Hello twoplustwo,

I have been a professional poker player for 3 years, playing online and a little bit of live here and there. I keep a PG&C called "Grinding Past the Fries" which has had thousands of replies and hundreds of thousands of views. I have sold action for live and online tournaments many times in there. I have been staked once by a friend for online, and once by a large stable. I have made them both aware of this thread and I'm sure they will be able to confirm that I have a 100% squeaky clean reputation, and have never done anything remotely untrustworthy in my years as a professional.

In January 2017 I ended a deal with the above stable. We had a slight disagreement about something, and we agreed to go our seperate ways. I ended the deal in approximately $3,500 of makeup, and paid it back over three weeks or so after we split. Our relationship is still very healthy, and I regularly talk with the guys that run the stable. Around that time I also moved to London. I spoke to my then good friend, Remco (o_0remco), about staking me for live 1/2. He is a successful 500z reg and has strong live results. I met Remco in the Dominican Republic in November 2015. We spent a month together in Las Vegas in 2016 for the World Series of Poker. He bought action in at least one of my tournaments. We have both paid for a room in a house for June 2017 in Las Vegas.

Remco agreed to stake me for live poker in London. We didn't draw up a contract, it was an agreement between friends. At the start of the agreement I told him that if he wanted to end the live stake at any time I would happily switch to online to recover any makeup. Within the first week of the stake I won approximately £800. We chopped, and I sent him his %. The deal was 70/30 in my favour, and he gave me an extra 5% on one of the chops because it was my birthday. After we chopped I started to lose, and I needed Remco to send me more money. He sent me more money, and I continued to lose. Around the 15th March the total stake was £2,200, and I had £220 left. I asked him to send more money. He said he would do so in a few days. I asked him consistently for more money for approximately 3 weeks, to which he always said he would send soon. On 1st April he said he wasn't sending more money, we argued ever so slightly about it, and he then told me he was just making a bad April Fools joke. I continued to ask him for more money.

On 10th April I sent him another message asking for more money. I'm not sure if it is all that relevant but I know that Remco was going through a really sick downswing online at this point. He said that he had "done some calculations", and that the rake was too high. I replied with "so we just wait until Vegas?" He advised that I was doing well online and therefore he wanted me to pay him back. I amicably explained that staking doesn't work like that, and that I wasn't going to just pay him back out of my own pocket. I encouraged him to send me more money for live poker and offered to put in a lot of hours to recover all the money and get us back to even. He advised that it would take too long to grind it back at 1/2, and that he had lost 14k staking people, and was stressed, and wanted his money back. I told him that I wasn't prepared to pay him back out of my own pocket, and that staking doesn't work like that. We went back and forth for a little while, but I ended the conversation by saying I didn't have anything to say, and that I wasn't prepared to pay him back out of my own pocket. Please note that Remco believes that by giving him the option to switch the stake from live to online I was allowing him to end the deal and ask for the money to be repaid. I did not and would never agree to that (obviously).

We spoke again on 19th April. He messaged me asking if there was a solution yet. I was firm in my stance (whilst trying to remain amicable) that I wouldn't be paying him back out of my own pocket. At this point he claimed that this was not a stake but in fact a loan. We had chopped and I advised him it was in no way a loan. He then became confrontational, saying that he would start acting like a dick. He called me a few names (I'm a 27 year old man, I am not bothered about that), and said...

"Oke i will see you in Vegas then"
"But one thing what i know, i will get the money back"
"I always sound nice, i always act nice. But if people act like this and try to rob me they have the wrong person in fromt of them."

I think it's fairly obvious that this was an attempt at intimidation. I did not back down, and continued to state that I would not pay him back out of my own pocket, as staking doesn't work like that.

All of the above doesn't concern me. I have been staked more than enough times in the past to know that I am not in the wrong. I offered to grind out of makeup either live or online, and Remco insisted that I pay him out of my own pocket. The reason I have detailed everything above is that Remco has contacted somebody out of the blue to tell them this story. Without going into detail, this person is in a position of power in my poker career. I spoke to the person in question and he advised that Remco left out "75%" of the details, and asked him not to tell me Remco had spoken to him. It is clear to me that Remco is now trying to tarnish my reputation, as it makes absolutely no sense for him to contact this person. As somebody who sells action for live tournaments, posts in the HS transfer thread etc, my reputation is very important to me. I believe that by making this whole sorry affair public he can no longer contact important people within the community and pick and choose what parts of the story he tells them.

