Latest Bizarre News From Around The Poker World

Michael Borovetz ArrestedHere is a round-up of some of the latest poker news to make the headlines over the past few days, including a poker pro scamming travelers out of money, a controversial late half-price offer being made for the HPT Main Event at the Westgate Las Vegas, and Doug Polk finally being blocked from accessing Daniel Negreanu’s twitter account.
Michael Borovetz Arrested
Michael Borovetz (photo) is a poker pro with $587,615 in live tournament winnings since 2004, with his biggest score recorded in 2006 after taking down the WSOP Circuit Atlantic City event for $66,240. Borovetz has only made $26,492 since 2014, though, and it seems that the player is not beyond resorting to nefarious means in order to pad his bankroll.
In fact, the 43-year-old was recently arrested by New Jersey Port Authority police for “theft by deception” after he told a tale of woe to a fellow traveler and implored him to loan him $200 while at Newark Airport on April 3rd. In turns out, Borovetz had no intention of honoring his debt, and furthermore has been pulling similar scams since the early 2000’s. After his most recent victim parted with his cash, though, he became suspicious and so reported the incident to Port Authority, which subsequently sent officers to arrest him at his nearby hotel room at Newark Airport Marriott.
Borovetz is now set to appear at the Essex County Municipal Court on April 17th, and is likely to claim the same defense as the previous times he has been in hot water over the same stunt. Borovetz apparently suffers from a gambling addiction, and in 2014 responded to a 2+2 poker forum thread by admitting his guilt, and expressing his desire to turn his life around.
“It is time for a permanent change to my life, it has to be done,” wrote Borovetz.
Unfortunately, he appears to have failed in his endeavors, and is once again making the poker headlines for all the wrong reasons.
HPT Westgate Half Price Entry
Also attracting negative publicity this week is the Heartland Poker Tour (HPT), which held its latest $1650 Main Event at the Westgate Las Vegas, but failed to make the tournament’s $500,000 guarantee. With just 300 players registered, and a $69,000 overlay looming, a tweet was sent out by a poker vlogger known as Trooper97 offering half priced entry into the event for latecomers.
Nevertheless, the ‘promo offer’ was apparently reserved for just a few select players, and as one casino attendee later noted, those permitted the discount were introduced as “Matusow’s boys”, while top pro Ben Yu was told that the offer was not open to him when he tried to fire a third bullet in the tournament.
The Heartland Poker Tour has since apportioned the decision to the Westgate Las Vegas, which in its small-print had stated that its original guarantee was based upon a minimum of 300 entries. In the meantime numerous players have expressed their frustration over the incident by threatening to boycott future HPT events, while other players are busy ensuring that the story does not disappear quickly, including the likes of Joey Ingram and Allen Kessler. The whole situation seems to have gone totally over Mike Matusow’s head, though, and as he later tweeted:
“How am I involved in this all I did is try and promote tourney in which a friend for 25 yrs was running. All you fuckhead poker players want to do is cry about bullshit! You guys never cry when wsop takes in 80 mill a yr from poker players you just keep registering! Quit crying https://twitter.com/subiime/status/982831222492549120”
Negreanu Blocks Polk
Finally, the ongoing animosity between Daniel Negreanu and Doug Polk reached a turning point recently after the Canadian pro finally decided to ban the outspoken social media sensation from visiting his twitter account. Over the years, Polk has been attacking Negreanu over a range of different issues, including PokerStars’ shift towards recreational players, and the subsequent revamp of its rewards program and rake policy.
At the 2017 WSOP, Polk then took the opportunity to attack Negreanu’s alleged defense of his sponsored site by wearing a t-shirt saying ‘More Rake Better’, and more recently Polk called Negreanu “an embarrassment to the game of poker.” Despite receiving little response to his public criticism, Polk has continued to trash talk Negreanu, and in a recent dig at his vegan lifestyle, Polk tweeted:
“My mom, who has worked in the medical field for 30 years, was discussing that hospitals are limiting carb, not meat, intake for cardiac patients to help w/ high cholesterol. Its disheartening to me top doctors in the world haven’t taken the time to read Negreanus Twitter rants.”
Following Negreanu’s decision to block Polk, the latter has continued poke fun at him, and recently released a sarcastic yet humorous video entitled “Got some sad news today guys”. Nevertheless, many poker fans are now hoping that the two pokers celebs may be closer than ever to laying their petty quibbling to rest.


Poker News
08 May 2018
Best selling author Maria Konnikova, famous for such books as How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (2013) and The Confidence Game (2016), decided to turn her psychology and writing skills towards the subject of poker in early 2017. At the time, though, the Harvard University educated Ph.D. in psychology admitted to not even knowing how
29 Mar 2018
Last week, Francisco Vallejo Pons, a Spanish chess Grandmaster, pulled out of the European Individual Championship in Batumi, Georgia having made it through to the competition’s fifth round. Vallejo had previously won the event in 2013, and was this year’s fourth placed seed, with the tournament acting as an important qualifier for the 2019 Chess
16 Mar 2018
A woman poker pro and author who goes by the pen name Sia Layta says that she will be entering the $10k WSOP Main Event this summer disguised as a man. The prime reason for doing so, however, is apparently to support an upcoming book of hers entitled ‘Black Widow Poker: A Woman’s Guide to
14 Mar 2018
The Merit Poker Top Guns recently concluded at the Merit Crystal Cove Hotel-Casino in Kyrenia, Cyprus, in the Turkish occupied part of the Eastern Mediterranean island. The tournament series ran from Feb 21st to Mar 5th, and featured 28 events with buy-ins ranging from $100 to $5,000. Stealing the headlines, however, was Georgios Zisimopoulos, who