Hello,

i kindly ask the community to give me some input on how to handle a scammer. I haven't outed his name yet, but will do so if that is the appropriate action to take in order to protect future stakers/ poker community.



Cliffs:

* He joined a Coaching for Profits deal with Contract + NDA, signed by him ( i have a copy of his ID, Utility bill, address). By the nature of the contract, he has no option of quitting (because as the coach is taking a huge risk). This is made very clear to everybody who wants to join and i actively tell people to NOT join.
There are also people who have gone (successfully) through this program and documented things publicly. So there is no "i did not know" excuse possible.

* After receiving between 10-12hours in coaching value, he simply tells me that he thinks about quitting because some players wanna stake him and he can live with them. I ask him that quitting is not possible, but if he wants to work out a fair solution, he shall let me know

* After trying to spin things in a 100% clear contract (i consider this as an insult as his motives are pretty clear), he makes an offer that is offensive (750 Euro in total), considering i charge 500 Euro per hour. I decline because this is in no way an acceptable payment and while i know that it would have been the best money EV, i do not want to sacrifice my own values and give my consent to what is essentially a scam

While it is totally in my rights, I really don't care about the money involved. I'm looking to build something great for the longterm and luckily i am in a position where money isn't changing my life.
Out of principle i will not let scammers get away, even if it's $10. I've never been in this type of situation, so i don't know what my responsibilities are for the community.

Sure, you're thinking i am full of **** about the "don't care about money", but i have emailed a 2p2 MOD telling him that if the guy (now the scammer) simply offers to pay around 3k Euro , i will not accept one cent from him. The Email is time-stamped and i can prove it if ever needed. After that i have given the scammer another changes to do the right thing with no result.

Why? If he offered to pay, it shows he is honest about his motives and not looking to pull a fast one. It would also show he is honest and there is no need to warn the poker community. I could move on and do what i really care about.

I gave the guy a fair chance to take the high road. He hasn't taken it and is not responding for over a week now.

Also, i do assume it is my duty to warn the potential stakers? They are not English speaking, but i believe there is a way for me to let them to know.

What is my correct line of action?

You should probably put a liquidated damages clause in your standard contract to cover the contingency that a player breaches by "quitting" at different points in time over the length of the contract.


I also would guess that your NDA is unenforceable. For the NDA to be enforceable I think you would have to have some real breakthrough, proprietary stuff that you are sharing in these coaching sessions. The thing that I'm thinking that might have the best chance of this is if you developed some sort of proprietary software that you use. But with something like poker coaching, I would just be pretty surprised if you are actually doing something that would warrant your NDA being enforceable.

I don't know if he was a scammer or simply someone trying to back out of a contract. I wouldn't publish his name after calling him a scammer though. You could find yourself owing him some money.

NCAs in future also

So when i take your stuff (information/coaching is a real asset...just cuz u can't touch it doesn't make it non real) and then "back out" by not paying its not a scam... interesting

* Yeah, definitely the liquidated damages clause is good to have.

* Well, the NDA is basically made so that there is trust among students. We share confidential info


Assuming this is in the contract, what is my next step. I do have to expose him, correct?
I am less concerned about going to court, although it would be an interesting experience.

I mean, i think the closest well known situation in poker is a backer leaving the deal in make-up and getting staked by somebody else.

So the least to be done is to expose the name and move on?

What I'm saying is that until you prove it in a courtroom, it isn't a scam. And yes backing out of a contract isn't necessarily a scam. So if you publically call him a scammer and it hurts him financially, especially if you purposely do it to hurt him (which is considered malice), you can get sued whether he is a scammer or not.

Unfortunately, Almost all of these contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on. It sounds harsh but it's true, there is almost no way to enforce them and is even more complex if the player lives in a different country.

I know of at least one major staker, whos lawyer advised it was pointless making people sign anything like this. And we're talking stakees that involve hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There really isn't much you can do here but out him (if you can't mediate a reasonable solution (which by the way, i think him paying a 500 hourly to you would not be reasonable)), keeping his name private just means that others may get scammed in the mean time.

OP, are you expecting him to play for you or pay for the coaching?

500 Euro an hour, really?

It is a coaching for profits deal. This means i will get a % of profits in return for coaching. So usually he plays, gets coaching and pays this way.

The student can't quit this contract prematurely because the coach puts in the work first and gets paid later. That's the nature of the deal and all parties are fully aware of this

In this case the student simply quit without paying (=scam). So the least the student owes is the hourly for the coaching.

I was asking for 30% of my normal (and official) price which is more than nice just to see if he wanted to scam me.
I was not going to accept money from him (proven by time stamped email to 2p2 mod).

No disrespect buddy, i can understand that this looks like a lot of money to you. When i started playing i thought the same. Well, to me it seemed crazy to pay somebody 50 Euro per hour

And frankly, i do not recommend the average poker player to get coaching at this price.

