims of not receiving documents. At one point, the judge said, “You got served.”
The court recorded no further documents. It appears that the case was settled, as George & Company filed no further motions.
Now that Bekavac has nearly $200K in his pocket from his MSPT win, he could make an effort to make his poker debts right.
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