The fact that this guy is a scumbag doesn't reflect anything about poker. There's scummy people in all areas of life and there's people who appear reputable who end up being capable of stuff like this in all areas of life.

Reading his explanation it seems like even though he was good but variance of a summer at the WSOP clearly emptied his roll and thus he decided this was a good way to come home with something.

TPE should review his status as a coach as well, how can you be a coach if you have no integrity anymore, the community overall should shun people who did things like this as anything else condones it and no matter if this is the first time and he is a great guy etc, when push comes to shove he cannot be trusted and resorts to cheating, lying and stealing.

Played under aged did we?

Nothing wrong with a guy stealing from female online players is there?

You don't get "disoriented" in Vegas without some chemical assistance btw.

Also lol at getting ****ty the night before a 5k.

to be fair, most of the players in the venetian 5k were playing like they sold 130% of themselves

Is he not going to face criminal charges? Examples were cited including how, if robbers try to rob a bank and get caught, they don't just have to pay the money back. Paying back the money he owes only refunds the financials, but in no way compensates investors for the expected loss they would suffer if this wasn't caught. As has been mentioned, there's no way to quantify what that would have been without taking it to a judge. It's attempted theft/scamming. I'm no lawyer, but he must have broken the law somewhere along the line here?

I'm going to swim against the tide here and write a post in support of Ben. (Please actually read and consider my thoughts before flaming).

Some facts first.
1. I don't know and have never interacted w Ben. The only party here that I know in any sense is fakelogic who bought and sold some action from/to me this summer.
2. I have been an investor in quite a few packages on and offline as well as backed players in other ways.

As I see it, Ben made a bad mistake, fairly quickly admitted it (after he got caught of course), and is making investors whole.

The question that jumps out at me is "Is it possible to have scammed and not be a scammer?" Prior to today I probably would've answered no. But based on what we know about this situation (the facts stated ITT seem to be widely agreed upon), I would now answer "probably".

Ben--had he wanted to--had the opportunity to REALLY scam the community. He could've sold a big package at low MU and ran off into the sunset among other highly lucrative (and amoral) options. But he didn't. He appears to have played a summer of events with nothing going awry. So either Ben is the worst scammer in the world, or his actions were not premeditated.

While he clearly scammed, it seems pretty clear that the logic of the scam was "****, I've sold action to this event so I better play it but I don't have the money on me to play, so I'll sell more action until I have the 5k. But once you tell the 1st lie, the rest become to easy and you're quickly sliding down a slippery slope. This is not to excuse Ben in any way. He made a huge mistake and should face consequences. But besides the phantom bullets (which is really just straight stealing) the overselling was likely done w/o malicious intent.

Now most folks, if they oversold an event and then lied to some investors about phantom rebuys, when caught would double down on their lies or slink away into the dark. Few ppl have the heart to admit that they make mistakes, especially when they're as damning and serious as the ones Ben made. But he's been open and honest about the events despite knowing that his honesty would earn him virtually no credit w most 2p2ers.

Even fewer people would have had the means and desire to refund investors. Presuming he continues to do so (every indication is that he will) this experience oddly makes me trust Ben more than a random marketplace seller. He's scammed once (poorly for a small amount of $ when he's had many opportunities to scam for much more previously) and he's making things right. I also believe he's chastened and is highly unlikely to make a similar mistake ever again.

Ben, I applaud you for taking responsibility in this difficult and embarrassing situation like a man of integrity and wish you luck going forward.

Everyone else here may think I'm naive, but if you have trouble selling in the future, pm me. Bank of mixgameaddict is open for you.

(Don't get too excited. I'm a MU nit).

How can all these people be "respected by the community and their peers" when they, after 10 years of grinding, don't even have enough money to their names to play in their bread n butter games.


How can someone so heavily relied upon staking to the point that he can't afford to go to his day job without it, be respected in a community?

I agree it's clear it wasn't premeditated from the outset but he clearly had many opportunities to stop what he was doing. I don't think this auto makes him a terrible person for the rest of his life. Everyone makes mistakes to varying degrees and hopefully he learns a lot from the situation he has put himself in. You are right that he has handled this almost as well as he possibly could have from the moment he was caught. He made a couple dumb excuses in his post seemingly implying too much time spent in vegas was the fault, but other than that assuming he continues paying back all involved and it doesn't turn out he's done this before then that's about the best he can do from the point of being caught. I definitely don't agree with your views about his trustworthiness for selling action going forward but I guess that's your choice to make (although he shouldn't be allowed to sell through 2p2 imo). This guy had wayyyyyyy more reasons to not do something like this than most people (coach at a training site/many friends in the community/many connections to sell action/etc) and he still ended up scamming. He also chose to scam two of his close friends which I would assume he thought deeper about and still chose to do it than if they were 2p2 marketplace randoms. I think if he's capable of 'snapping' and doing something like this once than clearly he could do it again in a similar spot.

I think many/most marketplace grinders basically make a living through MU (ie they're close to breakeven w/o MU), but that doesn't mean that everyone who sells action should be presumed to be bad. In fact, almost all of the tourney players I respect the most sell a decent amount of their action. It's sensible when you understand the variance of mtts.

I have a BR such that I could play every Wsop event under 10k every summer on my own money and not bat an eye, but yet I only play 10-15k buyins and sell some pieces to boot. What does that tell you (other than I'm a life nit)? Not much.

Yeah I agree selling pieces makes sense regardless of bankroll, it's all about comfort and yeah as you say markup. But what I am targetting in my post, with unsuccessful wording , is that it's scary how many people can't even afford their own action even for one stop, yet continue to play with their knifes to their throats and boasting about previous results in order to sell out. And, unsurprisingly, these are of course the guys that end up scamming in the end when there is no other way out.


Sorry for miswording myself in the original post, I'm absolutely not implying that everyone who sells action is "bad".

Tyman,

I've studied a lot of psychology and strongly believe that while people have a stable moral compass most of the time, it doesn't take much to jolt that compass out of its frame leading to short term bouts of erratic amoral behavior. (As a tangent, it also doesn't take much to get other people's compasses to point in the wrong direction.)

The important thing is not what happens in those extraordinary circumstances (all the mmqbs here undoubtedly believe they would never act like Ben ... but research says they're wrong), but what happens when the the unusual circumstances end and life returns to normal. Does the offender admit his mistakes and accept the consequences? Or does he dig deeper or run away out of embarrassment. I think coming clean and making restitution is a far stronger statement of character than the original scamming since the former is far rarer than the latter.

I agree. I think everyone would be better off if these wannabes all just moved on to do something useful with their lives (as they likely eventually will ... Making lattes at Starbucks is useful, right?). Unfortunately there are always more dreamers waiting in line to fill the spots of those who leave ...

It's not like he was even in some difficult/new situation though. The guy travels around and plays lots of live tournaments. If he really believes that being in vegas too long just sent him spinning out of control one night than he clearly just can't handle this life and should find something else to do. Idk how you think this is unlikely to happen again when he "spun out of control" with basically nothing out of the ordinary happening.

Running really bad at table games is not "nothing out of the ordinary". I've never been in the abyss myself but I've been close and it's truly a mindfu*k. I know 3 different ppl who've lost basically their life rolls over extended sessions at the bj and craps tables. Once you lose more than you thought possible, most ppl stop acting rationally/normally.

I get that. I don't think I worded it well enough, but I'm saying that this isn't anywhere near his first time around that environment and if he continues playing poker it will continue to be around. So my point is that if it's possible for him to snap once then it is very possible for it to happen again. So I don't see how that seems like a good guy to invest in even with him paying back the funds he stole (which tbh I'm still confused about because if he has money to pay back immediately then why was he stealing if it was just to cover the buy of the tourney he no longer had the money to buy in to play?)

sad to see but not a total loss like 99% of these threads

You missed the part where he did have enough action but gambled it away. Then you later say 'he could have scammed more, but didn't, so he's ok' (not a direct quote), which is incredibly naive.
And these people shouldn't sell action, it's not ****ing rocket science.

Idk, the claim that "I didn't play the tournament any differently despite selling 130%" is incredibly insulting to 2+2's intelligence. Does he think we all have a combined double digit IQ?

Can't see why people are stepping up to defend this guy - overselling is one of the worst things you can possibly do. He's straight up stealing from not only investors but his friends who he had swaps with (some of whom are damn good at the game, i might add). With the connections he had, the fact that he went the scamming route is even more damning and anyone who deals with him again after this is a complete dolt.

