This is Haseeb Qureshi. You all must be aware that several days ago, I announced that I was retiring from poker, self-banned my TwoPlusTwo account, and said that I was no longer going to respond to any of the allegations on TwoPlusTwo. I fully intended to leave the poker world and wanted simply to move on. I knew that I had made mistakes and had been dishonest, but I thought the only thing I could do for myself would be to move forward in my life.
So I packed my things, said goodbye to my friends in the poker world, and began to prepare for my travels. But I am no longer able to leave. Since I have announced my retirement, things have heated up on TwoPlusTwo in a way I had never expected. I knew that I would get ridiculed and that my poker reputation would get torn apart; I expected it. But I could never have imagined how bad it would become. Being dishonest is one thing, but now people have been accusing me of criminal acts, of trying to con one of my closest friends, of abusing people, of being a homosexual, of being a sociopath, and all manner of other things. And as one or two people started accusing me of these things, not long after the populace of TwoPlusTwo followed.
When my friends first alerted me to this, I just wanted to recede further. I took it to mean that the poker world is so backwards, I was right to get away from it. But as I’ve thought about it some more, I’ve realized that what’s going on is not acceptable. Not to me, and it should not be to anyone. People are now making very serious allegations about me, without any proof; allegations that could follow me for the rest of my life. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to take that sitting down. I felt very sad and alone when I decided to duck out. It was sticking my head in the sand in a way – I did not want to deal with how difficult it was. But in the same way that I owe it to myself to move on from poker, I also owe it to myself to deal with this before I do. So I am here to set the record absolutely straight. To say what exactly did happen and what didn’t.
In this post, I am going to provide two things. The first thing I am going to, to the best of my abilities, provide is a full and faithful timeline of everything that has gone on in this scandal. Many people have begun to twist and misconstrue the order and veracity of events since the story has come out. Now that Jungle has admitted to the multi-accounting, the final lies I was telling have no more use, so I will set the record straight on exactly what happened. I will add an addendum to this timeline chronicling every lie and inconsistency that is not explicitly mentioned within the timeline – explaining what was lied about, and why. The second thing I am going to provide is a relatively short point-by-point list of individual things I want to address and put to rest.
A full timeline of what’s gone on:
I met Jose around February 2010. He approached me for coaching and I referred him to Jungleman. Jungleman was at that time somebody who I talked poker with. Between February 2010 and December 2010 Jose and I kept in touch and I became a friend/advisor to him.
Around December 2010, Jose was seeking out a stake+coaching and he contacted several people, including me. I brought the idea to a few people, Jungle expressed interest. Jungle and I agreed to stake Jose and to go halves on it. We wrote up a contract and it was executed by all three parties. Jose did not have a lot of money online at this time, but we agree to let Jose play on his own money at first as though he was already on the stake (i.e., with the assurance that we can cover any risk) until we could get the stake money to him. We end up being very slow/lazy and not getting the full amount of money to him until much later (several months, during the chip dump). For this period of time, he mostly played lowish-mid stakes.
In January 2011, a friend contacted me saying they had seen a thread on 2+2 on which ‘LookingForProdigy’ was searching for a mysterious young Portuguese poker player and thought it may be referring to Jose. I saw it and it did seem to be about him and this seemed to be confirmed when Jose contacted me and confirmed that it was about him. Jose made no mention of knowing who made the thread.
Until this time, Jose had no ‘poker profile’ as such but it seemed clear that this was likely to change and so Jose and I thought it would probably be sensible to announce himself to the community rather than leave people to speculate etc. So, I advised Jose on how to get his poker profile and career off the ground: to make a TwoPlusTwo account; post a thread containing his story; get a web presence, etc. He liked my advice and asked me to be his ‘agent’. I initially decline while telling him I will give what advice I can, but after a few days I agreed to be representative of him (with the caveat that it would be a temporary arrangement and that he must get a real agent). I told him that I would represent him as regards to online training sites, other than that I will work with him on PR, advising him, and helping him in starting his career. Jose offered payment for this and there was a suggestion that I will receive a % of his coaching revenue as payment, but there was never any formal agreement. As the arrangement went on longer than the 3 months we initially expected it to we agreed we would need to renegotiate at some point, but we never did.
