he is a thief imo demetri , if all that is true.

He was constantly lying to you and taking advantage, then spinning more and more lies to keep it going as long as possible.

I hope you get as much back as you can.

Would love to see someone takes these ****'s to court, they act as if make up is money borrowed. It's an investment and when ye drop a horse a loss should come with that!

Another thing I here pocarr and demitri are doing is lending horse's money(this so called "wage") and then double the loan gets added to the horse's make up. This is outright disgraceful behaviour imo

if you loan a horse money, you are essentially giving them an advance on winnings. most deals are 50/50 so for every $1 profit a horse only gets 50c, meaning if you give them $1k loan (advance on winnings) the actual winnings they would have to win to make that $1k from profits is $2k and thus why the loan (advance on winnings) is doubled on the makeup. The horse has to win $2k to earn his $1k or pay back his $1k

Unless i have been missing something for years, this is pretty standard in backing when dealing with loans? I might be wrong

Don't mention my name in this nonsense, I have never done that

You obviously have no clue how make up works.

If a horse chops/makes $1,000 it is chopped 600 them 400 me (on a 60/40 deal, it would be 500 them 500 me on a 50/50 deal)

if they are in make up and do a PRE chop, it is the same thing/effect. I get 400 they get 600. no different from when they chopped in 1k profit

you berk

+1

I've got sympathy for demitri, who appears to have been the victim of an outright scam.

The Tom Friedman one I think depends on exactly how far away he was from meeting volume goals. I wouldn't consider posting on the forum or watching 'x' number of strategy videos to be a material part of the agreement. Volume is a different matter...if he's meeting 90% of his volume then I don't think it's a reason to drop, 20% would of course be another matter entirely.

The 'stole our time' thing is of course ridiculous either way. When a stake goes bad it generally means everyone has lost out on their time (usually horse hasn't made profit so is out on his time, while the backer is out on their money and a smaller amount of time for admin, coaching etc).

I definitely see your point, the forum posting/video watching stuff are significantly less important than other parts of the contract. That said, it IS a contract that was willingly signed by the horse and he violated it. I'm not saying that makes him a thief/scammer, but it does allow the other party to end the agreement and be owed makeup, provided that too was listed in the contract.

Yeah agreed. The horse decided to sign a strict but reasonable contract. It's not like it's a ridiculous slave contract like whoever that 180man guy was. As long as they warned the horse a time or two to start meeting the quotas then it seems a reasonable reason to drop. Horses need to do a better job of reading what they are agreeing to when entering a stake.

The problem is once you start getting into enforcing really tiny rules like that, which aren't material to the main point of the contract (i.e. 'I give you money, and you play poker for me with that money, and we split profits'), the potential for dickery is endless.

From the stakers side, there's the potential to end stakes over very minor transgressions, and it's kind of a freeroll in the sense that they'd happily end it in MU and demand repayment, but if horse had shipped a big score during the time he was breaking the rules, they'd have been shouting from the rooftops if they didn't get their 50% cut.

And it's not only horses that break rules. What if it's in a contract that a staker will reload a horse within 24 hours, but he ends up taking 28 hours? Could the horse, at 1 minute past the 24 hour point, declare himself free of the stake and free of any MU obligation? What if in the contract it says the horse gets 1 hour of coaching a week, but the coach that week never showed up. What if this happened two weeks in a row? Can he happily head for the exit door with no questions asked? I'd say no - but then again I'd consider both things to be equally as minor as something like not writing enough forum posts for the month, or not watching some specified strategy video.

I mean by the strict letter of the contract, they can drop I suppose, but it's probably not their most +EV play (since no horse on the planet that is dropped for not watching videos is ever going to repay a dime), and if they get angleshot later down the line by a horse over some technicality in the contract then there can be no complaints. I just think it's healthier for everyone to not nitpick over tiny details in contracts so long as the main terms are being fulfilled (which are: staker sends money to play poker on a timely basis, horse plays the specified games and volume with that money, the profits are split according to agreement)

Backers can drop horses whenever they want, for whatever reason they feel like giving.

It's perfectly reasonable for a backer to demand repayment of makeup when a horse willfully breaks the contract by playing unauthorised games, refusing to use coaching material, failing to meet volume targets etc. as otherwise the backer is exposed to an obvious angleshooting opportunity when a player gets deep in MU and deliberately gets dropped. It's fair that Pocarr and other staking groups should take reasonable steps to enforce their contracts and demand that players in breach should repay makeup.

All that said, nobody's going to convince me that it's reasonable to blackmail a player who hasn't actually stolen anything into repaying makeup by threatening to put up a "xxxxisathief" site if they don't comply.

Of course, but they can't drop for 'any reason' and then expect to be repaid.

