You know nice guys can still scam right? And scam hard and ruthless. Erick obv gave off that nice guy image but that doesn't change the fact that he scammed for lots of money. However I'm not surprised that back in the day he paid $600 to someone he owed. First it's only $600 and at that time he was flushed with money from Full Tilt. I recall reading he was getting hundreds of thousands a month from them. So he had access to millions of free money every year from Full Tilt so not surprised he paid that $600 and probably paid other debts then. But after Full Tilt got exposed so did he. My friend told me he now gets staked low buy in tournaments and sattys in some California card clubs like Oceans 11 by Rene the Storage Wars dude.

I played with Gavin during an overnight session at the Bellagio… maybe 2006? He had two young ladies with him who he was staking in the game and they were losing aggressively. When they busted, he would pull out a huge wad of cash and buy them back in. He talked about having a $30k+ day on the golf course so the repeated $500 buy-ins were no big deal. Much like the others have said, he was drinking heavily that night but was funny and friendly to everyone at the table… except the dealer- there were some ones he clearly didn’t like very much. I still remember a hand to this day he called a bluff where I was representing nut clubs in a $1200+ pot.

Wow, I really miss 2008.

I really only have one. I was at the WSOP in like 2007 and played a $1500 PLHE tourney where he was at the table and busted me in the first orbit (remember that back then, a $1500 tournament meant T1500 and you started at 25-50). If I remember the hand (details maybe not quite exact, but more or less correct), I potted preflop with AA and he called. The flop was something like JT3 rainbow and I potted and he called. The turn was some innocuous card that put a two-flush on board. He checked and I checked. The river completed the running flush, he bet, I jammed, he called and turned over 97 for the runner flush so I was out.

I moped around Vegas for the day and then came here to post my bust out hand (as we did back in the day when it was still somewhat unique for someone from 2p2 to be playing WSOP events) and the first five responses were from people saying he'd talked about the hand on his podcast that night. I listened to it and he misstated the action most of the way so he looked like a genius and I looked like a fool, instead of him calling a pot-sized bet on the flop short-stacked with an undercard gutshot and getting lucky.

Can't say I ever saw him as the hilarious and wonderful addition to the poker world most people did. I might still be bitter about it.

So, were you jamming 1 pair as a bluff to get a fold, or was it a "OMG I have Aces" jam? Since it's 2007, I'd say good chance it's the later.

It was not exactly well played by me on the river. The thought of a runner flush never crossed my mind and I thought he had AJ/KJ/QJ. 2007 poker was just like that.