Remco has tried to freeroll me, he has called me a thief, tried to physically intimidate me, and attempted to tarnish my reputation by messaging people who are important to my poker career that he doesn't even know. By reluctantly making this public I believe I take that power away from him.

I absolutely despise confrontation, and this whole debacle is thoroughly embarrassing, but it's gotta be done.

Edit - I have given Remco notice that I intended to make this public. A courtesy he unfortunately did not extend to me.

gl, some ppl just can't handle losing money i guess

Mistake!

I'd agree with the view that if he ends the stake when you are in losing - he eats the loss.

But then you gave him the option to switch it to online, so he has a good argument that you should grind online with his money to gradually pay him back. This makes no sense though as you are adequately self-rolled for online (?), you should never have made that an option in the first place.

This is why I avoid any form of staking.

LOL remco way to go.

Good move posting about this like this gazzy, you are obviously right and ppl like him who neither understand how staking works nor can't handle losing really shouldn't be involded in staking anybody

I feel like it's important to say for full transparency that the wording of one of my messages when agreeing terms is ambiguous...

"Also, if you want to stop the stake you just tell me and I'll grind any losses back online "

...this can of course be open to interpretation, but as deathglory says we really should have had a contract to fully clarify these details.

Sorry for not including that in the OP.

Edit - also, deathglory, the reason I offered to switch stake to online was so as to recover any losses and not leave a friend hanging with me in makeup.

I never said it was a loan, i never had any intention to freeroll.
While we were discuss the situation he started to ignore me via text and phone.
So because of that i wanted to hear a opinion from someone who was in the middle and not someone who was at the side or Gary or me. I also said, i want to fix the problem with him and see how it goess.

My 1 month downswing has totally nothing to deal with this case. I was up in March 12k and ended down 9k.

The problem started with the deal what Gary offered me.
Gary said: ''also, if you want to stop the stake you just tell me and i grind any losses back online''

Today he started talking with me and some other dude(house mate of Gary) that i did try to make Gary a bad person to share this, what i clearley didn't want , only a solution and a opinion who was right in the deal.
I told the story to a guy who was in the middle , and a poker friend. What i said earlier to Gary i wanted to fix it between the both of us. But Gary did decline to search for a solution.

Gary ended today again with: I have nothing else to say.
me: like i said , we need to find a solution. There is no solution yet, so still a lot to talk about.
Gary: there is no solution.
Me: this is what i mean
Gary: I offered to recover. You tried to freefoll me. GG


I had a while back the exact same situation with the old staker or Gary and just payed back out of my own pocket.

Imo.

- Gazzy doesn't owe anything obviously as this is not how staking works. By asking him to just pay up you're essentially creating a stake where Gazzy was just playing on his own roll but giving you 30% of the profits for no reason.

- Remco should still have the option to stake Gazzy live, or online at Gazzy's usual stakes until the makeup is cleared, but does so taking the risk of further makeup.

I typed a long response but in the end deleted it so i'll just say this instead.

I am the friend who staked gary for online a while ago. Whilst the arrangement wasn't particularly profitable for either parties since an insane downswing was involved, it did show his integrity.

I barely knew the guy at the time, but after sending him more and more float amounting to sums higher than that stated in this instance, eventually things turned around and he got out of it and sent all the money back + profit.

He could have easily just ****ed me over considering he wasn't very well known on 2p2/poker at the time, plus it was for an amount larger than in this instance, PLUS he was WAY less financially stable than he is now Gazzybusto2014 ---- > Gazzyballer2017 but he didn't and that shows integrity imo!

Doesn't owe anything other than all future online profits upto the amount. Lol

Gaz you were far too kind with the loose "terms of the stake" and basically set yourself up to be freerolled like this.

Not questioning Gazzys integrity at all btw, I'd infact question remco accepting such an insanely favourable deal.

As a long time backer for cash games and having been involved in staking partnerships with many players over the years ( Gazzy included ) I can say that this definitely is not how staking works.

All interactions with Gaz over the years have been professional and we never had any issues or challenges that couldn't be overcome. He's a stand up guy and I have nothing but respect for him.

( He didn't ask me to post in here at all fwiw )

This next part is likely common info for most readers here , but if not then I just want to note a few things so maybe someone can learn for future reference if ever going down this road.

Im not sure if the challenge here is just not understanding how staking works or a communication issue , but as a backer , if you don't reload a player ... and the player hasn't violated the contract in any way ( you really need to have contract if backing players ) ... then that would be writing off make up.