I have never received any money from Jose for any of the above services he asked me to provide.
At around the beginning of March 2011, I helped Jose to write his story which was posted in his ‘I am..’ thread. Jose provided the information/facts and his rudimentary story. I re-wrote his story using the facts he gave me (both he and I mention this in the initial thread). There were a few doubters in the thread and so I asked a few friends, including Jungle, to write posts to support Jose. Jose’s career and popularity began to grow.
Over the next few months I helped Jose in the way I had promised; crafting and publishing posts; advising him how to deal with social media; helping consolidate his web presence etc. A few times I posted on his TwoPlusTwo account for him with his full knowledge and permission. Jose (who was dealing with real life issues like exams) would change his password and let the person assisting him do the work on the relevant site and then change it back. He did this with his web designer and with someone who was helping him with his Twitter as well.
Jose then secured an agent (Jim Erwood, Poker Royalty) and a sponsorship with Lock Poker (which was a deal closed by Jim Erwood who had been instructed by Jose to seek out sponsorships).As a result, I started to do less for him and although he still ran some things he would write by me I no longer took the time to edit them as extensively.
In April 2011, after Black Friday, Jungle and I finally got around to getting Jose’s stake money together. I got 100k from my bank account onto UseMyWallet, and from UseMyWallet onto the account “Sam Chauhan” on Lock Poker. The account was in my name. We did not want to do a bank transfer because Jose’s bank account was in his mother’s name, and both Jungle and I felt more comfortable giving it to him on the public “Girah” account that we knew was traceable directly to him. After the money got verified and landed on Lock, we tried to transfer it directly to Jose’s account, but the account could not be cleared for such a large transfer. We asked Jose if he could do anything, talk to Lock people to get it through, but he told us that our only option was to chipdump him money. Believing that Lock wasn’t a tracked network, we saw no problem with it.
I chipdumped Jose 100k using the SamChauhan account. Jose wanted to promote the fake match before it began, but I told him not to, as it was not a legitimate match and it was stupid to draw attention to it. I discovered that he ended up tweeting about it afterwards even though I had asked him not to. I told him it was obnoxious but let it slide. A couple of days later, Jungle was bored and unable to play on any sites after Black Friday. Jose offered to let Jungle use his account if he let Jose watch. Jungle agreed to it and played at first through Teamviewer on Jose’s screen (at first telling Jose what to do and then trying to click the buttons himself), but when it proved to be too laggy and a pain to use, Jose gave Jungle his password and let him play on the account on his own computer. He played some PLO and NL over a couple of days. He lost money net.
In the next day or two and after Jungle had played on his account, Jose mentioned the Bluff Challenge to me. Up until this time neither I nor Jungle were aware of Jose’s participation in this challenge. The Bluff Challenge was a small promotion being held on Lock Poker in which all accounts were being tracked and the biggest winner would receive a Lock sponsorship and the cover of Bluff magazine. When he told me about this I got very upset and panicky; the SamChauhan account was in my name, the name itself could be tied to both myself and Jungle easily, and now it had become a high-profile and suspect chipdump and Jungle had logged into his account. I was fearful that this would all get exposed easily and look suspicious, that Jungle and I would be accused of trying to cheat Jose into a competition, that Jose would lose his sponsorship and all our money would be confiscated etc. Jose told me that he thought I already knew, that I was aware of what was going on. I wasn’t and wouldn’t have agreed to forward the stake money in that manner had I known. I was too afraid to go public about any of this.
Several days later, Jose contacted me and told me that Lock had disqualified him from the Bluff Challenge for having a second IP log into his account at some point. As far as I am aware, at this time Lock was not aware of the chip-dump. We knew that the person playing on his account was Jungle. We deliberated about about what to write and decided to say that a backer logged into his account while he was asleep and played some poker on his computer. After that, Jose’s career took a hit. Jungle lost money on Jose’s account so no-one else had lost out financially, Jose had been disqualified and so the chipdump would not make a difference to his standing in the competition and I thought it closed the door on all of the ****. I was somewhat relieved.
