These are just not true. For one, it was at NL, not PLO. Second, he had played 25/50 before, but his main game was 5/10. Third, as a high stakes player, the idea that a 5/10 player playing heads up with someone at 25/50 is rare or indicative of chipdumping is just completely wrong. To put it narratively, it would be believable that he would be more likely to take shots on the last day of the challenge. Because poker is a game of probabilities and chaos, things like this are inherently difficult to prove. The real indictment is the margin by which he beat the 2nd place player, and yes, that it occurred on the final day.

You are right that what took place would, to a competent observer, look shady. But chipdumping is an indictment that cannot be made without unequivocal proof. That's my point. Not that it doesn't look shady--it obviously does, and like I said, if I actually wanted to chipdump, doing it all in one day on one session with such fantastic timing is profoundly stupid.

My point is that there was no proof. Keep in mind, chipdumps are generally punished with confiscation of funds or account closures. And what counts as proof of chipdumping by the poker community is a very different standard compared to what counts as proof of chipdumping by a poker security department. While 2p2 may have readily made that indictment, LockPoker has a much higher burden of proof.

I originally claimed that it was me in a Bluff Interview to try to deflect any blame from Jungle. Jungle later admitted to be the one who was actually playing on Girah's account during his interview with 2p2. I never actually played on anyone else's account.

If you read the final summary threads about the Girah scandal, they point this out as one of my key lies.

If this is true, I was completely unaware of it. After the Bluff Challenge blew up, I was watching 2p2 closely, and I never heard anything at all about suspicions of chipdumping--in fact, just the opposite. The overwhelming sentiment on 2p2 was one of sympathy for Girah. If this was going on on another site then I'd be unaware of it, but this definitely wasn't happening widely on 2p2.

This charge also wasn't raised until very late in the Girah scandal itself, around the same time that our involvements as his backer became public.

In short, you could be right. I don't know. But I don't think that it was quite as vociferous as you are suggesting.

I do believe I have left the poker community, for what it's worth. I've not interacted with it for over a year and a half, after being a professional poker player over five years. My post history indicates why I recently created this account--but I no longer participate, nor am I generally welcomed.

I don't want to turn this into a fight. I don't want to be contentious, or seem like I don't believe I was in the wrong, or made mistakes, and I'm certainly no genius. I apologize for bringing this up, my only intention was to try to get the story straight amidst all the chaos of this situation. This thread is ultimately about Lock Poker and its various offenses against players, and I don't want to derail that. I'm not trying to defend Lock either--they are clearly a terribly run company, and are actively manipulating and lying to players, if not defrauding them outright. You're a good person for putting in all the effort you have to try to bring their practices to light and help poker players from unwittingly trusting this company. So your disrespect for me is both understandable and warranted.

Haseeb

A breakeven 5-10 ring grinder suddenly sitting at 25-50 heads up (whether NL or PLO) is highly unusual, especially if he plays an unknown account and wins a staggering sum like 100k. (Winning 100k in one session of 25-50 NL is quite unusual in itself!)

This would be a huge red flag for chip dumping to any semi-competent security department.

For it to have occurred on the last day of a "win the most" contest is so outrageous that no reasonable human being could believe it was anything other than chip dumping.

Someone on 2+2 described it as, "The most obvious chip dump in the history of chip dumping", and I have to agree.

Jennifer put out that misleading press release AFTER the chip dumping accusations were zinging about the internet (including 2+2), and claimed his disqualification was due to that IP technicality. She even said that he legitimately won the contest otherwise.

You keep talking about "proof". It is almost impossible to PROVE chip dumping, unless one party admits to it. Otherwise, the accused can always claim that one of them was just playing very poorly. Chip dumping is determined by an intelligent analysis of both the cirucmstances and the play. In this case, it didn't even require an intelligent analysis. A blithering idiot could see what was going on here. For Lock to "miss" this is a stretch that I refuse to believe, especially given their other shady history and their subsequent lie regarding the reason for disqualification.

Iiiiiif their climactic shady practice really is right around now to cease all cashouts and abandon all intent to pay anyone, and we're just among the early suckers to know about it . . what do we do then?

I wasn't around during Black Friday. I know this is not the same as Black Friday, but essentially, what happens to a poker site and its players these days if they do uh .. this?

Or is it wait and see? Did 2plus2 get very involved in Black Friday? I would imagine there was an uproar.

Quit feeling sorry for yourself or and trying to get others to do the same. Nobody cares about you or what you think

I'd buy a cake and few DVDs just incase

Haseeb, you could've simply asked Lock's owner to allow the transfer for stake. That part of the story never added up. Talking with some Lock pros at the time, they were at a loss for words in explaining your reasoning for depositing 100k on a random account to chip dump over to Jose. Nobody thought your explanation made a lot of sense.

Hell, just being allowed to deposit so much money through Lock's casino processor should've gave you a hint. Jose could've simply asked the owner "hey, these guys are staking me 100k, can they just deposit then ship to me?" Why would even a reputable site owner reject their top pro being staked in nosebleed games? There are ways to do these things on most any site to be honest and Lock was less restrictive, not more restrictive.

Of course, maybe some of the high stakes community accepted it. But we all know how that goes: "Big scandal, read cliff notes, omg they cheated, ok done." Hell, you guys had the HS community going on a lot of this stuff before it blew up.

goddammit dog I used to idolize you. I wished that one day I would play high stakes and troll stevebets hu. I have even called people with jack high and it was good once.

Now you're just sad, trying to convince us of some alternate universe where all the motives and reasons you guys had make some sort of sense. I would snap-gain back like 80% of the respect I lost for you if you would just say you know what, we ****ing cheated to try to get girah his stupid little contest win, go **** yourselves 2p2. then leave with a dealwithit.gif or teh youtube vid where the guy drops his mic. I could actually respect that because it would be honest. The way you are talking now it's like Lock conspired with you guys to shove this poker prodigy bull**** down our throats

Well, there's no site that won't accept tons of deposit money, that doesn't say anything about its flexibility. We didn't deposit 100k on an account to chipdump it to Jose. That's why we created an account with a joke name--we never expected to use it. We thought we would deposit, transfer, end of story. But when it told us we couldn't transfer the 100k to him, we had to figure out some other way to get it to him.

I do believe it was mentioned before somewhere in the mess of threads about this that Jose tried to contact support to lift the restriction, but they didn't. We probably could've tried to go up the latter, but we thought it would've been a pain. Jennifer wasn't very punctual with Jose in the past, from what I remember. And, yes, Lock Poker was a very loosely run company, but it certainly wasn't a very responsive company.

Everyone seems to think I'm trying to defend my actions. I'm not. I'm really, truly not. I accept that what I did was dishonest, scummy, and reflected poorly on the entire poker world. Man, ****.

I'm not going to have Internet for a bit, so I can't reply anymore anyway. I seem to really only stir up anger by posting, and there's no point in that. Sorry.

Yet isn't that exactly what you did, regardless of whether it was so Girah could win the challenge or to stake him like you claim?

Great post, thanks.

I like that part where you state that returning payouts to normal will not be an indicator of health or anything good. If it ever happens , that would be merely an indicator that pyramid is working again, more than anything else, that is deposits > cashouts, for a while.

Its pretty obvious to me that if players try to cashout all their funds now (or in June giving them 1 month to get some deposits in) lock will have to declare bankrupcy immediately. (classic pyramid destruction mechanism)

AdamEvePoker skin had been closed with tens of thousands of players dollars left hanging. I honestly don't expect anything healthy happening to lock in near months.

lock stole my maney? gotdamit

If you didn't know the challenge was going on and merely tried to transfer a friend 100K through "harmless chipdumping"... then why did you just say this:

"Everyone seems to think I'm trying to defend my actions. I'm not. I'm really, truly not. I accept that what I did was dishonest, scummy, and reflected poorly on the entire poker world."

Wouldn't you feel zero guilt whatsoever if you didn't have any harmful intention in your chipdumping? Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Rhetorical question btw, I don't want to hear anymore word twisting.

You keep saying you will leave the poker world but you keep returning to write these **** posts and clog up very important threads with some vain attempt to regain your integrity/reputation. You really want to take the high road? Just stick to your jason burt thread and leave.

the audit part isn't completely accurate. appreciated what i learned in the rest of the post tho, ty.

is there anything a touch more certain? it seems to me to be above 90% that there is a lot of shadiness going on at lock and likely they dont have the players money, but since I'm sponsored by a competing site im hesitant to tweet/talk about it. however it also seems that if i did tweet/talk about it it would likely save innocent people a bit of money (however if i was wrong i could miss a future spot to save ppl more etc).