The first one (unauthorised games) for sure, failing to meet volume targets...maybe, though it depends how severe (i.e. running 10% below required volume for a month is not a valid reason IMO). Refusing to use coaching material I would say only very rarely qualifies for repayment of makeup, since picking a losing horse is a risk the backer takes, plus there's the issue that some 'coaching material' out there sucks donkey balls.

I just don't see all 'breaches' of contract as the same. There's 'material' breaches and 'immaterial' breaches - stuff like forum posts, watching videos, a couple of hours delay when it comes to reloads, the backer missing a coaching session etc are all in the realm of insignificant breaches, IMO. If it can be judged that a horse should have to repay 100% because he doesn't watch some videos and post on a forum, what about if some horse didn't get enough coaching sessions that month as per his contract, but ships a big MTT then says 'nah, I'm not giving you guys anything as you didn't fulfill the coaching part of the contract'. Everyone would be calling that guy scum. But if the backer can make small mistakes and still be entitled to a cut of the winnings (as I think is right) then the same must apply to the horse - he must be allowed to make small mistakes and not have to pay back all his makeup, otherwise the situation is grossly unbalanced.

Who gets to decide which rules are "really tiny" and which are "material?" Both parties agreed to all the rules, allowing one of them to not follow them and claim it's immaterial is going to lead to much more 'dickery' IMO.

Remember, the parties do not start out on equal footing. The backer assumes pretty much 100% of the risk in regards to

1) Will the horse even play (or will he steal the bankroll)?
2) Will he play within the specifed limits?
3) Will he listen to/attend coaching (when applicable)?
4) Will he be profitable?
5) If profitable, will he pay me my fair share?

Not to mention a litany of other worries, including any sort of deceptive behavior, using funds for non poker means, etc. Because the backer assumes so much risk, it's normal for him to set somewhat rigid rules/structure to avoid being angled.

Take a look at this thread; how many times has a horse came in here and made a compelling argument about being screwed by his backer? Compare that with the number of times a backer has been angled/etc and it's not even close. I'm not saying that there aren't shady backers out there, but if the standard agreement is a freeroll for one side it isn't the backer.

I don't disagree with this in theory, but I see no harm in deciding cases individually rather than relying on a generic blanket statement. In poker terms, if someone asked "How do you play this hand" the answer is usually "it depends" and the same can be applied for backer/horse conflicts IMO.

George Lee / Georgiy Li
Pokerstars (and most other sites): mad1lee
2+2: mad1lee

Cliffs: George walked out on 85k in MTT makeup to go play cash games.

We staked George since August 2013. He won an okay amount of money in the early days, and then in the last 12 months went deeper and deeper into makeup. We were happy to continue because we believed in his ability and had a very strong relationship with him. A player going into deep makeup is never a good situation, but with George we weren't as concerned because of his work ethic, history and because he seemed very honest.

While George was deep in makeup, we paid him to do individual and group coaching sessions in the stable when work was available. We also did the usual things like putting in a framework to allow him to make cashouts when he cleared parts of his makeup, gave some small life loans, plus things like buying him a monitor and desk, and printing and mailing materials we had made to Russia.

George came to us recently while in 85k of MU and said that he had gotten an offer from his friend, Ch33s3z0r (high-stakes Russian reg), to play cash games and receive coaching, and that he was going to walk out on his makeup to do so. The only thing George offered in return was to play out a token number of tournaments (3-5k was proposed by him) on the deal before leaving regardless of what the makeup amount was after this number of tournaments. This was not a reasonable starting point for discussions and we refused to engage on it.

Whilst we didn't want to negotiate that, we did make it clear that we were happy to do anything to make it comfortable for him to continue to play under the deal, e.g. by offering increased rakeback / life loans / a 'makeup aside' arrangement whereby he could start making money straight away and a % would go to paying off makeup. We were willing to explore any combination of these to get an outcome that worked for both of us. George had no interest in discussing any of these items, repeatedly stating 'that is not going to work for me'.

We are not sure if Ch33s3z0r realises the full detail of George's situation and the implications of his own actions, i.e. that he is essentially enabling a scam to take place. We have asked George to put us in contact with his friend, but he has apparently refused to let George share his contact details with us.

George sent the remaining bankroll back and has admitted that what he has done is very scummy. Needless to say, this sucks, it's a lot of money and we are very shocked that it has come to this with someone we considered a friend for a long time.