A month or so later, while Jungle and I were in Vegas, Jungle played the SamChauhan account and I took 50% of his action. Jungle lost 40k, which Jose lent to us against his account balance. This comprises the 40k we owed him. I have never played on the SamChauhan account, and it is currently empty of any account balance.
Later, I give Jose access to my iPoker account to play under our stake. As far as I know, he either didn’t play or played a negligible amount. Earlier on (but after Black Friday), Jungle asked to play under my iPoker account as well and I let him. I had not played on the account for a long time, and the account did not have a lot of profile. I have played a negligible amount of online poker since Black Friday.
Over all of this time, Jose was down substantially in the stake, but we assumed that it was just because he was running bad. Jose provided us EV graphs which seemed to show him substantially under EV.
At some point, Jose challenged both Durrr and Isildur to matches, and also began offering high stakes matches with bb/100 give-backs. He told me about his idea to challenge durrrr, and I told him it was fine because there was no way durrrr would be able to accept any challenge at that time, and that if he did accept that there would be plenty of people who he could sell pieces to for such action. But that if he challenged Isildur that he’d better be able to back up his word, and we certainly weren’t going to back him for it. Jose and I agreed though that if he could get an Isildur showdown, that the positive publicity even if he lost would be worth whatever EV in cost he’d have to pay if he shelled out his own cash. He was planning to take his own action in the Isildur showdown if he ever took it, and was trying to get Lock to subsidize the match, but they weren’t willing to. He also posted a commitment on the TwoPlusTwo thread that during the Isildur showdown if he played it, he would have a live webcam feed showing him playing without being sweated. Regarding the high stakes bb/100 give-back matches, we discouraged him from doing this, because he couldn’t back any of this up and we weren’t going to stake him or sweat him for them. But he believed his hype was so big that nobody was going to take him up on them. I believe he got the idea from the durrrr challenge stunt, but he ended up being right. The only person who ended up contacting him about this was ike and that was quite late on, and we told him we would not back him for such a match.
After Black Friday the idea was suggested that we three (Jose, Jungle and I) get a place together for a while. Several countries were talked about and we first decided to go to Portugal, but eventually settled on Canada and live in Vancouver. But when Jungle was denied access to Canada and was no longer able to go there, we reverted plans to go to Portugal instead. Jose was tasked with finding us a place to live and securing us a lease etc.
On or around the last week of July, Jungle informed me that somebody had told him that Jose might be scamming people. There was no evidence of this allegation being true at this point and so we both dismissed it as likely being bunk.
On August 4th 2011, Jose sent me an e-mail saying that he was going to quit poker because he had been accused of scamming. I spoke to Jose and he told me about the HU group he talks poker with and they have accused of scamming. I tell him to calm down, and ask him to get me in touch with the person who’s accusing him from the HU group, it’s then I speak to Nick Frame.
Nick Frame told me how over the last couple of weeks, Jose had been trying to get people to play him on Sauron1987 and Dollarman, and that they had very strong evidence that Jose was controlling both of these accounts. I agree that theevidence is concerning, but that we need proof, and Jose assures us he can provide it.
When the conversation ended, I confronted him. When pushed, Jose finally admitted to the allegations but it was clear that he did not want to confess to the HU group and he logged off under questionable pretences. I suspected that Jose would not be willing to confess to the HU group right away if at all and so, believing it was the right thing to do and best for him and the HU group, I let the group know that he had confessed to me.
I then left the US on a series of several flights towards Gibraltar. Along the way I log on Skype when I could and remained in contact with the HU group, letting them know of everything that had gone on and was going on, assuring them that if Jose will not pay that I would cover anything they were scammed out of, and trying to reassure them that everything will be ok. Once I got to Gibraltar, I told Jungle what had happened. Over the next day or two, I tried y to convince the group not to go public immediately and they of course found this suspect. I admitted to them in confidence that Jungle and I were staking Jose, and suggested to them that one of us was the backer who played on Jose’s account. I told them that what he had done was wrong but I didn’t believe Jose was inherently a bad person; at this time I thought he had made a very grave and stupid mistake to help a friend. The HU ring said they had to go public, but would wait a week until doing so to give Jose time to sort out repayments and a public statement. I asked them to ensure that when they made their findings public about Jose that they respect our pre-agreed privacy, and mention only that we have been helpful in uncovering and dealing with this scam. They agree to do so.
