Craig Bergeron, a veteran live/online poker pro from Michigan, has been arrested and charged with multiple felonies, including first-degree murder, in connection with the slaying of a man on Monday night on Detroit’s east side.
Bergeron, 35, allegedly gunned down 37-year-old Tommy “Mike” Ireland, using a rifle in the slaying, which occurred at about 8.40pm on Monday. Police learned that the shooter fled the scene in a white SUV, which they were then able to trace, likely via security or traffic-cam footage, back to Bergeron.
Ireland was pronounced dead at the scene, while Bergeron was arrested on Christmas Eve and has been charged with four felonies. Besides first-degree murder, he also faces two counts of felony firearm use, plus a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He is currently being held in the Wayne County (MI) jail, which encompasses Detroit. Details of Bergeron’s earlier felony conviction or convictions have yet to be released.
Bergeron allegedly committed another assault in the nearby Detroit suburb of St. Clair Shores shortly after killing Ireland, but he has not yet been charged in that matter. Investigators have not yet been able to determine what happened between Bergeron and Ireland that might have precipitated the murder, nor what Bergeron was doing on Detroit’s east side, which is nearly 50 miles away from Bergeron’s residence in Saline, Michigan, to the west-southwest of Detroit.
Bergeron a prior WSOP Circuit ring winner
Bergeron had achieved prominence in both the live and online poker worlds in the early 2010s, though the extent of his poker playing in recent years is less clear. From 2008 through 2019, according to the Hendon Mob results database, Bergeron logged more than $1.3 million in live-tournament winnings.
His largest live payday of nearly $313,000 came from a fourth-place finish in the 2010 EPT Deauville (France) main event. A year later, he took down a preliminary event in a WSOP Circuit series at Hammond Horseshoe, near Chicago. Bergeron also won a preliminary event at the 2009 EPT Dortmund festival.
However, he has no recorded tourney results since 2019, and he has never cashed in a WSOP.com event, which he would’ve been able to play from Michigan.
Alleged murder adds to run of strange and often tragic poker-connected stories from Michigan
Bergeron’s arrest on four murder-related charges adds to a recent string of bizarre and often tragic stories with poker connections that have taken place in the Wolverine State. The most tragic of all was the brutal torture/murder of well-liked pro Susie Zhao in a northwestern Detroit suburb in 2020. Zhou’s killer, Jeffery Bernard Morris, was later sentenced to life in prison.
Another poker story with violent overtones was that of Michigan’s Rudy Gavaldon, who won an online bracelet on WSOP.com in 2023 while awaiting trial for the attempted murder of his wife, Lara, the previous summer. Gavaldon was out on bail at the time of his bracelet win but was soon back behind bars for drug-use violations of his release.
And then there was the saga – which remains incomplete, as of this recounting – of another well-known Michigan poker player, George Janssen. Janssen, a four-time Circuit ringwinner and a two-time champ on the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT), was found on a quiet road in Michigan’s ‘Thumb’ region in December of 2023, bloodied and with his hands zip-tied.
Janssen claimed to have been kidnapped and held for ransom for weeks in a home in northern Ohio before duping his captors and escaping. The FBI had been reported as investigating the very odd circumstances of Janssen’s disappearance, but no further developments have emerged as a full year has elapsed.