It sucks, but it's part of the deal.

Not all stakes win ... thats the nature of the beast.

From the sounds of this , there was also an offer to continue the stake in another fashion by moving to online , but it sounds like that offer was declined and the backer in this situation just wanted his money back.

It doesn't work that way when staking someone.

If the stake is continuing, obviously the backer needs to reload and the player resumes play under same or new agreement ( if that was able to be negotiated ) with conditions laid out etc.

If some type of settlement agreement had been reached where a player agreed to pay back make up for any number of reasons, while going on his own , then sure , the player would play with their own funds and honor the agreement set in place.

Players cannot be expected to play with their own funds and pay back a stake/make up when they were not given a reload and when they have not committed any offence/violation while being staked and where no agreement has been reached in regards to this.

If a player had jumped into higher limits , stole money , had a night out on stake funds etc etc , different story ... but it doesn't sound like any of that happened here.

No reload by backer and not accepting an offer from player to work off make up online ( which ofc would need to be agreed upon ) means end of stake by backer ... unless Im missing something , seems pretty cut and dried... Gazzy doesn't owe anything.

My 2 cents

Cheers,
C.

You were doing better before you even posted lol. Now every body agree you lose, stake is over because you ended it

Why? it's quite clear that the stake wouldn't end if remco asked to stop the live part.

I would like to side with gazzy on this but actually I don't. This is the most important part of the agreement despite its vagueness.

This agreement is clearly ridiculous and remco you're a scumbag if you did allude to threatening him, you are equally if not more to blame for this.

I honestly think you 2 should agree on some token amount for the fact that you both messed this up. I know some people won't agree with me but they'd be wrong. You can't compare this to how other stakes works since there is clearly an abnormal clause in this stake which both parties have agreed to. And by token i mean token 10% - 20% kind of thing and go back to being able to share the house in vegas.

Well you sound like a very important person. Thank you for helping us poor slowfolks along you can go away now we'll clean up from here

How did Gazzy mess this up in any way? He was staked and lost money and his staker refused to reload. He was generous enough to offer to grind it back online - clearly on stake and not with his own funds.

His staker on the other hand refused to send reloads, tried to get Gazzy to repay out of pocket by threatening him. Yet by far the most divisive action of the staker is contacting the guy who he knew is a very important part to Gazzy's continued success in poker, pathetically under the guise of "getting advice", in order to strong arm him. Very scummy behaviour.

exactly all this

gazzy has done nothing wrong here

pretty cut and dry
backer should have just sent more monies to continue stake.
since he hasnt now no mu owed sorry but backer is s.o.l.

gl in vegas

Ponty is saying that the way that Gazzy worded the "Also, if you want to stop the stake you just tell me and I'll grind any losses back online" is ambiguous. While it's clear to us that what he meant to say was that he'd grind back the money with STAKER funds, he did not say this, and thus left the door open for remco to interpret and push the interpretation that Gazzy was basically giving him bit of a freeroll.

With that out of the way, if these two are/were friends, remco is super scummy for trying to push this interpretation, and he should just eat the losses because it's obvious what gazzy meant. He's better off just trying to remain friends with gazzy and have gazzy throw him a bone at a later time because very few people are going to side with remco here imo.

I wasn't just "an offer" it was an agreed to clause of the stake. The backer pulling funds for the live play doesn't end this stake (according to the terms they both agreed).

Don't misunderstand my previous post, I like gazzy a lot (no idea who this other guy is but he comes across a bit of a dick) but at the same time there is an agreement in place which everyone else seems to be completely ignoring. I don't even think it's that ambiguous but it is of course terrible and should never have been in there/phrased like this.

I don't think gazzy should pay the entire debt (not even close) but nor do i think he should just walk away here. I think a fair offer would be to agree pay 10-20% of the debt (arbitrary figure pulled from my arse) or allow remco to continue to stake him live or at 500z. Seeing how the latter will not happen i think the former is the best way to go.

If gaz pays nothing or gaz pays full then one of them gets to freeroll the other.

unless backer sends money stake is over.
since no contract was done then the 2 parties involved should talk about the level of stakes that will be played online and how much the backer will send to cover the online play.
imo this is the only grey area of the stake.
the backer trying to heavy the backee is a dirty move and seemed desperate attempt to freeroll here.
i believe the downswing has a lot to do with the situation.