The following night after the above conversation, Jungle woke me up in the early morning and tells me that the group had decided to go public immediately, and were no longer going to withhold anything. The group told us that they no longer felt comfortable with the situation and were going to release everything. I spoke to them and requested that the members who are going public to respect our previously agreed privacy, and they assured us they would not mention us. It was agreed between the group and Jose that they would post their thread and Jose would immediately follow with his statement. Jungle and I briefly posted: the brevity not because we were dismissive but because we were jetlagged, had little time to formulate responses while in-between flights, and were of course caught out by the suddenness of what was happening. Jose announced that he was not going to look at TwoPlusTwo again, that he was going on vacation and the he would be out of contact.
The next day: someone came forward stating that Jose had the password for my account on iPoker; the group posted private Skype conversations, accusations were levelled at me etc. Once it was seen that I was trying to prevent the scandal from going public, it was naturally suspected that I was complicit in Jose’s scam.
Once I saw what the reaction was to the situation, I discussed it at length with Jungle and decided that I would try to take the fall for everything. As it was, people had decided that I was involved with Jose’s cheating and I was probably closer to him than anyone, so it seemed like the right thing to do to let people keep the focus on me and keep Jungle out of it. I made a long post on my blog explaining my relationship with Jose, and claimed that I’m the one who multi-accounted and played on Jose’s account. I claimed that Jungle had nothing to do with it. People believed me.
The situation escalated, Cardrunners severed their ties to me, TwoPlusTwo and other forums naturally began to flame me for my involvement.
Over the next few days, more details were uncovered on TwoPlusTwo, some that I neglected to mention in my blog and some that I forgot. One of the things that I forgot was that I logged into Jose’s Twoplustwo account a few times to post things when he asked me to. Two of the things I neglected to mention was that Jose often asked me to crop and upload photos for him because he didn’t know how to, since he’s quite bad with computers; the second thing is that in our original agreement that I agreed to act as his representative only regarding training sites, but I didn’t consider myself his agent in the usual sense of the word since Jim Erwood from PokerRoyalty was working officially as his agent (and I encouraged him to contact him in the first place). Since he ended up securing a profitable deal with PokerStrategy through Jim Erwood, I never ended up closing any deals for him, but I did contact several training sites later on calling myself ‘agent’. As of now, the only deals he’s gotten (with Lock Poker and PokerStrategy) were both negotiated and secured by PokerRoyalty, and we had no other provisions in which I would act as his ‘agent’.
TwoPlusTwo moderators then confirmed that Jose was using the same IP as ‘LookForProdigy’ (who started the thread which instigated Jose’s announcement thread), as well as two other TwoPlusTwo accounts. I was not aware that Jose had multiple accounts. As far as I am aware, he had never told anyone.
It was then suggested that Jose had not made the money he had claimed to, and evidence was put forward suggesting that all of the screennames tied to Jose have not been his, and his results had been fabricated and aggregated into a screenshot. At the point at which I learned of this, I did not know what to believe and what not to believe about Jose or his story.
Around this time, a few friends contacted me who know about the SamChauhan account. They told me that I need to go public and admit everything, and that if I don’t they will not be comfortable remaining silent about all of it. It was obvious that I could no longer bury my head in the sand and had to say something no matter how bad it will look. Sauce approached me as I was writing my statement, and told me he has to post something on TwoPlusTwo about his suspicions. I asked him to hold off until I can give the statement myself, and he agreed.
I gave an interview with Bluff explaining everything regarding the chipdump, and then I wrote a blog post announcing my resignation from poker. I told people that I would no longer be engaging anyone from the poker world and that I only wished to get on with my life (I wanted to get away from all of the stress and sadness that I felt). I then begin a new blog separate from my previous Cardrunners blog, announcing my plan to travel through Europe by myself for a while. I hoped that coming clean would be an end to it, but there were still more theories and accusations to come.
