You know what the funny thing is? At first when this thread got buried here I figured the Mods wanted to hide it out of deference to Stox. Now its the 2d most viewed/responded to thread in the forum and the other top threads are coaching is a scam and is coaching a waste of money. Maybe keeping it here was a good idea.

Don't forget to say the same thing to Fletch3000, since he also publically admits he thought something was up but didn't do anything about it.

After all, if you're going to be an ass, you ought to make sure you're an equal opportunity ass.

Strongly disagree. This thread (and the one that you moved to the mod forum, and have not moved back) is rife with examples of outright dishonesty, either premeditated or opportunistic. There are two components to the allegations though, and the issue of whether JH is as winning a player or as good of a coach as he claims is very much subordinate to the theft/dishonesty prong, but that hardly makes the coaching issue disappear. I know that Stox is an advertiser here, but their alleged negligence in bringing him on or retaining him as a coach (irrespective of whether it was a matter of poker abilities, or questions of character/honesty) does not deserve to be swept under the rug with your characterization of the matter as a 'staking deal gone bad'.

for starters i didnt even read Fletch3000's post. i just skimmed this thread and read the first post accusing the guy whoever that was by. i read LA's blog which was linked in several threads.

2nd, LA was a Stox poker coach and had a reasonable obligation to make his suspicions known to the higher ups at Stox. he not only had something to gain personally by making sure that Stox name was dragged thru the mud, at least at the time...but he also just should as a decent human being not wanting to see other ppl get scammed.

but yea, i guess im an ASS for publicly calling out someone for their BS. oh wait, thats right, i dont care about ur opinion fanboy. continue on w/ the LA nuthugging now.

The original thread on 2p2 (which is probably locked somewhere) has statements from not just one student, but at least 5. These statements are available on the Stoxpoker forum, albeit in the private area (paying subscribers only) in a massive thread on Jason Ho.

You can see how easy it is if only one person comes forward with a story, how quickly they will get dismissed because it's a Stoxpoker coach. Even when so many come forward, 2p2 admin still dismisses it....

I hope all training sites take notice of how powerful the implicit or explicit recommendation they are giving when they take on players to produce videos. It appears here that many people were sucked in to a 6-figure scam, and trusted the name of stox poker that the coach was a legitimate winning player and worthwhile coach.

Whether you promote your video makers as coaches yourselves, or you allow your coach to solicit students on your forums, you are allowing them to use your good name to promote their very high-priced services.

From many posts in this thread, it appears here that a stox poker coach not only was creating poor quality videos, is a losing player, aggressively markets his coaching on the stox forums and tries to push students in to a personal staking deal or sell 'intensive' courses abroad, but that one of your own star coaches knew of at least some of his lack of poker ability and attempts to rip off students.

Perhaps you havent spoken to some of the people involved in this mess and know that some of the complaints have already been proven false? Thge majority of the complaints still stand as-is, but the coaching complaints seem to have nothing to do with the real issue - a staking deal gone bad.

I've read it all.... I dont know Jason Ho, nor do I care to know him based on what I have been told so far but the only players whose opinions I trust as players who had coaching experiences with Jason seem to have had fairly positive experiences - one of them is Sublime in this thread, he is a goofball in real life but he knows what he is talking about when it comes to poker. I've spent hours talking poker with Sublime, if he felt he got something out of Jason Ho's coaching then I believe him far more than I believe his stable of stakers who are upset that the staking deal went bad.

With that said I have never seen a video from Jason Ho other than the joke videos posted on YouTube, but then again I think most video coaches are pretty poor at what they do so take that with a grain of salt.

Of course its more than just a staking deal gone wrong, but for the purposes of this thread and the hope of the stakers to recover their funds we should all be focusing on this narrow aspect because that is the fundamental core of this issue. Most of the people chiming in this thread are "mee toos", people who are outraged yet were never affected by Ho, many (like me) have never even seen a real coaching video of his. My goal is only to keep this thread on topic, and the heart of the issue is the bad staking deal - all the other components are subtopics that are relevant when it affects the staking deal but not relevant as evidence when its not associated with the staking deal.

For the record coaching sites usually hire their coaches because they are good teachers, not because they are winning high stakes players. A good example of that would be Ed Miller, former 2+2 author who is highly respected yet when he wrote his seminal work Small Stakes Hold'em he had barely played above the mid-limit stakes range, and when he wrote his first two NL books he was learning to play the game at the same time. Ed's ability to teach is fantastic, few people who have read his works could claim that his lack of experience made him unqualified to write these titles... thousands of players have read Ed's books and have gone on to be much bigger players than Ed ever has been, its a testament to his work, and is also the same reason why coaching sites chose their coaches for the most part.