This is probably not the right place to discuss my services, but i am working very hard and deliver a lot of value to my students and team at BPC.

If you want to see publicly documented results & case studies, go to my paid thread and/or send me an email.

@Contract:
Well i know it's hard/ impossible / too much work to enforce it in a local court. The contract is there to show all parties their obligations and to communicate very clearly what the deal is about.

However, nobody has ever scammed me without paying a high price for it. This guy will be no exception and he will regret his decision. So i'm really not worried about this aspect.


@Your thoughts:

Thx for your thoughts Ponty. Appreciate you taking time to answer.

So if i understand you correctly, i should give away the name of this player. I'm obviously more than willing to do this so nobody else will ever get scammed by him. How many details, where do I publish the info?

I know many scams stay unpublished because creditors have the illusion that they will get paid "one day" and they fear that if they make things public that they will never see one more cent.

As explained in the OP, i am not after money, i wanna do the "right thing" for the poker community first and then go after my personal interests.
I could have settled for a small amount that he offered, make some chump change and nobody would ever know about his real character. I'm stubborn and have too much self respect to accept this...

(Also, i hate to be mistaken for a charity or do-gooder. I do this because it's in my long term interest that the poker world cleans up. I'm very old school with such things)

Were you staking him or was he to play on his own dime? Also it's confusing when you say you wanted 30% of your normal rates but won't accept any $$ from him. What exactly do you want from him at this point, knowing he doesn't want to continue the arrangement? Sorry if I seem dense, I've been drinking and it's unclear what you want to happen at this point.

PS: I'm on your side as this is clearly bs, but are you wanting to know what's fair or just weather or not its prudent to out him?

It was coaching for profits, so he was playing with his own money. Gordon asked him for 30% because if he was willing to actually pay the money then it would mean that he genuinely wanted out and wasn't just pulling a quickie for some free coaching from the beginning.

That's what it looks like to me anyway, hope it gets sorted out. Also it's a dick move either way because due to the nature of these deals it should go without saying that once you sign up, backing out isn't really an option.

BTW Gordon, don't you just keep their security deposit in these cases?

I have to say this is a shame. I don't know you personally Gordon but from what I have read/seen, you seem to genuinely want to help people who are prepared to work hard. This alone kind of makes you a bit more vulnerable to a-holes.

I know some people will argue this isn't a scam because he has offered to pay for some/all of the coaching but IMO it most definitely could be a scam. If and I say 'IF', the person involved signs up to the course and improves his/her win rate and all of a sudden wants to go it alone (probs with the assumption they will coin it in without paying a % over to Gordon), it is a scam. They are probably correct in their assumption ( short term at least) but that is not what they entered into. They signed the contract knowing they would be committed for a certain length of time and should stick by it.

I don't suppose Gordon would cut people adrift if they wasn't making money and stop coaching them so it should work both ways...

I hope you sort it out but I'm not sure 'outing' the person is a good idea. Potentially it could come back to bite you on the arse. If you aren't too bothered about that, then outing the person would be deffo + ev for the poker community if it is a scam.

Good luck with your courses and hopefully these people will be few and far between.

Update:

Through a person that a friend of mine knows i received good. This person holds 400 Euro of the scammer.
Kind of a low amount, but i can make sure to get a favor done by withholding that amount.

Scammers don't deserve any good treatment so i'm gonna make sure to get this money as a down payment of what i'm owed.

Just mentioning this to stay transparent on the development. It kind of gets dirty, but so be it.

I have talked to the Super red mod Mike Haven and he told me that the correct way here is to only post SN's. That's kinda strange, but probably 2p2 also has some issues in regards to legal stuff.
Any case, it's a "first time" for me, so i wanna do this as transparent as possible and keep the community updated.

So i'm not gonna publicly post the name on 2p2. But i will very likely decide to publish it elsewhere since scammers shouldn't get away that easily.

This?

So your solution is to steal the money. And how does that make you better than a scammer? I think that the only real solution to all of this is for you to see a therapist.

Yes. Of course the security deposit is kept in those cases. It is small compared to the value, but if you read some posts above, you will see a full explanation.

We have a lot of costs (server, creating material, my assistant, helping coaches, and soon software). Server is probably the cheapest, but the other stuff does cost...

I'm having a net loss even if you count my coaching time for "free". Please don't feel sorry, the way BPC deals with setbacks is to become even better. One idiot and around 20 super awesome great people. That's still a good result

I'm done with the thread. If somebody has more questions, you can always email me to support@bestpokercoaching.com

Best wishes to all,

Gordon

You sound mad bro.

This is why you need a liquidated damages clause.

curious, what would a liquidated damages clause do in this kind of scenario?

I think it's your coach who sounds mad bro.

No coach sounded pretty reasonable itt