Partouche Poker Tour Reneges on €5m Guaranteed Prize Pool

The Partouche Poker Tour in Cannes has been hit by a potentially reputation damaging scandal after the organizers pulled back from their initial prize pool guaranteed sweetener.
Last season, the Partouche website announced the following promise: “See you next year for season 5 of the Partouche Poker Tour, this time with a guaranteed prize pool of 5 million Euros!”
However, after the €8,500 re-entry Main Event currently underway in the French Riviera managed to attract 557 participants to create a prize pool worth €4.2 million, the organizers appeared unwilling to swallow the €800,000 overlay and have now denied the tournament was ever guaranteed. Commenting on the matter, Head of the PPT Maxime Masquelier stated:
“At no time did we say that €5m was secured when it is guaranteed in writing.”
In the meantime, it has been noticed that Partouche appears to currently be removing online references to the guarantee, although players have already preserved the original information using screenshots, while the cached version of the Partouche website is also available. As Justin Bonomo noted on his twitter page:
“Good thing I posted screenshots instead of links. @partouchepoker is actively deleting instances of the word guarantee. Very incriminating…If @partouchepoker fixes the prize pool I will forgive. Otherwise I will never play there again and I will keep spreading the word.”
Adding to the furore is the apparent French law brought to the attention of posters on the TwoPlusTwo, which states the overlay on casino organized events should not exceed €250,000. However, this has not been confirmed yet and either way Partouche would still remain open to criticism for their handling of the situation by unhappy participants.
Weighing in on the debate is the 2010  Partouche Poker Tour Champion, Vanessa Selbst, who at the time won €1.3 million out of the €5.68 million prize pool. The Law School student explains that when she won the tournament €100k was missing from the prize pool because of Ali Tekintamgac, who was disqualified for cheating and two years on, the matter has yet to be resolved. Turning her attention towards the latest controversy, Vanessa Selbst explains:
“This is really tilting – I went to the director today and he basically gave me the runaround..I and some other people are boycotting the side events and won’t be returning to this venue. I had really looked forward to the week in Cannes but this is really unacceptable.”