Skilled poker participant Rick Salomon has come unstuck in his authorized bid to assert a $2.2 million playing debt from a Saudi sheikh.
Rick Salomon, pictured with ex-wife Pamela Anderson, has no recourse to pursue a poker debt via the French courts as a result of the sport doesn’t contain a bodily talent “like chariot racing.” (Picture: David M Bennett/Getty)
The American is possibly higher identified for co-starring in and advertising and marketing the Paris Hilton intercourse tape, earlier than marrying then divorcing, then remarrying and re-divorcing Pamela Anderson.
Salomon claims he gained the cash truthful and sq. from Raad al-Khereiji — a scion of one among Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest households — throughout a recreation of Texas maintain’em on the Tiara Miramar Seashore lodge on the French Riviera. However the sheikh welched.
Salomon has spent the previous couple of months of his considerably colourful existence pursuing the debt via the French courts.
$34 Million at Aria
However his declare has been thwarted by an archaic French legislation that limits enforceable playing money owed to those who are derived from bets “involving weapons, foot or horse racing, chariot races, tennis and different video games of the kind which entails bodily talent and train,” The Telegraph stories.
Clearly the creator of the 1804 legislation couldn’t think about a playing recreation of talent that didn’t contain “the train of the physique.”
Salomon’s lawyer, Ronald Sokol, was capable of show efficiently that poker was a recreation of talent, however was much less convincing on the train half, regardless of emphasizing the Tiara Miramar session had lasted for an “vitality consuming” 48 hours.
However al-Khereiji’s declare that he had believed the sport had been “pleasant” and “with no monetary stake” was on shaky floor when information obtained from the Aria in Las Vegas confirmed the Saudi shouldn’t be one to play for peanuts.
Al-Khereiji spent $34 million in 29 months enjoying at Aria’s high-stakes recreation within the Ivey Room, named for poker legend Phil Ivey.
“We’re contemplating taking this all the best way to the French supreme courtroom because the French rule on playing money owed has been in impact since 1804,” Sokol instructed The Telegraph. “There was no case legislation since within the civil courts.”
Hollywood Video games and Texas Bankers
Salomon shouldn’t be one to play for peanuts, both. He was an everyday in Molly Bloom’s Hollywood high-stakes poker video games, which have since been immortalized within the film, Molly’s Recreation.
We all know this as a result of he was as soon as talked about in a lawsuit — together with Tobey Maguire, Nick Cassavetes, Dan Bilzerian, and others — that had been introduced by a gaggle of traders who had been robbed by a fraudulent hedge-fund supervisor named Brad Ruderman.
Ruderman had been invited to play within the recreation, the place he reportedly misplaced lots of of 1000’s of {dollars} to the group of gamers.
The traders had been searching for to claw the cash again from the gamers, who had been unaware of its provenance. Maguire finally settled out of courtroom.
In 2015, once they had been going via messy divorce proceedings (quantity two), Pamela Anderson claimed in courtroom filings that Salomon had gained $40 million from the billionaire Texas banker and occasional high-stakes poker participant, Andy Beal.
Anderson claimed Salomon was hiding the win from the taxman and the divorce courts.
Whether or not any of that is true can’t be independently verified. Salomon finally paid Anderson $1 million to settle the divorce.
