"Now I know what 'under the gun' means," jokes the Finnish dealer Jonna Nissinen, who was at the Grand Hyatt Hotel when the EPT robbery took place. Nissinen got trampled underfoot in the panic that ensued. She talks to Coinflip.com about the incident.


Nissinen was seated at her table near the only emergency exit in the tournament room when the commotion started. The panic spread quickly as players realised there was an armed robbery going on; there were no shots fired but apparently someone had shouted the robbers had a bomb (in truth they didn't).

 "The Finnish player Juha Lauttamus came towards my table and I asked him what's going on. He shouted, 'It looks like a robbery, run Jonna!' but I wasn't quick enough," Nissinen explains to Coinflip.com. The panicking crowd of at least 500 people were stampeding away from the gunmen and towards the only exit where Nissinen's table was located.

"My table toppled over and I got stuck between the wall and the table, and then everyone was running over me," Nissinen recounts the scary moment. "Some Russian player fell on me but then I was saved by another Russian." Nissinen says this gallant knight was a Russian high stakes player but she doesn't know his name.

"He punched the other Russian in the belly to get him off of me and then he pulled me up and helped me get through the exit," Nissinen describes.

"I lost my shoes in the commotion. I ran outside in my socks and eventually I got the hotel's health clinic where I was patched up," she says. People have died when they have been crushed by a panicking crowd, but luckily Nissinen got away with just bruises and a shock.

"I look and feel like I've been run over by a lorry," Nissinen said more than 24 hours after the incident. She also says the casino dealers are joking that now they finally know what the poker term 'under the gun' stands for.

The Finnish pro Juha Helppi had an ordeal of his own in the panic. He ducked under a poker table but unfortunately it was in the area where the Ladies' Event was taking place.

"Poor Juha got completely ran over by a crowd of women," Nissinen laughs. Thankfully it was only Helppi's pride that got hurt.

Nissinen says that it took surprisingly long for the police to get to the scene. She is also unhappy about the tournament organizers' decision not to pay for the security guards' gun licenses which meant that the security were unarmed. "What can they do when armed robbers storm the place?" she says. (There is a video below which shows one crazy brave security guard throwing objects at the robbers!)

Nissinen says she heard there were six masked robbers armed with handguns and some kind of swords or long knives. A statement by the EPT says four men entered the hotel carrying handguns and machetes. Another source mentions there were six men but two of them stayed outside with the getaway car. "One of them put a gun to the head of the woman standing at the registration desk and said, give us the money!" Nissinen explains to Coinflip.com.

Nissinen also reveals the exact amount taken by the robbers: €220,000, so the sum of €1.1 million mentioned in some sources is greatly exaggerated. The money and the men are still missing, but Nissinen says they will surely be caught. "Apparently they were just amateurs. I heard they took off their masks in front of the security cameras so it won't be too hard to identify them," the dealer says.

Video taken from the livestream when the commotion starts: News clip showing the actions of the death defying security guard: