hyperbolic much?

It's also high stakes which people tend to watch more and there are no other popular streamers streaming poker atm. The whole Ben thing won't be relevant at all for Twitch viewership. Maybe it'll add 100 people and I think that's going ott.

i cant expect who is the next victim of dougs indiscretion. jason mercier, tom dwan, ben86, eli elezra etc are already roasted.

There is a lot of discussion if this should or should not have been kept private, and what should be done. Ultimately this boils down to a few important questions


1. Did Doug know beforehand that there was a chance Ben could no reciprocate due to his other agreement?

If Ben did not disclose this previously, it makes the situation a lot worse. Could be an honest mistake on his part by not properly understanding his partner but still makes the reneging on coaching a lot worse. Important if Doug understood there were risks at play.

If Doug did know there was a chance the partner would veto the coaching, he was at least aware of the risks at play but Ben still did not live up to his end of the deal. This happens in the real world all the time, this is a default and there are remedies. Obviously in the fly-by nature of the industry no one is drawing up a contract before hand with contingency plans should someone default, but remedies could still be agreed to after the fact which leads to the second question.

2. Was there even an effort by either side made to come to an agreeable resolution?

The most honorable scenario on Ben's behalf would have been to say, "Look, I have a previous agreement with my partner and made a mistake and can't actually coach, you gave me a lot of valuable coaching - is there another way I can make this a fair deal and I make you whole?" It's impossible to say at this point whether an agreement could have been reached but it would have been the right thing for Ben to do.

While I can't say with complete confidence, it appears Ben did not do anything of the sort. At this point, I think if Doug feels he was wronged he should have brought it up directly with Ben. Something along the lines of "I feel really slighted by the agreement we had, what do you think is a fair way to resolve this". This allows Ben an opportunity to hash it out with Doug if he wants to. If Doug did not do this because he thought Ben wouldn't respond and they weren't speaking, I don't think that is an excuse. I believe you have to give the guy an opportunity to make it right.

It also seems like the above did not happen. What my read on the situation was, at the time it was certainly a disappointment to Doug to not receive coaching in return but it wasn't a huge deal as evident by still maintaining a relationship with him and waiting 20 minutes in the arctic winds with him. What Doug ultimately did, whether consciously or subconsciously, was purposefully not give Ben a chance to rectify the situation so that Doug could use it as personal clout at a time when it is most convenient to him, and that day has finally come. I think everyone is aware how many of these type of controversies Doug has been in and I'm sure he has a "reason" for why he is involved in every single one but like the teenage girl in high school who says she "hates drama" but always ends up finding herself in the middle of it, at a certain point it isn't just a coincidence that your graph of participation in these kind of events would certainly make you #1 in the world in poker (drama).

The ultimate question is where do you go from here, my guess is neither side now has any interest in coming to any sort of agreement. Ben is probably having repressed flashbacks from inside a high school locker, and Doug is relishing in yet another drama fest that thrusts himself more firmly into the spotlight he relentlessly craves (as evident by needing to announce he is #1 at every chance he gets even amongst a few friends late night in his living room). I think any further discussion by either side is going to result in more relationships possibly being frayed or more private stories on both side that I know neither wants revealed....

I don't know how serious people are about dream machines. The thought that poker has secretly been solved and only top pros have access to the solution is kind of ridiculous.

Great, then I second this question:

I'm interested as well...

Why are so many people in the poker community scared to man up and post on their main accounts / put their name out there when replying / putting their opinion out on drama. We always get a bunch of no post count new accounts everytime a new drama comes around.

I third

lol at using this to try to get Doug to talk about tools or software, like come on

FYP!




Why is it ridiculous? Imagine you are incredibly good at math and incredibly good at coding or imagine you have a guy who is incredibly good at coding - voila, you have a "dream machine". If you are somewat smart now you'll not even tell your wife that you have this "program". Most people arent smart though and most people like to brag every now and then.

I'm convinced there are tons of guys even at smallstakes w "dream machines". You can call them that, you can call them bots, you can call them realtime GTO assistance software. It doesnt matter - it is the same thing (and that there are bots in different formats we already know). And if your program is particularly strong then it's only natural to play at teh highest stakes available w it

I think it is more likely someone has an ad hoc software specifically suited to their needs that helps tremendously but that isn't proposing a GTO solution since I've been led to believe that is beyond computing capabilities.

lol pricetag, this is helicopter Ben were talking about, guy who won tens of millions(hence insane bankroll) , one of the smartest pokerplayers on earth but fell behind on NLHE when he went PLO. In order to not give up time and money he finds the arguably best player on earth at nlhe HU when this went down and offer a trade of information. Mind you this was in 2013/14 or so when games were still huge and alive. He gets his insights, gets leaks plugged and whatnot, now he can opensit the biggest games in the world because hes ****ing ben with a infinite bankroll and great poker mind and doing it comfortably and take on anyone aside from maybe polk, jungle, and some other guy or two not that he couldnt before but he wasnt sure he would be +ev in that spot, now he is for sure +ev, he could probably have done the work himself but that would cost him alot of time from the PLO tables to do so, and in turn money. Now he can opensit and lobby-chase in both formats.

