Ben Mintz, aka, Mintzy, really wanted to compete in a poker tournament but that was the wrong decision when it came to his employer.
Mintz is deep in a $2,500 buy-in Moneymaker Tour event, but his Barstool Sports boss Dave Portnoy is pissed he’s skipping out on a corporate outing to play poker.
Barstool is currently hosting its annual Barstool Combine, which is a spinoff of the NFL Combine.
Portnoy was so upset that he called Mintz, who was supposed to compete in the Combine.
Portnoy posted a video of a telephone conversation with Mintz in which the Moneymaker Tour chip leader offered an apology for skipping the event.
“So, if you win, do I not have to pay your salary anymore, since that’s why we pay you a salary – for these events that you’re just skipping?” Portnoy stated.
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If you’re a professional poker player, go do that … We have a major sponsored event that you have a jersey for, that you’re supposed to be a part of, and you’re just skipping it because you’re doing well in a poker tournament,” Portnoy added. “Well, great! Go make your money playing poker then.”
“BREAKING: Every cent Mintzy makes in this tournament will be deducted from his salary for him choosing poker over a mandatory corporate event,” he tweeted quickly in response to Mintzy’s post about being the chip leader in the $2.5K Moneymaker Tour Main Event at the Palm Beach Kennel Club in Florida.
This is not something new for Mintz. He was a professional poker player with gross tournament earnings of more than $600K, according to the Hendon Mob Database.
His best score is for just over 90K for a 75th-place finish at the 2011 WSOP Main Event.
He was previously fired by Barstool in May last year after rapping the song “1st of Tha Month” by Bone Thugz-N-Harmony, including the N-word, during a live stream. That firing was only because Penn was over Barstool at that time.
In August 2023, Penn concluded that Barstool and Portnoy were dangerous liabilities, and sold the company back to Portnoy for $1, having acquired it for around $550 million six months prior.
