Cate Hall Staking Dispute
06-10-2019
, 12:12 AM
Quote:
Sorry in advance for the tl;dr. I will put cliffs at the bottom. Also, before I get started, let me just state that I know Cate is not going to pay me anything, and I'm not saying all of this to try to get any money. I just know as someone who backs people and has been ripped off before, I always hear the warnings after the fact, and I wish I was warned before hand. So, this is my warning to anyone who might consider backing Cate Hall in the future.
My relevant staking deal terms with over 40 horses including Cate Hall are as follows:
-You may only play stakes/games that I've permitted
-You can't be on drugs/drink alcohol while you play
-If I drop you, you owe nothing, but if for any reason you leave the stake, you owe your makeup.
I explained these alone with all the other rules/profits splits etc with Cate over the phone. I gave her permission to play $5/$10 (as she requested) but also made it clear that lower stakes games were also on stake. I know not everyone will agree with someone quitting poker and owing their makeup, but I also give horses 2/3 of their profit, and give them the opportunity to play in very good high stakes games, some I coach and invest a lot of time in etc. I'm allowed to make my terms and it's up to the other party as to whether or not they want to have a business partnership under my terms. More importantly, whether you agree these terms are standard or not, Cate - as well as all of my other horses - agreed to them.
Cate has a tweet hinting that I insisted all things be done on the phone (presumably so that there is no text trail and I can scum people at will) but this obviously isn't true. I'm obviously not staking someone hoping that when they lose $60k of my money so I can scum them later for some kind of buyout. I've had people be in deeper makeup than Cate with no problem. I've also had people quit poker and I forgave their makeup because we had a good staking/personal relationship.
History:
I had seen Cate Hall around at Maryland Live Poker room a while back. At some point she approached me for coaching. I quoted her a price - which is high and I tell everyone who asks that they're better off getting a subscription to a training site than paying me. She does not pay for the coaching, but we remain friendly.
She goes on her tournament heater, and starts playing bigger cash games (went from $5/$10 to $10/$25 which is the biggest game that ran). Sometimes $25/$50 would go and she would sell me action. As she gained notoriety and got invites to bigger games - if the lineup was good, I would buy all the action she wanted to sell. For instance, when she played the all ladies Poker Night In America, I had 66% of her action (maybe 60%). When she played Mike Dentale heads up, I had 80% of her action. This continued when she played in games like Live At The Bike too with me taking huge pieces of her. This information is only relevant because she makes the following claim:
"A deal like the one Chad describes — where the player is on the hook for 100% of losses, regardless of whether they keep playing on roll, keep playing off roll, or stop playing — isn’t a staking deal, it’s a loan. And it’s a usurious loan — one where the player is paying 50% of profits in perpetuity as interest.
A deal like this is also equivalent to selling action at an enormous markdown.
In a recent exchange, Chad said that if I’d wanted a deal like I described, I should have just kept selling action to him (which I frequently did for big games in the past). But that’s the point: If I sold 50% of my action to Chad, I bore 50% of losses and got 50% of gains. Why would I ever move from that to a relationship where I bore 100% of losses and got 50% of gains?
A deal like this would make no sense for me to enter: I had no liquidity issues, as Chad and I explicitly discussed. My only consideration in entering into this deal was to have downside protection — which we also explicitly discussed. The deal that Chad says we had would offer me no downside protection, and would charge me 50% of profits for nothing but access to cash that I could have equally borrowed from myself for 0%. I would not have agreed to play 1/3 under those terms, much less 50/100/200."
Why would I go from putting up 80% of the money and getting 80% of the profit, to 100% of the money with 100% of the loss? Backers have to protect themselves, and staking is not a freeroll. This post sums up how staking is in my situation (I do not know or stake this person).
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=469
So, even if Cate assumed she didn't owe any makeup if she quit, then it was still scummy to take a huge shot and then quit poker.
Cate as a horse and integrity of our stake:
On April 6th I gave Cate $10,000 to start our staking deal. She played 9 sessions that month, and a session on the 1st of May. The next 4 months time she does not play. August 22nd she starts putting in volume again. I am rarely at the casino (once or twice a month usually), and there is a trust as a backer that horses are following the rules we outlined. I hear from a few people she's playing tough $10/$25 lineups that she isn't supposed to while she "waits for $5/$10" and I hear that she's "on another planet" and "couldn't beat $1/$3 right now" from multiple regs who don't even know I stake her when I do return to the casino. All this is around the time she is huffing nitrous to the point where she was struggling to walk. I don't know for certain if she was ever high while playing, but certainly I wouldn't want her playing while doing drugs as I've already had a bad experience with a horse doing that.
She plays a normal grinder schedule with losing results for three weeks from August 22nd-September 15th and then doesn't play the rest of the year. She told me she had health issues etc, and I did not bother her about putting in volume while she was in her nitrous huffing phase, but I did feel slighted because she was stuck around $23k at the time and had hardly put in any volume.
