Yeah I agree the noah and venessa interview with jungleman they did a good job with the questions.

so you guys were staking him $100k to play $5/10 but he had the money to be able to to play someone at $50/100 if you didnt want the action?

There was always the presumption that he had money, and it is misleading to say that we were staking him $100k to play 5/10 (I address this in one of my responses in this thread in detail, and even quote the contract we e-mailed amongst each other).
The impression he gave us is that he had 500k+ offline that he did not want to risk or be emotionally invested in when playing. He has told me he will be able to prove offline funds to Noah, but I cannot say for sure until he actually does it. But the acting presumption was that he fully possessed enough money to do this without a problem. This was the presumption behind the Isildur challenge as well - that was to be all his own action, and I told him that if he put up the $150k to play him, despite the -EV it may have ended up being well worth it for the publicity and the chance he won.

We assumed that the chip dump had been completely ignored and was presumed as legitimate. Up until this scandal, as far as I'm aware Lock never investigated the match, or if they did they couldn't find anything.

As far as your second point, I agree, but they probably weren't automatically cross-referencing IP's between who logged into Jose's account and what other accounts they owned on Lock. Also even if they did, they probably wouldn't give out screennames or any such thing. They may have also assumed that the match was legitimate even given the details involved. It would be very difficult for them to prove anything. That's part of the nature of poker.

Thank you for your kind words. I will no longer be staying in the poker world, but I appreciate it nevertheless. I hope that Jungle himself will have a long and less eventful career moving forward, haha.

As far as doing a live interview, I've talked this over with a couple of friends. I think I will be willing to do one live interview regarding all of this, only under the condition that Vanessa interviews me herself. She's been one of my most vocal disparagers through all of this, so I think she owes me at least facing me in all of this.

If this can be arranged within the next day or two, I would be happy to do this. I intend to leave on the road towards France after that and begin my travels.

Perfect man!

That is a pretty sensible idea, in going towards being able to leave on a (relatively) lighter note. If you can get through to her im fairly sure most reasonable people will also give you the benefit of whatever doubt is left. At least publicly.

I agree with the guy that said if, and its still a fairly big if, this is pretty much the truth now, and im inclined to believe its close, I dont think theres really been enough wrongdoing to warrant the total character assassination that everyone has received. I think what jose did is a lot different however and should be treated differently.

Both parties are still really young, and have been sub-merged in the pretty unique online poker world from an even younger age so its very far from difficult to believe they could get themselves into something like this while still being good people, and not some savant-sociopath scamming dreamteam.

I don't get it. All three of you are smart and at least one of you must have been asking close friends/family advice about the situation. If it got out that you chip dumped to win the bluff challenge (the account was registered in your name!), you and Jose would be shunned from poker, lose a ton of money, and possibly face legal action. But no, neither you nor anyone you talked with ever thought about chip dumping the money back.


If Jose didn't want to do anything about it and win the challenge, screwing the other guy out of a huge life-changing score, then that itself is one of the worst things anyone has ever done in poker. He lied to you in order to win the challenge and yet you still vouched for him, staked him, and wanted to live with him.

I was a reg on merge and also talked to jose on skype from time to time. I've been away from 2+2 during the devlopment of all this, but here is a convo I had with him the day after the challenge.

Me:
lol did u really win the lock poker bluff pro challenge in 1 day?
5/1/11 5:51 PM
congrats
josé maria macedo 5/1/11 5:51 PM
Yeah
5/1/11 5:51 PM
Ty
Me: 5/1/11 5:51 PM
was it hu?
josé maria macedo 5/1/11 5:52 PM
Yeah
5/1/11 5:52 PM
Like 8 different people
5/1/11 5:52 PM
At 50 100 100 200 and some 25 50
5/1/11 5:52 PM
pretty sick
Me: 5/1/11 5:52 PM
lol oh, wow
5/1/11 5:52 PM
what were their usernames?
josé maria macedo 5/1/11 5:53 PM
Arnie numbers
5/1/11 5:53 PM
Ineverfodl
5/1/11 5:53 PM
Tyler smith
5/1/11 5:53 PM
Player numbers
5/1/11 5:53 PM
Samcouham
5/1/11 5:53 PM
Just anyone who sat
5/1/11 5:53 PM
Proplayer66
Me:5/1/11 5:54 PM
wow
5/1/11 5:54 PM
lol
5/1/11 5:54 PM
its funny to see u playing 200nl 6max one day, and then deciding to play 100/200 anotehr
josé maria macedo 5/1/11 5:54 PM
Bah yea
5/1/11 5:55 PM
I always wanted to play higher
5/1/11 5:55 PM
I sat with everyone
5/1/11 5:55 PM
but no one played
Me: 5/1/11 5:57 PM
musta been like a 120k day
josé maria macedo 5/1/11 5:58 PM
Yea 170 overall


