Stinger is one of the few to have lived the dream. Respect to him. Seems like a legit intelligent dude who played his cards right. If it weren't something it'd just be people complaining that he ran better than them. Jealousy in poker is gross. Everyone is entitled to be the best if they had the money or didn't get sucked out on, run under be etc. People knew they were playing him. He fairly hustled isildur.

lol how does hastings play the victim when he stole 4+ million on multiple occasions(who even knows how much he cheated - he was only caught those times), in most cases you would be in jail yet some ppl feel bad for him because his feelings were hurt

gl scamming ppl in the tea business, probably some pyramid scheme

He got paid haters go slayed that's why they make bedwetting posts on 2+2.

i'd forgive most of his questionable behavior

don't see how anyone could give him an ounce of respect, tho

When you were scamming him, did you have any intention of donating any of the money to charity?

Ppl retiring from poker is like Pornstars leaving for regular work, the damage is done already sadly. Then you get sucked back in and the rest of your soul is drained out until your all washed up and used out.

Posts like this are a big reason these discussions turn to ****. The top part isn't an opinion, just blatantly false. Kinda like the fake news. Should be cleaned up by mods imo.

Was it ever proven that Hastings, Townsend and Cole DIDN'T collude during the actual match-up?

I know, I know, it's hard to disprove a negative or whatever the case might be, but knowing that you're discussing hand histories which shouldn't have been available as per T&C's, and plotting Isildur's downfall in the process, it doesn't take a huge stretch to imagine the 3 working together during the match itself.

Of course if the other 2 were, for example, playing live or muti-tabling nosebleeds themselves during Hastings v Isildur, it would effectively disprove the theory of collusion.

Whatever, personally I dislike all these 'rule-breakers' who argue 'everyone is doing it' and this justifies it in their own (and many others by the sound of it on here) minds.

I was there. There was zero communication going on between those guys. The hand history stuff is laughable as well. Their "analysis" of HH's was basically like, wow, this guy is actually as bad as we thought. For a week or so, everyone in the high stakes community was thinking that he was bad but the game (PLO) was in its infancy. He ran so well for the first week or so that there was a possibility that maybe he was some mad genius that had the game solved and thought about it differently than the rest of the player pool.

Uhmmm, nope. Variance is just crazier in PLO than anyone understood. I would bet that around those matches no one in the high stakes world had any idea how many hands constituted a significant sample size to determine winrate in PLO. People thought they were the best for winning big over like 50k hands. lol.

You realize that the CR guys each wanted his money for themselves right? If I remember right, cole and aba were stuck to isildur. While they're friends with Stinger, I'm sure they were both disappointed that they didn't win all the monies.

It was just a matter of time that he went off for a number like that. Hastings got lucky that it was him but any number of guys were that much better than isildur at PLO. Obviously, thats why he got that much action. Fanboys ITT don't have a clue at how bad he was at that game. In fact, around that time, I would argue that everyone playing high stakes PLO was probably terrible by todays standards and yet had a significant edge on blom.

We were all studying for midterms or finals. Everyone that had the roll was waiting online all day hoping that isildur would sit them. One minute stinger was studying for a test in his room, the next minute blom sits him. 4 hours later he had the money.

I remember we went out for beers after and it was incredibly surreal.

TL;DR I'm biased. IMO the isildur thing was blown way out of proportion. Most of you give high stakes players too much credit. 99% of winning like that is right place, right time. PLO was the wild west back then, nobody had a clue.

Good for him. I've retired from following him on twitter, and I must say, it's even more awesome than I ever could have expected.

I remember being on 2+2 around that time and the consensus was Hastings got outplayed but ran like the sun and was hitting draws left and right. Your post makes it sound like he outplayed Viktor Blom which just isn't true.

Just because someone runs well doesn't mean he can't outplay the other guy. You come off as some butthurt Isi fanboi so I'll just take that post as such.

You guys do realize hundreds of respected players are VPNing from the States, right?

Not sure Hastings deserves being dragged through the mud this much.

It's much worse if you're at the same time multiaccounting with the account of a known whale. It was no accident/coincidence that he decided to use that account. He would get action at high stakes much easier with that account, and with an unfair advantage to boot. The people that brush this off as not a big deal are at best ignorant.

Does Stanger77 "owe you money?"

Nope. I like to think about moral philosophy a lot and I also like poker, so when poker talk wanders into morality territory I like to comment and usually have a strong, well-thought out opinion. I could go on in a much more detailed way why I think stinger is way worse than a lot of people here give him credit for, but I don't want to flood the thread with my opinions.

If you look at my post history you'll find I comment every time morality and poker mix; stinger, nolan dalla, durrr, angleshooting, etc.

You must make a good poker player, stop being consistent will you?

You like to stroke your own ego then. Not saying Stinger wasn't out of line, but plenty of worse things going on in the world to get worked up about.

i only had to deal once in my life with hastings and my impression was that hes a disgusting person. i would really like to post details, but i was so disgusted by his person that i deleted him from skype right after.

basically he offered to pay isildur some money for multiaccounting him with the eireabu/abacliath (or whatever it was). then during our convo, at some point he started telling that isildur surely multiaccounted friends of him in the past, but he couldnt show me his proof for that.
he just didnt want to pay anything and then him and his friend started accusing me multiaccounting myself over isils account and what not.

hastings statement i remember best from that convo is that he really tried to tell isil hes playing on those accounts, but he didnt know how to reach through to isil. they played such an absurd volume for few weeks at that time. what you have to understand is that basically every single HS player i know has isil on skype. if thats not the lamest excuse for MA, what is it?

I base my arguments on logic, not what inflates my ego. And I'm only commenting about hastings instead of other more serious issues because that's what people are interested in talking about on nvg right now. Also the most serious moral questions have nothing to do with poker, so if my only concern was focussing on the most serious moral issues I wouldn't be on a poker forum.

I don't blame you for thinking I have a big ego based on my last post though, but not sure how else to word it.

Well said.

The guy is obviously a thief in the poker world.

It probably took under 5 minutes for the players in those games to realize that they weren't playing against a mega rich fun player. If Doug Polk got on Bill Perkins account and sat at 200/400 right now, a game would start instantly, but everyone in that game would realize almost immediately that they weren't actually playing against Perkins. No one playing in those games thought NoelHayes was a random rich guy amateur.

It would have been much worse if Hastings jumped on the account a known slightly-losing regular.

LMAO at deciding on how bad different levels of cheating are.

It is all cheating, don't you get that?

Do you realise that some people don't even think about cheating with regards to the rules?

Those of you that think it is OK to disregard the rules are just cheating the game for those who play it straight.

**** you all who do that - there is no excuse.

First line of the post was I was responding to: