• Germany edition
Photo: DPA

Armed robbers stick up Berlin poker tournament

Published: 6 Mar 10 19:36 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100306-25711.html

Armed robbers on Saturday struck at Germany's largest poker tournament, stealing hundreds of thousands of euros in prize money and injuring gamblers, police said.

The masked gang burst into the Grand Hyatt hotel in central Berlin, where the tournament was taking place, threatening security staff and prompting a brief panic, police spokeswoman Heidi Vogt told AFP.

Berlin's Tageszeitung newspaper reported on its website that six robbers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and grenades made off with €800,000 ($1.1 million).

"Several masked, armed individuals entered the Grand Hyatt and fled with a haul of money," Vogt said, without giving details of the sum involved.

She said a number of the tournament's players were injured in the incident, though none were seriously hurt.

Four of the attackers entered the hotel from Potsdamer Platz, one of the German capital's most important and popular squares, while two others kept watch, the Tageszeitung reported.

A security guard briefly stopped one of the robbers, who hit him over the head with a weapon and fled, the newspaper said.

Nearly 1,000 players are to take part in the five-day poker tournament, the first to be held in Berlin by the European Poker Tour. German tennis legend Boris Becker took part in the tournament's launch night.

AFP (news@thelocal.de)

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21:22 March 6, 2010 by berlinski
HAHA! Class! Hopefully the security guard is ok though.
21:59 March 6, 2010 by theladdie
Ocean's 14 !!!!
22:42 March 6, 2010 by strahlungsamt
Classic!!

And right in the middle of the big city too. Hope these are the same guys who run brennende-autos.de
01:00 March 7, 2010 by ErickDDiaz
Welcome to my world, L.A style.................. Ive always told my high paying tax paying friends. "Give it time before you Germans experence the same crimes we do in Los Angeles..And , thier responce? The same as Scoopi doobi doo, no clue!
04:13 March 7, 2010 by snorge
I have heard for years something like this would never happen here -only in unruly America. Germans were too civilized and too well protected by their police and Interpol....

So the excuse now my dear Germans would be?
06:55 March 7, 2010 by ColoSlim
Cojones! So did they flee mit auto oder mit zug? I guess nobody knows because maybe they were all eating the floor? No mention of witnesses outside of the building? There must be 1000's of people who saw this and I can hardly imagine how masked men with AKs and a million dollars disappears. Truthfully I cannot believe it!
12:34 March 7, 2010 by Edmond Schindler
Yes it all does cause a bit of embarrassment, even to read it. They had some class though, no gun fire. I don't condone this but somehow my hat is off to them for the accomplishment under such public eye.

Amazing, simply amazing.
19:10 March 9, 2010 by Talonx
Snorge, if it happened in the states people would probably be dead.
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