Player steals chips from friend as a joke, gets excluded from final table

Gaetano Preite could have started the final table of the People's Poker Tour (PPT) Malta as the chip leader, but instead he was disqualified from the tournament after he stole some chips from fellow player and close friend Nicola Luigi Abrusci as a prank. Preite took the chips, went to the rail to take a photo with them, but by the time he was done the remaining chips of the finalists have already been bagged. Preite immediately reported what has happened to the tournament director, who decided to exclude him from the final table, check out the details below!

The Italian live tournament series People's Poker Tour (PPT) has recently organized a tournament in Malta with a buy-in of €900, a total of 153 players turned up, which created a €133,000 prizepool.

The story that the Italian poker community has been debating for the past few days started at the end of Day 3 of the tournament, when the final table of 9 players was set.

Italian poker pro Gaetano Preite decided to prank his friend Nicola Luigi Abrusci during the last hand of the day and dragged some chips from the pot that Abrusci has just won. He took the chips to the rail and told them how he pranked their mutual friend.

Preite took a couple of pictures with the chips then returned to the table to give the chips back, but the stacks have already been bagged. The tournament director told him that this act heavily breaks their rules and eventually decided to disqualify Preite from the tournament.

The 9th place prize money was then distributed amongst the first 8 players, in the end it was Gianluca Escobar who took down the event for €41,090.

Preite said the following about the incident:

''I know it was my mistake, I risked my tournament for a bad joke and I respect the decision of the organizers. However, I believe that the exclusion is too harsh of a punishment. They know me in the casino, they know that I would never cheat and that I approach the game as a professional. I think we could have found a less harsh solution.''

What do you think about the case? Was the casinos punishment to harsh or is disqualification a fair decision? Tell us in the comments section.