Originally Posted by cuserounder
Duke Cheated Me
Last night was a rough night for me. The two people I consider my closest friends in poker, and who are among my closest friends in real life too, are Sequel and Duke. I’m always hanging out with Sequel, talking poker, talking life, etc. We’ve got that road trip we plan to take together next year, we’ve got plans for the future, etc. We’re really good friends, as you guys know.
I’m also really close with Duke, even though some of you might think we don’t like each other due to our trash talk – it’s all friendly, at least until now. We text almost every day about poker, life, sports, etc. We’ve discussed ideas to travel together in the US and around the world.
So last night, Duke told a mutual study group that he almost got a lifetime ban from Talking Stick. I immediately guessed it would involve having weed on him in a casino, as I’ve heard of that garnering lifetime bans before. But he said no, he went north to cover a whale.
Me: “Do you do this sometimes?”
Duke: “Most times”
My response to that was “You owe me $500 and **** you. You’re ****ing cheating in our prop bet.”
I offered to discuss it privately with him, but he chose to continue in the group chat. Also, if there’s any question of these quotes being accurate, I have screen shots of everything.
At this point he began backtracking and saying most times just means when there’s a whale and he needs to add a little to cover, and we argued about it. He claims he has maybe done it once or twice in the prop bet. Well, we know once… So he’s claiming one other time total, which doesn’t matter to me. It’s tainted, and so is his trustworthiness.
Duke claims when he was doing it he wasn’t thinking about our prop bet, and I’ll believe him on that. I don’t think he sat around and thought about how he could cheat me directly, for whatever that’s worth for his reputation. I completely trusted Duke with regard to gambling before this incident.
However, that does not matter. Duke broke the rules of poker, so he cheated, and it gave him edge on his hourly in our prop bet, which means that he was cheating in the prop bet, whether intentionally or not.
I told him this probably added a minimum of 1bb/hr to his winrate, and he said he didn’t think it was anywhere near that much, but he’d take 1bb/hr off his final winrate, and added “I think that’s way more than I should give too.”
No, no, no. You don’t cheat, get caught, and then decide what you “should give.” That’s called freerolling, and it’s bull****.
Duke cheated, he got caught, and he should pay me the $500. The edge he gained is impossible to quantify, anyway. I don’t know how many times he did it, for how many big blinds. I also asked repeatedly whether he added it to his buyins in his tracking or if it counted as won money, and he never addressed that issue.
Here’s how far the edge can go. If I’m at a table with a whale deep stacked, I play more aggressively and gamble more to try to get deep stacked. I’ll take knowingly marginal or –EV spots to try to get deep stacked for a way more +++EV spot. This adds stress to me mentally, it impacts my winrate, and when it doesn’t work out, there’s no +++EV spot to speak of because I never get to it. When Duke’s in this spot, apparently he reaches in his pocket for some black chips and goes north.
Going north may not have the same stigma as going south, but this is no different than him having a really good player on his left with $1,000, a really bad fish on his right with $500, and taking $300 off his $800 stack to cover the fish and limit his exposure to the good player.
It’s breaking the rules, it’s cheating, it’s not allowed in casinos, it can get you banned, and it gives edge in a winrate bet.
Obviously as far as I’m concerned, the bet is off and Duke owes me $500 from the prop bet. I don’t know if I’ll get paid or not at this point, based on how he’s handling it, but for everyone on 2p2, buyer beware before wagering with Duke.
Beyond that Duke, you handled this very poorly, and as a close friend, that’s hurtful.
Duke still hasn’t even apologized.
I had hoped all of this could be handled privately, because the aspect in which the cheating impacted me was likely unintentional, and the people at the table involved obviously know it happened since the floor was called – so I didn’t feel the need to shine a light on this to the poker community. However, Duke has refused to do anything other than take 1bb/hr off his bet, which leaves me no real recourse other than to put this out there and warn anyone else who might consider betting with Duke in the future.
Duke told me that I could do what I had to do and if I posted this in his thread he'd try to get me banned from his thread and get it deleted, because he didn't want TSR regs to think he was shady, and that nobody would care or feel sorry for me. So he knows it was shady.
I really don't give a **** if anyone feels sorry for me, but I'm not going to let someone cheat me, turn it into a free roll and not let people know that he can't be trusted, or let people think they can get off with nothing when they try to cheat me.
Obviously if he settles up and makes good, I’ll let everyone know.