‏@AlbinoTraveler 7h7 hours ago

@TournPokerEdge as a member of your website, I'm curious if you will be making a statement regarding Kidcardiff and his relationship w/ TPE?

TournamentPokerEdge ‏@TournPokerEdge 5h5 hours ago

@AlbinoTraveler We were as shocked as anyone to hear this happened, and we do not intend to release any videos from him in the future.

The way I see it, the problem with defending or praising Ben on any level in the grand scheme of things is that even if he isn't an official scammer for life, someone else who actually is and chooses to commit the same crime could take advantage of that leniency/forgiveness.

So yes, most rational people would agree in a vacuum Ben might not be true scum and could be given a second chance (by people who have a reason to). But that doesn't
really need to be emphasized (if said at all) given the context of this industry/issue. It just weakens overall security adopting that mentality in any regularity. This is and correctly should be a one and done thing by default.

fakelogic--

I'm sure you understand this, so this isn't really addressed to you, but: as marketplace regulars have often rightly emphasized, it's important to distinguish between people who steal and make it right later and those who steal and don't make it right later. Whatever we might think of people who steal even once, making this sort of distinction puts helpful incentives in place--there will be people who steal, and it's good that they know that (relatively) good things will happen to them if they make it right.

So, in that sense, noting that Ben could some day get some sort of second chance, or at least could walk into the Rio and participate in things (even if he will have a hard time selling action), actually strengthens overall security.

Of course it's tricky to balance the need not to forgive too easily and the need to incentivize scammers to make amends, and errors can be made in either direction.

Sorry that you had to deal with this firsthand, and good luck dealing with the situation (if there's more for you to deal with).

All my best,

--Nate

While I can see this logic to some degree, where I still slightly differ is how this position weighs and values the motivations involved and in what context they are presented in.

In my view, most people who are capable of committing these acts inherently believe they will get second chances or have a twisted, optimistic outlook (or addiction if choose to call it that) regarding their future, as opposed to them thinking this is truly their "last resort". As we should all be very familiar with in the poker world, it takes a dose of cognitive dissonance and shifting rationalization to do this in the first place, and I don't see how that easily goes away simply because they were discovered or even made reparations.

And on the flipside (though to a lesser degree), individual investors (gamblers, some may say) also naturally carry some level of misguided/overconfident optimism that would make them lean toward jumping back in despite the added risks.

So basically, while I agree that we are unfortunately very limited in our options to motivating poker scammers to "make whole", and this tactic of "forgiveness" is definitely one of them (albeit on a case-by-case basis), I argue that it doesn't help for the overall marketplace security to downplay the act in the PUBLIC forum, since both sides are already predisposed to do that on their own privately.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, to put it another way, IMHO I don't think that most morally compromised people in society outside of poker are motivated to not commit further crimes or make reparations to their victims because of the chance at redemption. They're motivated by the fear of external and well-known threats of punishment, not praise or forgiveness. Even if you equate a reduction of a punishment to forgiveness as their motivator, that's still something they are given the benefit of, not entitled to, and should be presented as such.

A tl;dr version of my post above would basically be to argue that this relative scumminess/reaction scale you are implying (and I agree exists) should always err toward the side of not forgiving too easily due to the nature of what we're talking about. All sides involved are just too likely to be degenerates one way or the other, so without any other framework of oversight (e.g. law enforcement), it doesn't help for us to downplay things. We are all only human, after all, and as with most things, we need to collectively save each other.

fakelogic--

This makes sense; thanks for the reply.

I very much agree that it makes less sense to publicly downplay the seriousness of the offense and to publicly say that the person is probably someone who "just made one mistake," etc. What I had in mind is more that it should be clear that the person will be treated differently if he makes amends (to the extent possible)--victims won't hire Admo to make Web sites about him, he'll have a better chance of selling action a couple years down the road, people won't be waiting (for money) at the cage if he cashes a live tournament, etc.

Arguably this has very little to do with forgiveness and everything to do with simply creating two tiers of punishment for people who do this. I think you're perceptive to point out that rushing not to condemn people plays into bad cognitive habits that marketplace sellers and buyers are quite likely to have.

Thanks again, & all my best,

--Nate