MacPhee not fazed by armed robbery

03/08/2010

Saturday afternoon's armed robber attack on the EPT Berlin tournament at the Grand Hyatt Berlin may have shaken up Kevin MacPhee (29), but not enough to stop him from winning the event against a tough final table to take home Euro 1 million and the trophy.

The Idaho poker pro headed the chip stacks as the final table, comprised of MacPhee, Ilari Tahkokallio, Marc Inizan, Artur Wasek, Ketul Nathwani, Marcel Koller, Marko Neumann and Nicro Behling sat down and got on with the game after the incident. And in his first major tournament final table, MacPhee prevailed over his internationally diverse opponents despite all the prior excitement.

When the dust had settled from third placed Marc Inizan's elimination, it was MacPhee and Finnish player Ilari Tahkokallio facing each other in the heads up. The duo had clashed before in a London EPT match in which the Finn triumphed, but this time it was MacPhee who took the honours and the main prize, leaving Tahkokallio with a still-generous second placing purse of Euro 600 000.

MacPhee, a regular Internet tourney player using the nickname "imalucksac" said the win was his best yet.

"I am a luck-sack," MacPhee told reporters. "What can I say? I ran extremely good and I had the nuts every time someone played back at me."

On Sunday the EPT organisers, Pokerstars.net, released a further statement on the robbery which revealed:

"Yesterday at approximately 2:15pm (local time), an armed robbery took place at the European Poker Tour (EPT) event in Berlin. Nobody was seriously injured. Four armed men were involved in the robbery, which targeted the tournament registration desk outside the tournament area.

"No shots were fired and the suspects quickly fled after a security guard intervened. The police investigation so far has shown that the suspects had a handgun and a machete. Contrary to tabloid reports, no Kalashnikov assault rifles or hand grenades were used. The suspects did not enter the tournament area and the money taken was substantially less than what has been reported."

The police said that no arrests had yet been made, but that investigations were in progress. These included analysis for DNA of a cash bag which a courageous security guard had managed to snatch from the grasp of one of the robbers. The police spokesman said that the amount stolen was in the "six-figure" range.