The most recent stop on the European Poker Tour (EPT) was in Barcelona, Spain, one of the more picturesque locales on the tournament schedule. Apparently, it was not so serene for some of the game’s top players.
According to the gossip among members of the TwoPlusTwo forum, two poker players, World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner Carter Phillips and 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure High-Roller winner William Reynolds, were in Barcelona on Wednesday evening for the start of the EPT tournament. While traveling around the city, the duo apparently ran into a criminal element and a robbery occurred, with a machete used in the process. The incident left both players shaken.
On his Facebook page, Phillips updated his status to say, “I’d like to make this announcement that I am 95% sure that I am officially done with poker. More details to come. In the process of writing out a lengthy explanation to release to the poker community shortly.” Reynolds responded to the status update by saying, “For all of you that want to make bets and ridicule this post, now is not the time – none of this has to do with anything card related – people got robbed tonight and almost injured. I am thankful the 18-inch machete that was being swung at me last night didn’t kill me – the end.”
This sent the forums into a buzz as posters tried to ascertain what had happened. Many remembered last year’s robbery during EPT Berlin in which four men attempted to rob the casino of the prize pool built from the tournament’s participants. This event, however, seems to have occurred completely outside of the walls of the Casino de Barcelona and had nothing to do with the tournament itself.
A few days after the original post had exploded into a 15-page thread, Phillips started his own thread to explain what had happened that night. “Some of the details of the actual night are very skewed,” Phillips admitted. “I was not involved in knocking on the metal door. I also was not next to [Kayvan Payman] when he was robbed. I was probably about 50 yards away from the robbery and the knocking on the door.”
“I started going back to the scene as I realized that Kayvan had been robbed,” Phillips continued. “I was essentially just a bystander from a few feet away because, by the time I got back, the McDs owners had realized that William and Kayvan were not trying to hurt them or rob the store.”
As to his “quitting poker” statement on Facebook, Phillips cleared up the matter by explaining, “Everyone should understand there were several drinks involved in the night and the quitting poker thing was obviously right when I got back. I can honestly say that I have never been to any places in the U.S. where any of this stuff could have happened to me the way it did. Not to say there aren’t, because clearly people are bad all over the world. But I do think Europe is less safe and, therefore, when I mentioned quitting poker, I was more talking about the traveling abroad. I am tired of being in situations where my safety is at risk or where it is unfamiliar because of being in a new place.”
When poker pros travel, either from the U.S. to Europe or vice-versa, it is commonly known that many will wire their tournament buy-ins to the location where they are playing. In addition to that bankroll, however, players will normally carry money for miscellaneous expenditures that can sometimes run close to $10,000, which is the amount of money that can be carried without declaring it through customs. For those in any location, a poker player would be a prime mark for a robbery attempt.
Further details of the robbery are unknown, but apparently Phillips, Reynolds, and Payman are in good health, albeit unnerved by the incident. The former reflected, “This was a scary situation but, looking back, part of the night was definitely self-inflicted on ourselves and could have been avoided.”