Many times while I talked to him, we were playing at the same tables. Many times I told him how good the games were at 5/10, 10/20, etc. but he was always very content at only playing 1/2 a lot of the time. What I don't understand is why he would continuously play low stakes if he had the funds (and the talent) to play higher. What date exactly did the chip dump occur? And was it before/after his match with ineverfold? If the dump occured after his match with INEVERFOLD, it must mean he had enough money to play 50-100 on his own. It just doesnt make sense to me why he would pass up amazing 5-10 games if he had that kind of money. If he played after his chipdump, it makes more sense that he would have the funds to play, but he would be playing on your guys's money when you said no. Maybe i'm just not getting something here, can you clarify? Do people with enough money to play 50-100 spend their time rakeback grinding 1-2?

How about the other people that Jose claimed to have won money from? Do you have any idea how much they won/lost. All of this went down in a single day which makes it seem more likely that something nefarious was going on during this time.

DIH, You claim to still be "in negotiations" of some sort with Jose regarding paying back money, figuring out how to end your business arrangement. You say that this includes verifying his results.

If you and JM have any leverage with Jose, which it appears you still do, then you simply MUST have him reveal his screen names and db results to trusted independent reviewer(s) from 2+2 such as Noah, etc.

This would never have to be public knowledge, but this reviewer or reviewers could verify the truth of what you and Jose and JM have claimed regarding this scandal.

And finally, a live interview on top of this would put everything to rest fully, I believe. If you won't agree to both of these things, I would have serious doubts that your or JM's reputations will ever recover.

If you truly are the victim of Jose's horrible character, I would assume you have now spoken to his mother, his friends, his teachers, etc to spread the word of his actions. If so, can we see or hear about their responses?

I know if I got ripped off by someone as badly as you claim Jose has done to you and others, I would make certain to speak directly to every important person in his life to both share the story and ensure Jose be shamed by everyone that matters to him.

I am surprised not to have read transcripts of email responses from those close to him but would I be correct in assuming you have spoken directly to these people in his life since this situation came out to make sure they know what a scumbag he is?

I suggested to Daniel that he writes an apology because he did feel stupid and sorry about how he handled the whole thing. And he doesn't need Haseeb's help to write forum posts..

Haseeb,

Deanglow does have at least 1 valid point in his post, even if I'm not sure I agree with the rest of his it,

"He lied to you in order to win the challenge and yet you still vouched for him, staked him, and wanted to live with him."

Jose might not have outright lied, but it was a lie by omission. Jose ABSOLUTELY knew about the Lock Challenge, yet he let you dump him the chips anyway.

Most reasonable people would start paying a lot closer attention to their stakee after an episode like that.

You're right. But if you're insinuating that we are too smart not to have thought of that as a solution, I think the events of this entire scandal have shown (and I mean this slightly in cheek, but also in some seriousness) that in fact, no, we are not that smart.

He was playing 1/2 and such low stakes before the stake began and during the time that the stake was "enacted" but we hadn't gotten any money to him yet. He was playing higher before, I believe, but ended up losing most of the meager (<30k) roll that he had on Lock at that point, meaning he was already in makeup and didn't have much funds available to play with at all.

The whole thing about people with the money to take 50/100 action grinding 1/2 - I think it's clear that Jose was motivated by trying to win the challenge at that point (since the dump didn't actually put him into 1st place in the leaderboard). I don't know all of the details of what gone on or what claimed to, but at the time, if a stakee tells me he wants to play high stakes on his own action, I don't care. We knew he had money, and fully assumed that he could play 50/100 on his own money if he wanted to, but assumed he was too gun-shy and had lost too much confidence from downswinging and getting scammed by his uncle or whatever to do so.

He is still in Portugal. No idea.

It is amazing that you keep up with your arrogance towards the "plebs", even if they are the one who saw through your lies and caused your downfall.

One last thing. It would also make sense if an independent 2+2 "reviewer" such as Noah or Vanessa actually spoke with Jose and was able to verify some of your details about the story with him.

It's absolutely insane to me that nobody has spoken to him about this but DIH and JM, both of whom have a strong reason to lie about what Jose has or has not done.

I've been following this scandal pretty closely (tho I'm only reading posts by people I recognize/posts that get quoted by people i recognize) but I don't think I've seen an answer to this.

Why did the SamChauhan chipdump take 570 hands according to this screenshot:



Couldn't it have been done in <15 hands if the point was just to dump $100k for a stake? Even 4 tabling, 570 hands takes like 45 minutes. Sure seems like it was meant to look like a real HU match.