Absolutely agree with this, however Honestly, the way i read the clause first time, i also assumed there would be no sending of money for online play. 2 reasons, 1 gazzy was always rolled online and secondly it wasn't stipulated.

There's also one other issue that i'm struggling to get my head around. If you are going to want to end a stake with someone for live, there seems little way that you would suddenly want to start staking them for higher games online (remembering that this was only 1/2 live), that doesn't seem to make sense to me and is probably the only reason I give any credence to Remco's claim.

Like i said before, playing on stake again in this situation seems ridiculous. Is remco expected to stake him for higher online? is he expected to stake him for 200nl online (where gazzy currently plays/is already rolled for). Is gazzy expected to play 200nl and give away everything to pay off stake?

There is no way that gazzy should be forced to give up profits from his current stake but also seems "meh" that a backer would have to now back him for 500nl online when the stake was originally for 200nl live. I don't see a scenario this ever works and the lapse wording of the contract is on both of them. I still think a token buy out is the only way this gets resolved reasonably.

I dunno, to me it's all very ****in clear that Remco should be allowed to back Gazzy online to play NL200 (even though he doesn't need it) since Gazzy did offer that, or keep staking him at NL200 live. If Remco does not want to send any more money then he obviously forfeits any kind of make up.

No idea why anybody's talking about backing him for 500z

Hey everyone,

First of all, thanks a lot for all the feedback; regardless of with whom you side, it's all been very constructive, and I appreciate that. Also thanks a lot for those that have messaged me privately, again I appreciate that.

Just wanted to clarify a couple of things. First of all this all went sour on 10th April when Remco said he wasn't willing to send any more money, and he wanted me to directly send him back the entire stake out of my own pocket. I wish I had stressed a lot more in the OP that from that day up until he started making physical threats I was constantly telling him to send me more money so I could resume the live grind and recover the money, and that this was the only way we would rostucko (coz obviously I wasn't gonna send him 2k out of my own pocket). I feel like that might not have been picked up by people. The stake ended because Remco refused to send more money, and asked me to send him the full amount. I asked and asked for more money, but he was adamant he wasn't sending more and that I should repay him.

Secondly, I fully agree with someone above who said this was a mistake to begin a stake without a contract; this was extremely naive on both mine and Remco's part, and lesson learned I'm sure for both of us. I did of course say to Remco at the start that if he wanted to stop staking me for live, we could switch the stake to online at his request. Some people are questioning why I would be open to this as I am adequately rolled for online, and the reason was simply so that if Remco wanted to recover any makeup this would be the quickest option. He was one of my best poker friends (between me busting the stake and this all coming out we went on a non-poker trip to Prague, just the two of us), and I didn't want to be stuck in makeup if he was looking to end the deal.

Finally, a lot of people have said that the best solution is for Remco to stake me for either live or online and to recover the makeup. As above, I cannot stress how much I tried to get him to send me more money for live poker to continue the grind. Up until a few days ago I would've more than happily done this, but given him physically threatening to "see me in Vegas" and "get his money back one way or another", calling me a thief, demanding I ship him the money back, and sandbagging me by adding someone on Skype out of the ****ing blue to "get an opinion", there's no way I'll be investing any of my time to get him back to even, live or online. I tried for WEEKS to get him to send more money, he refused, tried to freeroll me, threatened me, and slandered me behind my back. As far as I'm concerned the stake is over.

Edit - as Fayth says, I never have been a 500z reg. When we started the live stake I was a 100z reg, and am now a 200z reg. Whilst we didn't discuss specific terms for switching the stake to online, it would have been for whatever stake I was playing at the time I'm sure.

Well I don't think it works like that, you guys got into a fight over the matter and we get that but you can't just end the deal because you're mad at him.

It's never too late to fix things and I'm sure you guys can work it out like grown men, I believe in you.

###
without taking any side on this, the accusation getting freerolled by remco now kind of becomes a freeroll for Gary, when he refuses to not grind online.

im sorry but once you are being threatened, the stake is over.
and so is the friendship.
remko went to far, and for him this will be a lesson learned.
not only he lose a backee....he lost a friend.

if gazzy did anything wrong here it would be a different story, but he did not.

let this be a lesson for all backers......set aside an amount that you are comfortable to stake with, and not an amount that has a portion of yur own br..... when you downswing this is what happens, you no longer have the funds to stake.

gazzy good luck in the future

he refused to gring online because backer would not send him money to play.

yall really need to read the whole thread to get the facts straight.

gazzy said he would grind online for him for the stake so that remko can recoup mu.