HUNTER: Murdered Toronto high-stakes poker player in wrong place at wrong time
It was a targeted heist with the townhouse's other occupant being the target
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Professional poker player Matthew Bergart was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Early on an April morning, his luck ran out.
According to cops, around 2:25 a.m. on Thursday officers responded to a shooting call at a townhouse on Lake Shore Blvd. W. at Long Branch Ave.
It was a targeted heist with the townhouse’s other occupant being the target. Bergart was only visiting.
It was the kind of caper that has become lore in almost every small town in the country. Local knuckleheads hear someone — usually an old-timer — who lives in a rural area has buried thousands of dollars in Bee Hive Honey cans on their property.
Things go south — often because there is no pot of gold — and the victim is slugged, stabbed, beaten or shot to death. And then the slaying becomes embedded in local lore, from where it emerged.
This time, it was in the big city and the honey can was a townhouse. What the thieves were after, cops did not say.
Cops say that three suspects entered the Etobicoke unit and made demands for valuables. What happened afterwards isn’t clear, but a struggle ensued and Bergart was shot multiple times. He later died in hospital.
The killers wore dark clothing and balaclavas and fled the scene in a “white or light-coloured sedan southbound on Long Branch Ave. to westbound Lake Shore Blvd. W.”
In the opaque — and often bizarre — world of online poker, Bergart was something of a star. In one article on a poker website, he was referred to as the “mysterious Canadian.”
And if you think watching the game on TV is as dull as dishwater, I will not recommend reading about it. But it appears that Bergart was successful in the world of poker.
An example of breathless poker prose about Bergart from 2022: “Recently, he has been active. Few people understand who he is, but he plays very strong. In one of the hands, Matthew called Viktor Kudinov’s bet on the river with 7-high and was right.”
Bergart told poker scribe Wouter Beumers about “his difficult career.” The “mysterious Canadian” had been banned from two of the biggest online franchises, Poker Stars and ACR.
“I banned myself on Stars when I was 18, because of my parents. I was banned from ACR because I played under the account Isidro Pereira and they also suspected me of using a solver. GG acted meanly because in 2019 I won a lot,” Bergart said.
“But now I’m allowed to play here under my account.”
How successful Bergart was at professional poker is unclear. He did play in the 2019 World Series of Poker and one site listed his winnings at about US$19,000.
Across the planet, wannabe poker stars, infused with gambling mania, sit in their basements and play for hours on end. Some win, some lose, some go bust. But in the gambling graveyard lies a small army of men and women who gambled and lost everything.
Most of the time, the stakes are only money.
In the case of Matthew Bergart, the “mysterious Canadian,” they went much, much higher than a game of cards.
Wrong place, wrong time.
Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-7400, Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477), or at 222tips.com.
@HunterTOSun
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