In the last week of August 2015, about 1,000 players from throughout South Florida paid 0 each to enter Hialeah Park’s poker tournament, the largest Texas Hold ‘Em tournament in the card room’s history. Players received15,000 chips to start, an additional 5,000 chips if they paid toward a dealers’ tip pool and 8,000 more for after playing for a few hours. Plus, they could buy in again if they were knocked out.
As they advanced, players who still had chips competed on August 30 for a top prize of $60,000. Leading up to that point, professional poker player T.J. Shulman of Boca Raton noted players chatted with management and were not assigned seats. Also, managers handled cash without receipts. Worst of all, the listed payouts seemed too low for the entry fee.
“I told a Hialeah supervisor, ‘You’re missing $48,000 from the prize pool.’ The guy told me, ‘If you don’t like the way we’re playing here, go back to the Hard Rock,’ ” Shulman said. “They said they’d take the money to the cashier later. They did every possible dance there was.” Shulman added, “The staff were talking in Spanish, and another player understood someone saying he was getting 20 percent of the winnings and giving the staff 80 percent.”
Shulman and three other tournament entrants complained to the Florida Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering. Following the agency’s investigation, it issued on December 29 a seven-page administrative complaint listing numerous issues at the historic circa 1921 venue. The Hialeah operation most likely will be slapped with a six-figure fine as a result.
The state determined 13 players who had won money in the tournament did not receive required receipts. Also, the report stated required casino surveillance video did not properly cover parts of the poker room, including areas where cash was handled. The state also noted Hialeah did not keep a ledger of jackpot debits and credits. In addition, the report said it’s not clear if every dollar that went into the jackpot fund was paid out. Also, money was kept in former poker room manager Nelson Costa’s office instead of a cashier’s cage or vault. Costa recently resigned and three of his assistants have been let go. The complaint does not include any criminal allegations.
Although Hialeah remains the most lucrative of Miami-Dade’s four poker rooms, bringing in more than $8 million a year, officials said. In November the casino took in $5.1 million in slots and $635,920 in poker; pre-scandal, that figure was in the $700,000-plus range. The November total included $69,797 in tournament poker— just 1.3 percent of the slot machine revenue, making tournament operations easily overlooked.
Hialeah offered a big tournament January 26-31 but the buy-in was just $100 with a prize pool of only $75,000. In another change, Angel Garcia, the casino’s director of compliance, now also serves as the poker room manager. Assistant managers have been hired from Atlantic City and the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood.