Jose resurfaced and spoke to me and several other people. He told someone that I was not the person who played on his account, but that he could not say who it was. This was leaked onto TwoPlusTwo.
Jose claimed to me that it was his friends posting under the account names which were found to be from his IP (with his knowledge), and apologized to me for all the lies and everything that had happened. He claimed to never have scammed either me or Jungle and invited us to verify it. He also stated that although he still will not provide his underage account names so as to legally protect himself, he truly did win the money he claimed to. He told me that he could prove this with bank statements and property he owns from poker money. I told him to get in contact with Noah to provide proof.
After my exit from poker, Jungle did an interview with Noah and Vanessa, in which he admitted to being the one who actually played on Jose’s account. He revealed that I had never played on Jose’s account and tried to protect him publicly by taking the fall. He also revealed that he played on the SamChauhan account and lost 40k on it, that being the reason for which we owed Jose money. In this interview, he alluded vaguely to the relationship between him and I, in which I was helping him with his career and giving him advice on business dealings and such. He conveyed himself as being somewhat oblivious to all of the details of the stake and Jose’s dealings.
From this, it was suggested that that I have been complicit with Jose in scamming Jungle. Ashton then posted in TwoPlusTwo with claims that I had brainwashed Jungle, that everything had been my idea, that I am a sociopath and that I was likely involved in Jose’s scam itself. It was then suggested at various points that I have scammed or have attempted to scam Jungle and am skimming money from him, that I have installed or have attempted to install Trojans on Jungle’s and/or other people’s computers, that I am a sociopath and pathological liar, that I am a con artist and my relationship with Jungle was meant to take advantage of someone who didn’t know better or was socially ill-equipped, that I have had physical relations with him, that I have been physically abusing Jungle for his compliance, among other accusations.
Up to this point I had been trying to ignore whatever was happening on TwoPlusTwo. I was aware that people were lambasting me and I wanted to stop focusing it and just move forward with my life. When I was paying attention to what was or may have been going on on TwoPlusTwo, I was unable to sleep well and was constantly stressed. But it became clear to me that the accusations made by TwoPlusTwo have only escalated since my announcement of leaving, and I was naive to deal with it by trying to escape or bury my head in the sand. So I have come here to address this situation and to make it very clear what happened and importantly, why.
I will now make a list of things I was dishonest about, along with an explanations as to why. This will not be able to include every lie by omission, but those will be implied by the order of revelations along the timeline.
• I was somewhat dishonest about the motivation behind trying to stop from letting the scandal being revealed immediately. Although all of the reasons I previously stated (that we had to protect our money that he had, that we didn’t want to spook him if he would run, that we weren’t sure what he’d do if he lost all incentive to be honest) were true and we did consider them, the honest fact is that we just panicked. We didn’t know what to do, we never expected that Jose could scam anyone, and we knew if the scandal broke in an uncontrolled way that we would be implicated. I don’t think we really had any idea what we were going to do if the scandal didn’t go public. We didn’t think it through that far.
• I said I was the person who played on Girah’s account. It was actually Jungle. I wanted to protect him. Although it was originally his and Jose’s idea to play on the Girah account, I wanted to protect Jungle, and I knew that my reputation would already be destroyed by how closely I was associated with Jose. I simply wanted to help my friend. Some people are claiming that I was paid off by him to lie; that is not true. He has not paid me anything, and we never discussed anything regarding any payoff. Although for all of the work I’ve done for him in a professional capacity he had agreed to pay me, I tried to take the fall for him because I wanted to protect my friend. I thought it was the right thing to do. You can probably tell that I thought of it as a noble thing, but it may have just ended up being immoral and stupid. I don’t know. But that’s why I did it.
• I chipdumped to Jose. I finally revealed this lie in my interview with Bluff. I lied about this because I was afraid that when it came out, it would look like I was complicit with Jose in trying to help him win the Bluff challenge, and I knew it would be hard to believe that I had no idea that it was going on. I also knew that people would take it as evidence that he was just my puppet, that I invented Jose, etc. But I didn’t, and I was afraid. That is why I lied about it.