also im not much of a haseeb fan at all, he always kind've annoyed me, and seemed pretty scummy in the girah scandal, but he comes off as pretty geniune to me in this thread, and is likely providing some fairly valuable information. just my 2c

You're smart enough to make a decision based on incomplete information. Do what you think is the right thing.

lol at lock being considered competition for ftp. I appreciate your mentality as far as business ethics go but speaking up about situations like Lock is is something that no one should be afraid of doing. They have been so ****ing shady for years and honestly someone like you talking about the situation can really help get it out there to the average joe on the street more than nvg tweeting some clueless lock pro who ccl. I don't think you are obligated to say something about them but if you see something ****ed up you're not out of order for saying anything/warning people/etc, especially considering the whole online poker ordeal of the last few years

thanks for putting this together.. what baffles my mind is the silence of the sponsored pros.. people like rizen, moorman and annette 15 who are huge in the industry not saying ANYTHING (unless ive missed something) just isn't right.. id be embarrassed and ashamed to wear that patch this summer.. maybe they know something that we don't know and lock is fixing their financial situation.. but I doubt it.. if I was a sponsored lock pro id be more concerned with MY reputation then some failing company's reputation..

I would tweet a link notifying people of it like vanessa, without making judgements if i was in your position tom.

I think it's more about what they have been promised than what they know. According to some of them, they're saying even their payments from Lock are slow.

They most probably know nothing about the finances as indicated by Melanie Weisner that Lock Pros have more of a marketing agreement (not a management decision making position).

They somehow are convinced that Lock will succeed without knowing the company's financial position. They then want us to do the same, it's goofy.

They choose to believe whatever they want. The strangest part is when they make statements, they receive no support from Lock itself. They repeat the same rare (almost non-existent) statements that Lock make.

It's some very strange stuff going on with all of them, confusing. Where are the credible unbiased people saying Lock is going to turn it around?

Melanie seems like a bright woman.. im surprised she'll accept a "promise" as the titanic is sinking around her... she cant be that naïve.. if I was a lock pro ive seen enough and id jump ship immediately.. it's their names being sullied

none of the pros should be worried about Lock going down and smearing their reputations....none of the FTP pros caught flack besides the ones who were deeply involved in the actual running of the company.

nobody really holds Helmuth to the fire for being with UB either...except for the people who hate him already.

sadly the world is filled with people who are selfish/completely self serving and its hard to blame them...while its noble and righteous to be selfless it doesnt help pay the bills or secure the livelihood of loved ones. sounds great in principal but in the real world you need to be rather selfish to get anywhere and avoid being trampled and used by others.

what happens if everyone in this thread is wrong and Lock actually ends up fixing things and gets back on track? if pros listened to people on these forums they'd end up burning bridges with Lock, of which there would be no going back....
keep in mind they are being told by people inside the company that things are OK and will be better soon! i highly doubt any of these pros would be so naive and clueless if they had ANY real inclination or evidence of real, tangible problems at Lock(no matter how obvious it may seem to us...its still speculation).

I mean even if the company was going under or suffering from major issues....would they REALLY be telling their site pros(who bring in tons of new players/deposits) or drop hints of financial problems while popping champagne bottles on their escapades in Portugal?

i think the majority of people are angry and rightfully so, but I also believe you are attacking the wrong people....i do agree that actively promoting the site while the situation is so volatile/unclear is shady and def looks immoral.

however we aren't aware of their obligations/contract with Lock and maybe they have little choice but to post twitter/facebook promos and attract referrals. either way its still their decision and choice...they could make it clear in other ways they are deeply concerned with the issues at Lock without damaging their reputation and relationship with the company in irreparable ways.

Its not true that none of the lower level FTP pros caught flack over the failure of FTP, and its also not true that Phil Hellmuth didn't catch any flack over UB, although I can see arguing that he didn't catch enough flack. This case is very different though, because this ship can be seen sinking from a mile away and these people are choosing to ignore it and continue to issue false assurances.

Thanks for taking the time to read this thread durrr.
Any and all information that you can share with your followers would help as clearly the people at lock think they can run amuck with ppls money and suffer no consequences.
If you have time and dig a bit deeper in the forums you will see countless examples of reprehensible and suspicious behavior.

And just because ppl werent sufficiently flamed in these instances it doesnt mean we should just roll
Over and let it happen again because at some point our standard will change and these people will feel
Some of the ramifications.

Or we can just not complain or point out the hypocrisy and let it happen