Pocarr looked pretty bad until rtinion posted the list of way more tournies played out of stake limits.. if he was supposed to play up to 44s and played one specific 55 multiple times and clearly misunderstood the situation, split the profit of the 55 when won etc their response would have been way overreacting and whilst technically their "right" basically absurd. despite whatever reasoning they gave, common sense obviously overpowers it... obviously it makes sense to have some rules but just like in non poker situations judgement should be used where appropriate. in fact I don't even think they have the right at some extent, there's too much incentive for the backers to find some nitty detail and demand full make up to be repaid which is obviously incredibly unfair ev wise in many scenarios. see grinder4all 3620# post

also must be the 10th person to say the stole our time thing is absolute bs, powertripping and abuse of positioning. seriously who had that great idea?

but given new evidence seems to suggest he played many tourneys way out (incl 215$ BI etc) he's in the wrong. although im pretty sure they didn't know that until they dug it up.. meh

(talking about two different cases in this post)

https://tomsfreimanisisathief.wordpress.com

edit: just saw this site.. wtf?? This is ridiculous.. just because you make the agreement that you can do this doesn't make it right or OK, blackmailing ppl into sending you money by hugely exaggerating is a massive overreaction. what he did (if I understood correctly) should not warrant his name coming up with being a thief on Google, it warrants warnings, a demanding of repayment and a warning in this thread/to the poker world not outside of the poker world.

it even has his address and personal details lol, pretty sure he can sue you for this (won't happen in practice but just saying).. you guys also posted many pics of him with ppl (that are completely not related to this issue) who you didnt blur out their faces etc...???!

all the terms
didn't watch enough training videos
didn't post forums enough
didn't play enough games

show the bad form/laziness of a horse who shouldn't be staked but not someone who is scumbag/thief (alone). he could do all of things (especially the first two) really easily and it be a complete waste of time/energy for both (especially letting the videos run without actually watching) and lie to you guys but he didn't..

I mean whatever wouldn't necessarily say I would avoid dealing with Pocarr since no one should plan to breach such terms obviously but it's pretty poor business to be so unreasonably harsh and probably a poor ev decision too. people are human, if you try hard you can find breaches from almost everyone sometimes (mostly unintentional, small ones like oops he posted 4 instead of 5 times, or oops he didn't watch enough videos this week, oops he had something come up so missed 1 week out of 30 in volume etc).
I assume you probably tried discussing with him (but details aren't clear on the site), but still.

Completely agree with OMGClayDol. I think a thief site with these exact contract violations are way out of line. Calling someone a thief public on internet for stealing time!! and not watch enough vids!!, make enough posts!!, play enough (slightly better but still not even close to what a thief is), cmon...

turns out hypnotic242 had a heart attack so underwent heart surgery. this explains him not getting in touch with any of my messages and not playing poker. he has been in touch and paid off his MU and is looking for a new staker. he was a very hard worker and reliable guy when i staked him.

The vast majority would be able to be sorted out through simple common sense (i.e: horse cashing out the bank roll to spend on hookers and blow = major, horse playing 10 games volume out of a required 2000 in a month = major, horse not updating his rail one time within 24 hours after busting out of his sunday schedule MTT's = minor).

For anything else, well I guess they'd have to go to arbitration.
For sure, both parties agreed, and it still reflects badly on the party that is not following the rules, even if they are minor parts of the contract. However, just because minor parts of the contract are breached does not cancel the contract as a whole.

This is true outside of poker as well. If you have an employee contracted to work 9am-5pm, but they show up once at 9:02am, that doesn't warrant a sacking. It wouldn't even warrant a sacking if they did it regularly.

I'm not saying only one party can decide not to follow the rules, I'd extend the same benefit to the backer. If a backer is supposed to reload his horses within 24 hours, but for whatever reason he takes a few hours longer (or even a day longer), I don't think the horses can just walk out over it and say they were 'dropped'.
These are just the risks of running a business though. All businesses when taking on new staff have risks (what if they can't do the job and require costly training to improve? What if they will get sick and need time off while we're still paying them?). It doesn't justify angling their employees for stuff like taking a 17 minute break when they're only entitled to 15 minutes.
Yes I agree here. The individual facts of the case are very important. Though I'm struggling to see a scenario where making forum posts and watching videos will ever be cause to be repaid 100% (and thus grant the staker a complete freeroll).

Maybe one of the problems is that all too often these seem to be 'all or nothing' type arguments made from the backer and horse. The horse, having breached some minor rules, doesn't want to pay anything (and thus freerolling his backer), but the backer believes he's entitled to 100% (thus freerolling the horse).

I know this isn't the way it's currently done in the industry, but I think the fairest way to determine MU owed would be on a sliding scale (i.e. an outright scam or theft gets 100% returned, some minor thing that the backer is probably trying to angle over gets 10-20% returned, stuff in the middle gets 40-70% returned depending on severity). Too often both parties sit at dramatically opposite ends of the spectrum, with one demanding 100% (a unreasonable pipe dream considering if the guy was in a position to pay 100%, why the hell would he get staked anyway) and the other saying he won't pay a cent (rather scummy, and unreasonable too).