• I said about the 40k debt that we owed to Jose was for a down payment by a house. It was suggested by somebody that this was the explanation for the money we owed him. I don’t know who came up with this, but I went along with it trying not to verify it outright (though I may have once, I don’t recall). The reason why I lied about this is because the real reason for the 40k debt was for Jungle later playing on the SamChauhan account. I didn’t want to implicate Jungle for this, and so I wanted to protect him. In retrospect, it was kind of a pointless lie, because we didn’t have to admit to the SamChauhan account in order to explain this, but that did not occur to me at the time.
• It has been claimed that I made several lies of omission regarding my relationship with Jose, but I genuinely did not. I simply either forgot about them, or neglected to mention them. The fact that I would crop and upload photos for him to me did not seem worth mentioning. I also neglected to mention that our original agreement included that I would act as an agent for him for online training sites, but I never mentioned it in my blog post because Jim Erwood ended up signing him a deal with PokerStrategy for which I could find no better deal, so I never ended up actually closing any deals as his agent. Beyond a training site (which I didn’t end up doing), Jim Erwood was his sole agent, so it seemed to me pointless to mention. I also genuinely forgot that I logged onto his TwoPlusTwo account (although after it was mentioned that I did, I remembered). I do not remember how many times I logged in or how many posts he asked me to make on it, but it had to have been very few. It was genuinely not a significant or suspect event in the recollection of my relationship with Jose. I also set up his blog for him and logged onto his Twitter account a few times to help him set up a background. He was very unwieldy with technology, as several people can attest to.
• Jungle went along with the story I gave. Once he was interviewed by Noah and Vanessa, he ended up telling the truth about everything. But in the interview as far as I heard, he did not represent our relationship to Jose or the stake very accurately. The impression I got when I heard his interview is that he was suggesting I was solely handling the stake and he simply didn’t do anything and barely interacted with Jose. I was informing him of what was going on the whole way through, and he was fully aware of (though probably wasn’t paying much attention or doesn’t remember) most of the details. But it was he and I who both agreed on the 100k number, that we were going to get it onto Lock Poker, we all signed a staking contract, etc. He also spoke to Jose several times and interacted on chat with him a decent amount, but I clearly spoke to him far more than he did.
Final notes
Now that I have addressed that, I want to turn my focus toward a few last things which I feel are important to say.
First, I’ve been alerted that there’s still some mention of my playing $2/$5 NL while in Vegas during the summer. It’s been suggested that this is evidence that I have no money. I do have money, and this was my first time playing live poker (as I mentioned MANY times on my blog, even mentioning the stakes I was playing, and never got the suggestion of being broke). I had played literally <10 hours of live play previously in my life. Remember, I am 21 years old. This summer was my first time ever playing live poker in Vegas. My hands still tremble and my heart still beats when I make a $40 bet. I could not even shuffle 6 chips together when I started playing. Eventually I started playing $5/$10 comfortably, but I did not play a lot of live poker in Vegas because I didn’t really enjoy it.
The second thing I want to address is my finances. Lots of people have tried at various times to accuse me of being broke. Jungle, Vivek, and plenty of other people can attest that I am not broke. I never have been, and I am not reckless enough to put myself in a situation that I could be. When I was hacked in the end of 2009 I lost a very large sum of money. Vivek ensured beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that I was hacked. I have never reneged on my prop bet with Ashton, never intended to do so, and always had the money to pay him in my bank accounts. This is all detailed in my previous post which I had somebody else post for me; I will provide a link to it at the end of this post. My relationship with Jungle is also explained in detail within that post. I also want to add that I find it strange that people would accuse me of taking advantage of or cheating Ashton in a prop bet which I lost, and for which he has been paid in full.
Another thing I want to make very clear is that in my working with Jose, I never tried to promote things about him that I did not believe were true. I did not invent any facts or bend any truths, and the only things I helped him to write were things that I genuinely believed were his ideas. All of the facts that I wrote into his original story he gave to me. Had I known any of it were untrue, I would not have written it. The only time I went along with a lie regarding Jose was when I was trying to protect Jungle. It’s clear now that though it may have been a selfless impulse, it was a big mistake.