There is no doubt that the accusations show that Ho was "rife with examples of outright dishonesty, either premeditated or opportunistic", but the reason the original thread was moved to the mod forum was also because there were unsubstantiated claims from individuals who have accounts on this forum yet chose to use an anonymous account to hide their identity so they can stretch the truth. There has been dishonesty on both sides of this story, since I am privy to some details not yet shared in this forum you will have to take my word for it until these details are shared publicly by Jim and/or the accusers.

PS: Stox is also a competitor of 2+2's, they host forums just like 2+2 does and sell education like 2+2 does - the fact that they are an advertiser is irrelevant. Please do not accuse us of sweeping this story under the rug due to business relationships, you man not intend it to be but its insulting to me personally, my intentions here are pure - to help find a solution for those who claim they were scammed in a staking deal while keeping the topic on focus so a solution can be found.

Please do not make false accusations - nobody is dismissing the claims of the people who where part of the PLO fund on Stoxpoker, if any of these five people wanted to post here under their real screen names rather than hide under a gimmick account we would welcome them with open arms. I think you also ignored the fact that Jim from Stoxpoker was told about this privately before the alleged scam was known about publicly and asked his forum members to come forward so a solution could be found, nobody came forward until after Jim asked them to do so.

TT, this is not my gimmick account. I just don't post that often. I'm not hiding anything (look again at my statement, I even outed a former 2p2r who ripped me off - never came forward until now, you can even go browse my IM inbox if you wish and see the message trails I had with that coach saying he'd pay me back). I let that issue slide but not this one, especially since it affects alot more people and is a lot more serious.

Secondly, when I say people are dismissive of individual claims vs a well known coach, I say that as an example. There are other students who feel the same, who are yet to come forward (and I hope they do). When alot of people come forward, it adds further weight to what we are saying.

When people are scammed, they tend to be embarrassed, feel ridiculous, and blame themselves (as I do). They don't want to talk about it. If the scammer picks the correct kind of people to target, then he'll carry on scamming because the victims won't want to come forward.

Thirdly, yes I know that Jim released a statement before we came out with our individual statements - please tell me what bearing this has, on how soon/late we act?

Furthermore, I don't know what part of our statements you've proven incorrect, as you've locked the thread in question. What do you mean by proof anyway?

There is no need for me to speak to any of them, I am one of them. I was never in his "crew", I didnt invest a dollar into his PLO scam even though he asked me for 20-50k multiple times. The only money I lost is the ones that I paid for his coaching. Therefore the only problem I have with him is his coaching ability and the way he dealt with me afterwards.

I obv learned something as I believe I can learn something from any poker player. But the list of complaints ranging from poor coaching, absence, personal abuse and absolutely no regret, remorse or any kind of human decency for whatever his actions are/were is enormous.

Understand that Jason was a Stox coach, came recommended by cottonseed and Jared Tendler as well as numerous other stox members.

Oh and please do post facts that have already proven false, go ahead post one of them.

Oh and I forgot, the account under which we came out with this mess isnt a gimmick. We thought it would add more weight if we came together and told our stories and neither one of us wanted to be OP. If this is an issue, I am sure not one of us has a problem outting ourselves to increase credibility. This isnt a vendetta, I have nothing to gain from this, I am not getting any of my money back I just dont want anyone to feel like I did after Jason treated me like he did. I havent felt so used and humiliated before in my life, it was truly a life low feeling. If this thread warns and prevents one person from feeling as I felt, I feel good about it.

If you want my pokerplaying credibilty pm me and Ill give u my FTP and stars names. Lets say if u look over top 50 winners at msnl or whatever on PTR my name pops up somewhere.

lol I just came over to read the drama bomb and then I check out this douche's website. I knew it had to be that tard. I remember last year when I got free stox and I was bored late one night and wanted to watch a vid so I fired up one of his jedi-mind bull **** videos. It was literally the worst analysis I've ever seen in a video. I mean he literally had no clue how to play NLHE at an even break even level. The video was being made at nl100 so I could only assume he played on some super fishy euro site and was a marginal winner and stox signed them on because, well, their coaching stable isn't that impressive (excluding a couple great LHE coaches and rask). I can't believe that people fell for his scam. And more importantly that they actually gave him thousands of dollars after listening to him talk about the game.

more unbelievable is that stoxpoker put his videos out there. Do they even watch or listen to the product they are providing? The fact that this made it on to the site and was consider valuable poker knowledge is just mind blowing. And now the fact that part owners of the site are claiming they knew he was a scam artist and still let him work his scam on their site is just ridiculous.