January 6th she came back and played 3 sessions losing $12,500 and saying she came back too soon. Not sure if that meant she was still doing heavy drugs or what, but I heard she was punting. I was not upset and tried to be understanding. Late in January I had another horse pass away from an overdose. She shared with me that she had offered to split the drugs he had OD'd on - which again I have a rule that you aren't allowed to be on drugs while playing so this shows her lack of interest and integrity towards the stake and her makeup figure. After his death, she begins to play short sessions for the rest of February. 14 sessions total and wins $2,800.
In March I organized a handful of games while Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow and Brandon Cantu were in town. Cate played in two of the games (they were $25/$50 with a $200 ante or $25/$50/$100 with a $300 ante, can't remember which ones she played) and she lost $27,000.
I send her the following message in our poker results group chat, and she makes no attempt to continue stake or even communicate for months (and this is before any bad blood). She never responded in it or addressed that I even requested her to put in volume. Months later she just claimed she was going to quit poker.
So, whether or not you like my rule of *you owe makeup anytime you quit stake* or not, this is the exact reason I do it. So someone can't agree to play a huge game, lose a bunch of money and then simply quit to avoid the time it takes to grind it back. Even if she did think this she was freerolling makeup, a backer deserves to know whether or not someone is quitting stake/contemplating quitting stake before they put them in a game 10x higher than they normally play, and it's pretty scummy to shot take something like that and bail even if the agreement was as she says - which it was not and never has been with any horse I've staked.
Arbitration:
Once I tell her she owes her makeup if she leaves stake we agree to a binding arbitration. I know I'm owed all the money, but I did think it was my own fault for not having proof of our specific terms (really my fault for a poor judge in character and ignoring warnings to not stake her) so I agree to only take half. Arbitrators say she should buy out or stay on stake. I don't know why she says I haven't agreed to this because I have never said that. I continue to agree to it.
In the emails she shared I try to make a point in my last email that if her intention is to say "I'll play on stake and grind out of makeup instead of buying out" but then scum me by never actually grinding on stake and I'm left waiting around for ten years with no action, that I would also be able to bend the agreement and out her because that is also not technically against our staking agreement. I was trying to say "lets both play fair" and not being sure it was interpreted that way, I sent her the following text after reading her email response.
She goes off to attack my character etc after that.
(she posted all the emails on her twitter if you want to read them, trying not to make this post even longer.)
Cliffs:
-Cate Hall claims she does not remember out staking terms and she owes no makeup.
-She got $60k in makeup and then stopped grinding or responding to me. She showed no interest in grinding out of her makeup figure.
-She has "quit poker" but not returned what's let of her bankroll.
-She has made false claims about how I have threatened her with lawsuits.
-She makes a false claim about how I agreed to arbitration and then refused to accept their agreement.
I haven't read everything on Twitter yet, but happy to answer any questions in here that I haven't already addressed.
My relevant staking deal terms with over 40 horses including Cate Hall are as follows:
-You may only play stakes/games that I've permitted
-You can't be on drugs/drink alcohol while you play
-If I drop you, you owe nothing, but if for any reason you leave the stake, you owe your makeup.
I explained these alone with all the other rules/profits splits etc with Cate over the phone. I gave her permission to play $5/$10 (as she requested) but also made it clear that lower stakes games were also on stake. I know not everyone will agree with someone quitting poker and owing their makeup, but I also give horses 2/3 of their profit, and give them the opportunity to play in very good high stakes games, some I coach and invest a lot of time in etc. I'm allowed to make my terms and it's up to the other party as to whether or not they want to have a business partnership under my terms. More importantly, whether you agree these terms are standard or not, Cate - as well as all of my other horses - agreed to them.
Cate has a tweet hinting that I insisted all things be done on the phone (presumably so that there is no text trail and I can scum people at will) but this obviously isn't true. I'm obviously not staking someone hoping that when they lose $60k of my money so I can scum them later for some kind of buyout. I've had people be in deeper makeup than Cate with no problem. I've also had people quit poker and I forgave their makeup because we had a good staking/personal relationship.
History:
I had seen Cate Hall around at Maryland Live Poker room a while back. At some point she approached me for coaching. I quoted her a price - which is high and I tell everyone who asks that they're better off getting a subscription to a training site than paying me. She does not pay for the coaching, but we remain friendly.
She goes on her tournament heater, and starts playing bigger cash games (went from $5/$10 to $10/$25 which is the biggest game that ran). Sometimes $25/$50 would go and she would sell me action. As she gained notoriety and got invites to bigger games - if the lineup was good, I would buy all the action she wanted to sell. For instance, when she played the all ladies Poker Night In America, I had 66% of her action (maybe 60%). When she played Mike Dentale heads up, I had 80% of her action. This continued when she played in games like Live At The Bike too with me taking huge pieces of her. This information is only relevant because she makes the following claim:
"A deal like the one Chad describes — where the player is on the hook for 100% of losses, regardless of whether they keep playing on roll, keep playing off roll, or stop playing — isn’t a staking deal, it’s a loan. And it’s a usurious loan — one where the player is paying 50% of profits in perpetuity as interest.
A deal like this is also equivalent to selling action at an enormous markdown.
