Update: I have not played poker. I never ever said I don't want to play poker again, nor do I feel that way. It is simply this: I don't DESERVE to ever play poker again, after what I did. It is theft, and I understand that. For the people that were saying "Most people are degen on their own money but not with others," that is kinda what I was doing, but I'm just so degen on my own money that it leaked into others and I couldn't really stop myself. Since when I started playing online with the funds, I was playing 4/8 dollar with the money I had made from my cashes, I never started playing online till I had that first cash, so that I knew at that point I wasn't risking the others funds. Here's the thing, I had been staked for like the past 3 years straight and hadn't played cash on my own money for a long long time. So it was really weird and degen and I just kept moving up the levels like I had back when I had played cash on my own action. There's no question that once you play a certain stake, the lower stakes seem less interesting and boring to you, right? Well, I played 1k/2k when I was 18 years old. You can't really recover from that when you go busto and have to get staked a year later, imo. So anyways, even when I lost and started lying to people about how everything was going, I was still thinking that I would win the money back on my own action and everything would be alright, I wasn't, at that point, thinking wow I just stole from all these people who gave me a GOLDEN opportunity. It wasn't until several days later when I bricked all the sundays that I realized, nay actually just kept repeating in my head "I can't believe I did this, I can't believe I did this"
Obviously I knew what people's options would be at this point which is why I carefully considered my options like running off with the remaining dollars, but I knew that the best resolution for everyone involved would be me coming completely clean and stopping gambling. Clearly this is a grey area in criminality and criminal charges probably couldn't be filed, so I decided that as a sign of good faith I'd return the 12k and get to work on paying back the rest of the money as soon as I could. This, I thought, would prove I was serious about my intentions.
Its very clear I am a winning MTT player and could probably pay back the money very quickly by grinding MTTs, but this is simply not going to happen. Gambling has had only a negative influence on my life. I want to cut it out completely. Again, I wish I had the self-control to gamble and wish I was gambling right now. I'm not gonna lie, winning is fun. However, I have demonstrated with my actions that I simply cannot gamble. It will obviously be a lifetime struggle, but all I can do is try. Obviously its gonna take a long time to pay back the money by working, but I simply have no other choice.
Once again, I'd like to point out that never did I play a tournament sub optimally, ever. All tournaments were played to the best of my ability and despite being life tilted, it never affected my play. I had a ton of experience playing tournaments while deep in makeup, life tilted, or feeling physically sick from food poisoning, which I get from almost anything. So please don't feel bad if you are an investor, about that fact, I was always playing my A game during the tournaments.
In response to what Noah said, I pretty much had that plan in mind, the escrow being Quaternion, from the day I decided to come clean. And the steps were already in motion, and we are making progress towards that goal as time moves on. The only thing you mentioned that we didn't do, was having a specific thing in writing which I sign, which I am willing to do, but my posts in this thread should be enough, I feel. However if the investors want it in writing we will figure something out and I will send it to Quaternion, signed by me.
Sigh at someone like noseeds, coming in here with no knowledge of events and going off heresay. Just wanna say that I never multiaccounted and never admitted to doing so.
In regards to the whole tongni/shaundeeb/hiv "scam" here is what actually happened, anyone whose there can confirm, including mr tim caum, the "whistleblower".
We were sitting in the lobby of pca, gildwulf had just beaten me in another 10k freezeout, and tongni was drunkenly semi-berating me, semi complaining that I hadn't beaten gildwulf this time. Then he drunkenly suggested that he play the match instead of me, since he'd obviously have a better chance of beating gildwulf. So I made some post calling gildwulf out for a 3rd? I believe freezeout. So preparations were underway, now there was a lot of people around at this point including ray (exitonly) and shaundeeb, who weren't involved in any way but just wanted to be witness to the whole debauchery. So anyways as the night went on and people got drunker and drunker, gildwulf was nowhere to be found, but the whole hiv/tongni switch was getting played up and people were laughing at the evilness of it. So at some point mr tim caum decides to go and PM gildwulf privately, to talk him out of it, which succeeds. So, to conclude, not only did I never multiaccount, tongni never played on my account, even one hand, and it was pretty much all drunken talk that was almost certainly never going to really happen. I have no idea how shaundeebs name got all mixed up into it, I think tongni was staying in his room? or something but somehow he got pulled in as well, even tho he was an MTT player while me and tongni at the time were LHE players. also, its not a HUGE amount of ev we were trying to cheat gildwulf out of, more like a small amount of ev given the fact that his true edge on me is nowhere near what he ran, as quaternion pointed out, he ran 13bb/100 or something ridiculous vs me in one match and similar in the other matches. if you know anything about hu LHE, no matter how "bad someone tilts", its pretty much impossible to have this big an edge on someone in a HU match.
