Meh. He's owed big time bucks to other people before and kept betting and doing ridiculous things. It's clearly possible that he's dead broke and has nowhere to turn, but given his past I see no reason to give him a free pass and assume he actually has to earn the money to pay it back. His own wife was essentially laughing at the fact that he owed a little money when this thread first came out. Plus not all of these debts are huge, he could easily make a small payment to each guy as a sign of good faith. He's barely even communicating.

My comment was more or less just joking at the absurdity behind making bets that you have to go earn the money to pay off after you lose them. Since that's...not how this all works.

Just want to point out someone who owes the IRS multiple millions in back taxes probably doesn't have many assets without liens on them.

If he says he wants to pay then why not just pay SOMETHING. 500, 1k? If he is not going to pay its better off he just says it so he cant keep entering.

Is he not playing Wsop ?

He hasn't played an event yet and i think it's unlikely that he will. who knows though, maybe someone will put him in the 50k and/or the main event or something.

curious how feasible it is he finds someone to back him and buy up some of his debt. he's still young and probably still good at poker. it'd be kind of ****ty for a good guy and rather talented poker player to just go down like this.

If Erick needed backing there would be a line out the door of people looking to put him into virtually every event of every series.

If Erick ended up cashing there would be a line out the door of people looking to collect for virtually bet he did not pay yet.

Either broke or emabaressed I imagine (or a combination of the two)

Is this true?

There'd be a queue a mile long of boxing promoters looking to finance a Muhammad Ali fight if he decided to make a comeback. Doesn't mean their reasons are due to Mo's current boxing skills.

I see no reason to doubt Erick's MTT skills. He has pretty damn impressive results for someone who hasn't played a full schedule over the past 5 years.

so he crushed with FTP $$$ and crushed tourneys over the last 5 years, but still can't pay off his debt, hmmmmmm, sounds like the backers lining up would be as dumb as rocks to stake a scumming degen

I know that this thread makes Erick look like the worst human ever, but there are lots of examples of people in his exact same position. What makes Erick's situation somewhat unique is that he was being paid amazingly ridiculous amounts of money from FTP, but that's not THAT different from the countless number of guys who play in the circuit with 9 figures in earnings who are completely broke.

I'm certainly not trying to defend him, I've been one of his harshest critics ITT. But from a backing perspective, having a very very good MTT'r who lives in Vegas, with a major incentive to play well and grind a lot makes a pretty damn good horse as far as horses go. There are many ways that horses have cheated and scammed backers, but just flat out walking off with winnings isn't a very popular one. Someone who ran a backing stable big enough to afford Erick, should be able to keep enough tabs on him to make sure everything was going okay.

Is it just me, or is your avatar really freaking hilarious?

How can this be true when there is no guarantee that he will pay his backers upon binking 1st in one of these babies?

Meh, I run a backing stable and that just isn't a really big concern. If Erick binked something, and I backed him, I'd be there to collect.

If Erick got backed, won a tournament, and didn't pay his backer, he would be infinitely more ****ed than he is now. All he is right now is a dude who went busto, and there are thousands of them.