I mean this thread is just unbelievable. I'm sorry you guys got screwed who did, but I don't for a second believe any of you were big winners and that this kid screwed it up for you. even marginal winners at midstakes would be able to tell he was a fraud in a few minutes.

you say that all now, but why didnt you step forward earlier ???

wtf I didn't even know who the kid was until I read this thread? I never read or post on stox. I just happened to watch one of his videos that I thought was crappy. how was I supposed to know that he was suckering people out of thousands of dollars who weren't smart enough to see through his bull ****.

I mean stox poker puts out a lot of not very good videos, I wasn't surprised that one of their nl100 instructors sucked. however when I read about this thread on another part of 2p2 I had a feeling it might be this kid. The name made me think he was asian (I know racist ban) and someone who was clearly a terrible poker player but acted like they knew everything, and someone who was coaching and making videos for stox, and someone that was broke in the
UK (kid had a british accent in his vids). this kid is the first person I thoguht of and sure enough it's that idiot.

so yeah I was covering it all up. I had secret knowledge. get serious.

This "kid" is over 30 lol

this was not meant to offend you. the qestion, if you say "even marginal winners at midstakes would be able to tell he was a fraud in a few minutes." why nobody stepped up earlier, has to be raised.

now get serious.

LOL at "it's just a staking deal gone bad". He's a long-term losing player who bankrupted himself playing poker then continued to play poker and lose more money. He's written the most hilarious PLO guide in the history of PLO guides. His serious Stox videos are (according to many here at least, most of whom don't appear to have any vested interest in the case at hand, I will readily admit I haven't seen any myself) pretty much crap and of no value to even break-even players at mid-stakes+. He was falsely advertised as a $1m winner, with apparently nothing having been done to check this out. There are dozens of complaints relating to the quality and quantity of his coaching in here and yet you want to call this "a staking deal gone bad"? Because a few people might have slightly embellished a small part of their grievances against Jason amid the complete torrent of complaints about his coaching, you're willing to write everything off and call it a "staking deal gone bad"? Come on, you're smarter than this.

You say some complaints have been proven false. Which complaints? How have they been proven? This is as bad as when FT support gets ragged on here for closing people's accounts with nothing more than "you broke the rules!" as a reason. If you're not prepared to back statements like that up, why are you posting them at all?

You have also taught us all such stunning insight as "victims of scams tend to be naive" and "victims of scams often have a hard time outing themselves in public" and proceed to highlight this as some sort of unusual behaviour that is worthy of note. Really?

Look, I understand you want to be seen as the voice of balance and reason amid the madness of this topic, but frankly it's making you look more than a little silly at present.

Anyone who gets coaching from a guy who looks like this deserves to lose.

they were all bs. He put that same prop bet up and then his only response was that he had dirt on his accusers trying to say that they aren't to be trusted. Basically implying a threat that he would out them publicly for something illegal one or more of his accusers had done, though it was all very vague.

He was given an opportunity to respond directly to the accusations and reports from his students and crew, but he only responded with veiled threats and vague assurances that he was mounting his defense.

Last I read he was banned from Stox and all his content was removed from the site.

Oh, random information that may be of interest too - he was made bankrupt in February 2008 and discharged 12 months later, so he was a registered bankrupt at the time he became involved with Stox (August 2008 if my understanding is correct). He also mysteriously saved up enough money to quit his job and move to Macau during the time he was bankrupt, despite the fact that as I said before any earnings past what he needed to live on while he was registered bankrupt should have been declared and inevitably sent to the Official Receiver for distribution to his creditors (and I'm pretty confident given the info posted ITT that he didn't fund the trip from poker winnings).

I can't help it that he looks like he's 15.

I don't think most winning regs in MSNL watch stox vids or browse their site very often. And I think most people like me with only the knowledge gained from one of his terrible videos would assume only that he was a bad small stakes reg that put out crappy videos. If you aren't a fanboy and didn't follow his apparently ludicrous claims on his blog and his idiotic website then you wouldn't have any reason to suspect he was running a scam.

I assumed he was exactly what he is (a bad small stakes reg) from watching his videos. I just had know idea that he was claiming to be more and scamming others based on those claims.

found something interesting when i googled "jason ho poker."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pr...usOne/Jason_Ho

does anyone know how wiki works? why is jason ho's name associated with phil gordon's wiki profile? can someone look up user ProsperousOne and see who it is?

could this be another one of his tricks?

ProsperousOne is one of the guys affected by this; he's a former "crew" member and his statement is on Stoxpoker.

It appears Jason asked him to setup a wiki entry to boost his profile.

wat? i don't get this. It's Phil Gordon's wikipedia page with Phil Gordon changed to Jason Ho in the first line but nowhere else(?)

It s phil gordon who did it , Jason Ho is his idol :-)