Lastly, one thing which has disturbed me is this episode with TylerSmith and Jungle. Jungle played TylerSmith on the Girah account and won some money from him. TylerSmith since contacted Jungle after Jungle confessed to playing on Girah’s account, and Jungle admitted to Tyler that he had played him. Tyler then proceeded to tell Jungle about how much of a hero he was and how people looked up to him, etc. TylerSmith then asked for all of his money back. Jungle said no, that was completely unreasonable, and offered coaching or some small amount of payment back. TylerSmith then threatened to post the text messages onto TwoPlusTwo to show how Jungle was acting. TylerSmith then proceeds to admit in the TwoPlusTwo thread that he had no idea who Girah was at all, and presumed he was some random fish.
First off, all of this business of posting private conversations in a public forum without the permission of the other party is not okay. I don’t know why it’s assumed that this is okay, but it absolutely isn’t, and this needs to be said seriously. People may ridicule me for saying this, but I’m surprised that this hasn’t been pointed out as inappropriate on many levels.
Secondly, within this thread TylerSmith admitted that he didn’t even know who Girah was, and assumed he was a random fish. On a network where Jungle would be free to, without consequence or breaking any rules, create a new screenname that would be unknown to anyone and play TylerSmith on there. So his claim that if he had known it was Jungle he would’ve never have lost that money – in actuality, he never would’ve known it was Jungle regardless. (Jungle is obviously not going to make his Merge name “Jungleman12”).
It hurts me to see people trying to take advantage of this whole mess. Part of the reason why I stuck with Jungle and agreed to do for him what I said I would was because I saw so many people constantly trying to take advantage of him. But what bothers me most is that in light of this, some people want to claim that I was taking advantage of Jungle as well. That I am some kind of con artist and that he is my sucker. This accusation has possibly made me the angriest of all. If I wanted to cheat or con Jungle, I could've done it a hundred times over by now, but I haven't and have never intended to. Jungle is my friend. I care very deeply about him, and he knows that. I’ve gone out of my way and done as much as I could to be a good friend to him, to be there when he needed me, to teach him what I could and to try to equip him for handling the world in ways for which he wasn’t. I won’t be able to stick by him anymore now, as I am moving on. But I know that he has learned a lot and is more capable now than he was when I first met him, and that’s a start. I do not need to answer to anybody but Jungle and to myself as to whether or not I was a good friend to him. To me, it is as simple as that.
I accept being guilty for the things I’ve done. And I am sorry for the mistakes I made. And sure, I could probably be accused of being a lot of things. For being brash, dishonest, selfish, stupid, self-absorbed, double-stupid. But to some specific people, I want to say a few things.
I don’t wish to address flamers in general, but many people have been accusing me of things who know how to contact me personally. If someone has something to say to me or accuse me of, I welcome anyone to do so him or herself. All this business of people who know how to get in contact with me accusing me of stuff to everyone but the person they’re actually accusing has gone on long enough. It’s cowardly, and it’s no way for someone with standing in the community to act.
To Ashton: please get in touch with me. You have failed to this thus far, and I don’t know what you’ve written on TwoPlusTwo in response to what I’ve written, as I’ve asked for people not to tell me unless you tell it to me directly. I welcome you to contact me yourself. I do not hold any malice toward you.
I believe that between this post and my previous one (
MY POST LINKED HERE), I should have made it perfectly clear exactly what happened in this entire scandal, with my relationship with Jungle, and my history in the poker community.
Jose has contacted me and told me he can provide proof of his money, and will do so as soon as possible to Noah. I can’t say whether or not he is to be believed, I can only let whatever happens at this point speak for itself. I can no longer say what I do or don’t believe to be the truth regarding Jose or his intentions.
That is all. I want everyone here to know that I feel very ashamed of the wrong that I have done. But I also want people to know that I am going to stand up for myself, and that unlike some people on here believe, I do not believe that I am unredeemable.
Haseeb
Last edited by Dog was dead; 08-14-2011 at 09:54 PM.