In a recent exchange, Chad said that if I’d wanted a deal like I described, I should have just kept selling action to him (which I frequently did for big games in the past). But that’s the point: If I sold 50% of my action to Chad, I bore 50% of losses and got 50% of gains. Why would I ever move from that to a relationship where I bore 100% of losses and got 50% of gains?
A deal like this would make no sense for me to enter: I had no liquidity issues, as Chad and I explicitly discussed. My only consideration in entering into this deal was to have downside protection — which we also explicitly discussed. The deal that Chad says we had would offer me no downside protection, and would charge me 50% of profits for nothing but access to cash that I could have equally borrowed from myself for 0%. I would not have agreed to play 1/3 under those terms, much less 50/100/200."
Why would I go from putting up 80% of the money and getting 80% of the profit, to 100% of the money with 100% of the loss? Backers have to protect themselves, and staking is not a freeroll. This post sums up how staking is in my situation (I do not know or stake this person).
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=469
So, even if Cate assumed she didn't owe any makeup if she quit, then it was still scummy to take a huge shot and then quit poker.
Cate as a horse and integrity of our stake:
On April 6th I gave Cate $10,000 to start our staking deal. She played 9 sessions that month, and a session on the 1st of May. The next 4 months time she does not play. August 22nd she starts putting in volume again. I am rarely at the casino (once or twice a month usually), and there is a trust as a backer that horses are following the rules we outlined. I hear from a few people she's playing tough $10/$25 lineups that she isn't supposed to while she "waits for $5/$10" and I hear that she's "on another planet" and "couldn't beat $1/$3 right now" from multiple regs who don't even know I stake her when I do return to the casino. All this is around the time she is huffing nitrous to the point where she was struggling to walk. I don't know for certain if she was ever high while playing, but certainly I wouldn't want her playing while doing drugs as I've already had a bad experience with a horse doing that.
She plays a normal grinder schedule with losing results for three weeks from August 22nd-September 15th and then doesn't play the rest of the year. She told me she had health issues etc, and I did not bother her about putting in volume while she was in her nitrous huffing phase, but I did feel slighted because she was stuck around $23k at the time and had hardly put in any volume.
January 6th she came back and played 3 sessions losing $12,500 and saying she came back too soon. Not sure if that meant she was still doing heavy drugs or what, but I heard she was punting. I was not upset and tried to be understanding. Late in January I had another horse pass away from an overdose. She shared with me that she had offered to split the drugs he had OD'd on - which again I have a rule that you aren't allowed to be on drugs while playing so this shows her lack of interest and integrity towards the stake and her makeup figure. After his death, she begins to play short sessions for the rest of February. 14 sessions total and wins $2,800.
In March I organized a handful of games while Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow and Brandon Cantu were in town. Cate played in two of the games (they were $25/$50 with a $200 ante or $25/$50/$100 with a $300 ante, can't remember which ones she played) and she lost $27,000.
I send her the following message in our poker results group chat, and she makes no attempt to continue stake or even communicate for months (and this is before any bad blood). She never responded in it or addressed that I even requested her to put in volume. Months later she just claimed she was going to quit poker.
So, whether or not you like my rule of *you owe makeup anytime you quit stake* or not, this is the exact reason I do it. So someone can't agree to play a huge game, lose a bunch of money and then simply quit to avoid the time it takes to grind it back. Even if she did think this she was freerolling makeup, a backer deserves to know whether or not someone is quitting stake/contemplating quitting stake before they put them in a game 10x higher than they normally play, and it's pretty scummy to shot take something like that and bail even if the agreement was as she says - which it was not and never has been with any horse I've staked.
Arbitration:
Once I tell her she owes her makeup if she leaves stake we agree to a binding arbitration. I know I'm owed all the money, but I did think it was my own fault for not having proof of our specific terms (really my fault for a poor judge in character and ignoring warnings to not stake her) so I agree to only take half. Arbitrators say she should buy out or stay on stake. I don't know why she says I haven't agreed to this because I have never said that. I continue to agree to it.
In the emails she shared I try to make a point in my last email that if her intention is to say "I'll play on stake and grind out of makeup instead of buying out" but then scum me by never actually grinding on stake and I'm left waiting around for ten years with no action, that I would also be able to bend the agreement and out her because that is also not technically against our staking agreement. I was trying to say "lets both play fair" and not being sure it was interpreted that way, I sent her the following text after reading her email response.
She goes off to attack my character etc after that.
(she posted all the emails on her twitter if you want to read them, trying not to make this post even longer.)
Cliffs:
-Cate Hall claims she does not remember out staking terms and she owes no makeup.
-She got $60k in makeup and then stopped grinding or responding to me. She showed no interest in grinding out of her makeup figure.
-She has "quit poker" but not returned what's let of her bankroll.
-She has made false claims about how I have threatened her with lawsuits.
-She makes a false claim about how I agreed to arbitration and then refused to accept their agreement.
I haven't read everything on Twitter yet, but happy to answer any questions in here that I haven't already addressed.
06-10-2019
, 07:48 AM
06-10-2019
, 03:16 PM
06-10-2019
, 03:45 PM
06-16-2019
, 11:27 AM
