(Poker) Armed Robbery at European event + Classy move:

[SirFozzie]

Looks like seven masked men (six of them with machine guns and the seventh with a machete) committed an armed robbery at the casino where the European Poker Tour's Berlin event was being held. Apparently they made off with about a million euros in money.

But, poker players being poker players, the tournament has since resumed, and we had a rather classy moment shortly after it resumed:

From the Pokerstarsblog: EPT Berlin: Day 4, levels 23, 24 and 25 live updates (20,000-40,000, ante 4,000) - PokerStars Poker Blog

Whatever happens in this tournament from now on, we've just seen one of the classiest moments of all time around the poker tables. The man who deserves all the credit is Ilari Tahkokallio, from Finland. Here's why.

When the tournament was interrupted earlier, Tahkokallio and Luca Cainelli were involved in a huge pot - and it was Cainelli's tournament life on the line. Cainelli was all in and Tahkokallio had called. The board had been dealt to the turn.

Cainelli had A♠Q♦ and Tahkokallio had A♦T♥. The four community cards were: 3♣K♣8♠4♣ and so Cainelli, with about 400,000 at stake, was looking good for a double up. Tahkokallio had a stack of more than two million.

This was the precise moment that the tournament was interrupted and all eight players, plus the dealer, left the table in some haste. All their chips ended up scattered across the table with no real way of knowing who had what.

When players returned to the table, with the intention of resuming the tournament, the director Thomas Kremser spoke to the players and admitted that there was no way they could confirm 100% everyone's stacks. However, he hoped that the players would agree to some kind of honour system whereby they claimed the number of chips they thought they were playing. The players agreed to this.

Then, however, they returned to the matter of the hand between Tahkokallio and Cainelli. Kremser said that there was no way they could guarantee that the deck had not been interfered with during the period the tournament room was evacuated. He said that his ruling had to be that the hand was dead and the players took their chips back. They could not deal the river.

Cainelli, and some of the Italian supporters, were not especially happy about the decision and Kremser suggested that he could reshuffle the deck and deal the river card, but only if both players agreed to that. Cainelli was happy but Tahkokallio didn't say anything.

Kremser told Tahkokallio that he did not even have to make a decision, adding that Tahkokallio could simply say: "I don't want to make a decision," and Kremser would then make an official ruling.

After a few minutes, however, Tahkokallio said that the river should be dealt - meaning if it wasn't a ten, he would pay Cainelli the value of his all in. This decision was greeted by a round of applause from the assembled media, players and staff. He essentially had a way of saving himself 500,000 chips, but allowed the poker gods to do their bidding.

The river was 5♥ and so Cainelli doubled up, as Tahkokallio made a lot of friends.