As for the more cheating, if you can really call it that, we were in Amsterdam playing Chinese with Me, Grimstarr, and 2 others. The thing you have to know about Grimstarr is he has a terrible, godawful memory, is like the biggest flake in the world, and just generally doesn't have a ****in clue what is going on. Not that I don't like the kid, we're friends and everything, hes just ABSOLUTELY CLUELESS, he can't concentrate on anything for more than 1 second, its like ADHD times a billion. So anyways, we have this Chinese game, and I try to "cheat" him by looking at his hand after we had both set our hands, and see that I can win extra points from him by setting my hand differently, so I joking say "oh ****, I didn't set yet guys" when clearly I had, my cards were facedown in front of me in piles of 3, 5 and 5. I am quite positive of all these facts as I have a photographic memory. So I jokingly switch two cards, leaving them very clearly separate from the rest of the cards so you could see which were which, and obviously get called out on it by the 3 opponents, cause I did it in plain sight for all to see. Obviously the cards were returned to their original positions, and the points for the hand were awarded correctly. The game then went on for another several hours or so, Grimstarr did NOT quit right after this hand as he claims. Obviously he just has a terrible memory and wants to make himself look better in retrospect, when clearly he was the fish in the game and didn't get any better between the two sessions, just ran better. So anyways, I did end up owing Grimstarr a debt of 5k after this. Which I have not been able to pay up to this point, since I have always been staked and in makeup since this time, but I actually gave him a payment of 500 dollars of good faith sometime after this, bringing the debt down to 4.5k, and do plan to pay him back when I can, just sometime after paying back this debt first, which I feel is more important, since the money was just stolen. But I never ever ducked him, was always in contact with him and clearly explained that I would pay him back when I was out of makeup and simply couldn't at the current time, so I have no idea why he sent that PM to Gildwulf, I guess he was just frustrated, but he has always known the situation from day 1. So yeah, horrible horrible "CHEATING" by me.
Finally, my old friend gildwulf. congrats buddy, you did the object of the game, get a fish and take his money. not really much to say other than that except its really classy of you to come in here and taunt my investors and friends, who were only trying to help out someone who asked them to. quaternion and I talked weekly, and we did trades at least once a month, for often large amounts, where I always sent first. He also did loan me money on one occasion and I paid back promptly. Just can't see where you can say liar, scumbag, cheat, when I was none of these things, PRIOR to this summer. And don't even really see the point of you posting here, except to gloat, oh look I took 80k off this kid. You really think that makes the people affected by this thing feel good? Just so classy. And furthermore, you have no idea what you are talking about, you really think I spent the last few years as a broke railbird? What did you think I was doing, how did you think I was paying food/rent/80k to you? Obviously I had some success in MTTs, and despite having no money management skills whatsoever, never TRULY went busto, all those threads in bbv by me claiming to be busto were just that, threads in bbv. I always had money behind or a staker behind willing to put me in hsmtts, you simply have to look at my stars OPR to prove this fact.
Finally, some people said I should apologize to the investors for everything, I feel this would be insincere, since if I was really sorry for everything I never would have done it in the first place. I think this is the case, and my apology will come in the form of the money, which is paid back, however long it takes, even if I have to take a minimum wage job and pay it back over TWENTY years. I know that is all the people really care about, and that is what I am working on at this time.
. At least you are guaranteed something then.