The amount of equity stolen here is massive and anyone who believes its under 6 figs are absolutely ******ed, and the equity LOST by polk is even bigger since PLO games are much more alive as of today even.

arbitrate. lol. This is a exclusive opportunity to the best guys in the world in their respective fields.



In order for Polks coaching to realize its true equity you have to have the right guy for it, mainly a great mind to begin with and a infinite roll. He could do the same to me and it would not make a difference, id still suck at poker.


basically how much you dislike polk or like ben, this still boils down to two things. Either Ben is a scammer(confirmed) OR he is a scamming raving psychopath.

gonna try to stay out of this but this post kind of tilted me.

this isn't true.

I lived with doug then, but towards the end of the year i went to asia to play games there so was not in town for the whole night in question so i didn't really get a grasp of the state of their relationship until later. I didn't know Ben that well but he was over for the NL coaching when I was around and we had some general strat discussions. Doug told me after that they had some issues and weren't working anymore and were not on good terms but I didn't think too much of it.

Some time later, I had a swap with Ben in something and Doug found out and asked me to cancel it. I told him i didn't want to because I thought it was a good spot and I didn't have a personal problem with Ben. We had a talk about it, long story short, the conversation i remember having with him maybe 2 years ago was close verbatim what was said in the 32 minute video i just wasted 32 mintutes of my life watching to confirm the same story i've heard multiple times since then, including how hurt doug was about the whole situation.

In my opinion Ben's def in the wrong on the buisness side (which is the most important) and the personal stuff is sort of irrelevent to the public, but Doug is not blowing up a non issue now that he more of a public figure and may gain from more publicity. I've never really seen Doug more upset about anything poker related, and there has been some real bad stuff thats happend to us over the years.

I wonder how much this thread has cost Ben in equity already. I mean it's not like any regs would sit him at PLO before this but now he's just going to be absolutely dead for action. Is there a person on earth who would sit him now? Probably not other than a random fish once a month for half a buyin on untracked euro site

There tends to be far too much gnashing of teeth about the 'O' in GTO. It doesn't have to be truly "optimal" to still be a massive edge in stomping lowly button-clicking opponents playing with only their clunky human brains. Chess hasn't been "solved" either -- humans do still occasionally beat the bots -- but even with my mediocre 1750 rating, I'll beat an advanced-but-not-optimal bot exactly 0 times out of 1 Million matches.

Take it easy man.

Dream (in the sense of real time GTO) machines, if they even exist, are useless unless you play hundreds of thousands of hands a month vs a multitude of different opponents.

Exploitative strategies will always work much better in the short term against a limited pool of opponents, such as the HS poker world for example.

So in short, if you are a good player you shouldn't worry too much about facing a "dream machine".

Based on what I see on the high stakes HH thread every month, it doesn't seem HS HUPLO volume is that vibrant anyway in general or am I wrong? People who have might have considered sitting him would have already had some kind of inkling, no?

totally agree with your post, was basically what i was trying to say in my post earlier.

i think helicopter ben is katya or forhayley or someone though. i was watching a rio vid where he was in it the other day and was trying to find out. don't think it's ben86 though, he was bttech on full tilt. i used to think it was ben tollerene myself.

A rare level of narcissism by Doug to utilize his position of power to force other people (yourself) from profiting through their own deals because of Doug's personal vendetta.

Sure I agree but it does end up making a difference in principle if not in reality: you have a software that helps formulate opinions and beliefs about how to play a hand, it is not 100% the perfect play being given to you. It is an extension of your way of playing which should still be banned. To take your chess analogies I feel it's more similar to a situation where players would be allowed to bring home opening prep (heavily computer assisted) with them to tournaments or do you think it's much worse than that (I mean it is since you can memorise lots of home prep in chess in a way you wouldn't for a computer made poker strategy but yeah)?

Or a friend asking a friend not to do business dealings with someone who ripped him off / treated him like ****?

If you committed a crime 4 years ago and was told upon by somebody, do you think you would be let off for the crime you committed?

NVG loves the drama. I predict Iron Man numbers for this thread.

You don't have to be super connected to the high stakes to know that Ben86 most likely had custom software. In his interview with Joey Ingram he revealed he works with Alix Martin.

Go and look up what Martin has done publicly and it is pretty clear why a top PLO player would want to have something to do with a mid stakes PLO guy, but in his bio states he is a specialist in Game Theory and has expertise in computer programming. Hint, he was working with software tools for Game Theory problems 5+ years ago.

A warning against getting scammed is one thing. Leveraging your friendship to block someone from making money because the guy said some mean things to you during a drunken night is another. Based on the details out I don't think Ben was intent on scamming, but the optics are definitely bad. I'd warn a friend from dealing with someone but I'm not going to dictate how to live their lives based off my own personal dealings.

its ok i forgive him doug made me rich and play pokr smrt and gud