Poker player detained near a casino in Batumi by plainclothes officers

GipsyTeam user "пацан_с_завода" shared the story of how a trip to the EAPT series in Batumi ended with his detention and almost a month of waiting with no right to leave the country.

On October 10 at around 11:00 p.m., during a tournament break, he went to walk his wife back to their hotel five minutes from the casino. On the way they were stopped and surrounded by four men in black clothing, two of whom got out of an unmarked car. They introduced themselves as police officers.

"One of them quickly flashed an ID, all in Georgian, and immediately put it away. All four were out of uniform, in black clothes, and two of them wore AliExpress T-shirts with the word 'Police' on them."

The men photographed the poker player's and his wife's documents and then told him to empty his pockets onto the hood of the car. He was carrying a large sum of money. The player asked his wife to film what was happening, and at that moment they twisted his arms behind his back and drove him away in the car.

"Somewhere halfway there, when one of them started talking on the radio, I realized the odds that I was actually being taken to a police station and not into the woods were significantly higher."

At the station they went through his phone: photos, messages and Telegram channels. Until the inspector arrived, the four men who had detained him asked unpleasant questions, including how much money he had lost in the casino.

"And when he arrived, everything became as polite as possible. The money was counted several times in front of me and all of it was returned, no questions asked."

The only thing confiscated was the vitamins from his pill box. The inspector promised the lab analysis would take 2-3 days and allowed him to travel to Tbilisi, where his return flight was departing from. In reality the analysis took 25 days, and the whole time the player couldn't leave the country.

"Suing the police in a foreign country is definitely no freeroll for me, better to just fly home."

Later the poker player found a video on YouTube where another person tells an almost identical story, with the same Eclipse casino visible in the background.

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