I think we're mostly in agreement.

It could tho, if it's something you've told them repeatedly and they refuse to adhere to the rules. A similar analogy would be if a horse plays just a bit outside the roll. I've only been in business for a few months and I've had several guys do it, some on purpose and some on accident. At what point am I allowed to drop the guy who does it in purpose? On accident, assuming it continues to keep happening?

Heh, well it's a bit difficult to give hard and fast concrete rules with this stuff as I'm sure you know.

It's really going to depend on the facts of individual case. Let's say you have a horse contracted to play $20 ABI or less, send him a roll that corresponds to those buyin levels, and then the first week of the stake he goes and plays the Sunday Million. I'd say that was grounds for termination (and full repayment) right away, since that one buyin would represent a significant part of the roll, and his makeup would be relatively low (i.e. a few hundred dollars). Having to pay back a few hundred bucks for making such a huge error (relative to the stakes he was allowed to play) seems fair.

Taking another example, let's say you've got a horse who through bad luck or whatever, ends up in $50k makeup. He's contracted to play up to $255 ABI, which he sticks to. However, every week, he goes and plays a couple of orbits of 2nl cash even though it's a tournament stake. In this scenario I'd say there's no real limit to how many times he can do that before having to repay $50k since while it might be annoying to the backer it's not having a material effect on the stake (as the losses would literally be measured in pocket change) and having to repay 50 grand because you made a bad decision with 2 bucks is never going to be a proportional punishment.

I know that's not really a satisfactory answer since it all depends on the backer and horses individual view of what is 'reasonable'. The most reasonable thing of all of course is simply for the horse to reg the damned games he's supposed to and nothing else.

BTW if you've been having a few problems with horses playing outside the roll, maybe you could require them to set buyin restrictions on their account prior to joining your group? Just set the max buyin to whatever the maximum stake tournament is they are allowed to play, and put cash games to 'DO NOT PLAY' (I'm assuming you're staking tournaments/SNG's and not cash games?). You could verify they've done this via teamviewer or skype.

It doesn't stop them reversing the buyin restrictions after you've sent them the money, but it does prevent them saying 'oh, my bad, it was an accident'.

idk, i def get where you are coming from but if a horse has repeatedly broken small rules then i think it becomes fair for the backer to drop them. Just like I think it'd be fair if a backer was repeatedly a few days late on reloading their player for no good reason then the player should likely be allowed to search out a different backer. If these small things happen continually on either end then it shows a disrespect of their business relationship and if someone is stupid enough to make the same mistake over and over after being told not to then I don't see how it matters that the monetary amt doesn't fit the actual severity of the individual crime. If you were tilting away a few dollars at cash games and your backer told you to stop and you continued to do it over and over and over again you'd have to be stupid/incredibly disrespectful. Unfortunately it's always going to be subjective where the line is of how many warnings it is reasonable to give someone, so I'm not sure what the best solution is. But I don't agree that the horse or the backer should just be allowed to not follow less important rules repeatedly because it doesn't have an immediate large financial impact on the stake.

It also seems reasonable that they expect horses to be on top of watching vids and posting in their forums in order to improve. The horse knows they are agreeing to this going into it, so I don't think it's shady to drop them for this as long as they've been given a couple warnings that they need to start hitting their benchmarks.

didn't read all the posts but of course dropping for repeated "small" offenses is one thing but posting this thief site with photos of them, photos of their friends/family, address etc is absurd, nothing else to say

yeah agree with this for sure

FB: https://www.facebook.com/dcalado?fref=ts
Nick Stars : leaderdmafia ( UK )
Name: Délcio Calado

Stole around 800€ which 200€ I sent him via Skrill for a transaction, rest was a deal I had with him betting-related (its not poker related but he is known in the poker community). He keeps saying to other people - as he ignores me all the time - that hes keeping the money because I didnt invest in a staking deal he proposed me - valued 150€.

So he is walking out on 85k MU to play cash?

Name: Phil Hunger
PS: roselotte
Skype: hunger2009
Email: philhunger@yahoo.de

Just seen a thread above about Phil Hunger scamming.

We took him on as we couldn't find any negative feedback at that time, decent MTT results, he was after a deal after cashing out his roll to buy a house (so he said). Couple days later he returned the $500 roll due to "personal issues". Week later he was ready start again and played a few games and even sent us a $225 split. Its now been a couple of weeks and he's blocked us off skype and gone with the $500 roll in his account.

Shame really as seemingly a well respected and decent player.

Do not stake