WSOP Player Sued For Unpaid Winnings

There is a tradition in the World Series of Poker for some players to take on financial backers in order to get into the big tournament in the first place. The cost for a seat at the table is ten thousand dollars. Some people just don't have that kind of money laying around and others are simply not interested in taking on that much risk all on their own. To avoid this, they sell shares of themselves to those who are willing to put up some of the money for them.

Imagine a person puts in one thousand dollars of their own money to back you in the tournament. That person would have purchased a ten percent stake in whatever you end up winning in the tournament. Many players sell shares to multiple sources in order to come up with the funding they need to buy one ticket to the big tournament.

Nick Marchington, a 21 year old poker player from the UK was skilled enough to finish all that way in seventh place in the World Series of Poker main event this year. That came with a hefty $1,525,000 payout. However, two men have filed a lawsuit against Marchington claiming that they are entitled to a total of ten percent of his winnings because they say that bought ten percent of his action.

The Clark County courthouse received the lawsuit less than twenty-four hours after Marchington was eliminated from the tournament. They clearly had no confidence that he would pay them the money that they say they are entitled to.

There is now a back and forth between Marchington and the two backers over which tournaments exactly they were backing him in. He claims that the backing was for smaller tournaments that he did not make the money in. They still say that they were backing him for the main event.

The two backers have a lot to gain if they can manage to win this lawsuit. They only put in about one thousand dollars in backing but could walk away with as much as one-hundred fifty-two thousand dollars (minus lawyer's fees) if they are successful. Marchington has to decide if he feels that he has the evidence on his side to come out on top in this case. These can quickly turn into he said/they said type cases. The courts may be at a loss for how to resolve this one.