Professional poker player Matt Berkey in 2023 warned everyone about crooked card games involving Chauncey Billups, two years before the Portland Trail Blazers head coach got arrested for allegedly doing so.
Billups is facing criminal charges from an FBI sting that involve one count of wire fraud conspiracy, and four counts of money laundering conspiracy. The former longtime NBA player and current coach allegedly acted as the “face” of fixed poker games that benefitted the Mafia.
In a May 2023 episode of the “Only Friends” podcast, Berkey talked about the poker game involving Billups. Berkey said he had heard stories over the prior few years, going back to around 2019, about Billups being the face of fixed poker games. He says he refused to play in the game but knew people who did, and that everything added up to the games being fixed.
In a 2023 podcast episode, poker player Matt Berkey told a story about how he heard people playing poker with Chauncey Billups
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and knew he was scamming and stealing money from an illegal gambling ring pic.twitter.com/kGsbYZOH5B
“There are a lot of stories about it,” Berkey said of Billups’ game. “There’s one that cropped up, must’ve been like five years ago, 2019ish I think? Four years ago? Where there was this game, it started in LA and then it came to Vegas for a few days, and it was all built around Chauncey Billups. And I had heard about the game, and the person who told me about it was like ‘look, I know the game runners, I am telling you 100% this game is on the up-and-up.’
“And I was like ‘well, I know a lot of the people that are involved and I am telling you 100% that it is NOT on the up-and-up.’ We kind of went back and forth and I agreed that I just wasn’t going to go play in it.”
Berkey says he had some friends who played in the game, and the stories weren’t great.
“But I had some friends who went and played it both in LA and in Vegas, and it obviously was like, for sure confirmed to be cheated. Like people who clearly didn’t even understand the rules of No Limit Hold’em are just jamming hundreds of big blinds with a gutty and then just drilling it,” Berkey said.
Berkey added that it was odd that “only the pros are losing.” He said that his friends returned to the game, because they thought the people they were playing against were not good players and thought they could be beaten. Those friends were right; the players were not good, but they won because they allegedly knew what was coming.
“Well what’s crazy to me is that some of the guys I’m friends with that played the game kept going back, not fully convinced. Just like ‘these guys are so bad, man. So bad!’ Yeah man, they know what’s f–king coming, man. You don’t have to be good if you can know the deck start to finish. Of course they look bad, they’re putting it in with no equity knowing that they’re going to win the f–king hand. Pretty tough you know?” (profanity censored by LBS).
In addition to mentioning Billups in his story, Berkey and his co-hosts also talked about some allegedly crooked games involving another former NBA star, Paul Pierce.
Billups has been placed on leave as the matter unfolds. Tiago Splitter has been named the Blazers’ head coach in the meantime.
