As some of you might know, I backed many players, and have been asked to arbitrate on matters such as this many times.

I was asked to serve as a consultant and expert witness in a dispute which actually got brought to trial. Needless to say, I have heard just about all of the arguments set forth in this dispute before.

Of course, the most obvious comment is that all backing arrangements are unique, and the terms of the agreement should dictate the result of any and all disputes. (Although, that is not always true----but that is irrelevant here).

What is always interesting is what happens in the absence of any agreement---


Assuming a contract, written or otherwise, exists, step one is to determine if there is a breach, and then to determine appropriate remedies.


I believe that Cate's first argument along the legal chain should be that the agreement itself is unenforceable. Even if they put some of it in writing, it is usually good law that for a contract to exists, there must be some time period set for which the parties agree to perform. To hold that Cate is responsible to play for the rest of her life until makeup is cleared, in the absence of a set time period, would likely be a bad argument. This is why most good staking contracts nowadays should be time and volume based, not one or the other, but both, and certainly not neither.

Honestly, the more I think about these backing disputes, the more I think this is a critical point.

Nonetheless, skipping to the "fun" part of the arguments----

1.Assuming the agreement exists, and is enforceable at all, did Cate "breach"? My opinion would be that she did, in that there is certainly an implied duty to act in good faith, to play, to play to the best of ability as well. For many reasons, she did not do that.
Was the breach justified? That is boring discussion, so lets move on.....

2.Assuming she did in fact breach----what are Chad's remedies? Does she have to pay 100% of the generated makeup? This is where the majority of the arguments show up for both sides----

First of all, an interesting note. In the case I worked on as a consultant, (for the defense actually) the parties explicitly agreed in contract that if the player breached, then he would owe the whole makeup. The defense set forth some very persuasive arguments I thought which suggested that the remedy of full makeup payback could not be enforced, due to a combination of issues ranging from liquidated damages, to violative of the spirit of the relationship, among others. I actually thought the arguments were very persuasive. However, the judge ruled that the terms of the agreement should be enforceable. Although there were some offsetting arguments which caused the award to be almost nothing, the fact that the backing agreement itself was enforceable, as well as the makeup payback clause, was pretty interesting.


So, if the agreement between Cate and Chad DID call for full makeup payback, and we assume Cate did "materially" breach, then Chad should be entitled to that remedy.


However, since there was no real discussion of breach and damages in the agreement, the best way courts usually handle this is to put the parties in the position they would have been in had there been no breach, or to best make the parties "whole"

To this end, there is another question which I don't THINK was addressed----that being whether Cate was ever paid any other payouts during the relationship. I think this is an important point. Lets say that Cate won 100,000 and then was paid $50,000 as a profit share. Then lets say she lost $200,000 and then quit, breached whatever. Assuming the agreed upon payout was 50%, it has to be a reasonable assumption that the intent of the parties was that Chad and Cate would be staker/backer, that Chad would put up the money, and they would split the total profits. Seeing as the total results were negative $100,000 (200,000-100,000) then Cate being able to keep the $50,000 violates the essence of the agreement and at least that part she should have to owe.


More subtly----lets say in the same scenario, that after she wins 100,000 and gets a 50k payout, she loses $30,000 and quits. Total profits would then be $70,000. Seeing as she should only received 50% of total profits (35,000) then she should return $15,000 of what she took as a payout.


In any case, this was supposed to be a short post, and has now killed most of my morning lol, but I guess I haven't chimed in here for a while.


My advice would be to make the agreements as detailed as possible to avoid these messes.

Nothing in here is relevant (beyond popcorn/industry interest) except what the arbitrators ruled. If you agree to binding arbitration, I think we can all agree that you should follow the ruling.

Therefore, I think it's most helpful if the arbitrator(s) post their ruling in this thread and we can see who is really not following it and go from there.

Yes , this for the most part, although it certainly is good discussion to examine the pitfalls of these arrangements in the hope that they can be tightened up. (I guess that's industry interest)

^^^What you wrote.

What my brain came out of it with:

Implied poontang odds?

She should start a Go Fund Me campaign. Pay off her makeup in excange for disappearing from poker scene and deleting her Twitter. I'm in

For anyone asking about this, here is my other dispute.
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...hread-1368332/

She's capable of winning. Live $5/$10 isn't hard to win, but she gave up trying. When I thought she was sober I put her in a bigger game. Had I know she thought she could walk away and quit with no responsibility, I'd have not put her in. Had she known this, she should warn me or decline to play huge. It's scumming to take a huge shot like that and bail without even playing one normal session after. As I said before, staking isn't a big freeroll, and my deal is structured around having the ability to give people shots in bigger games. It's much different than just grinding a lower stake consistently.

I don't have a problem with it honestly, but I'm not going to call someone "honest to a fault" who does. I agree it's no ones business, and I told her I didn't mind what she told people.

Lower your risk of ruin. Freeroll a backer. Get to play bigger games and live up to a certain reputation you're trying to build. What's the point of me putting up 100% of the loss for 50% of the win or a future 33% of the win if I have no other incentive? I was already getting 60%+ without taking the full loss.

All the drug stuff is relevant. This post is
1. a response to everyone she brought up on Twitter
2. a warning to anyone who would consider backing her in the future when she forgets what arbitration rules.

How did I back out of the arbitration pledge? As far as blowing it up, again, this is my response to her. She didn't have to take to Twitter.


Three have either here or via twitter. When I say 40+ horses they aren't all current, I mean since I've started staking. I don't want to pressure any of them to get involved, and many don't have twitter/2+2.

She came to me initially for a $5/$10 stake. She had a standard downswing, and then stopped playing for months. Eventually she played again for a couple weeks then took months off again. She was in a bigger game that was softer than the average $5/$10 by a good margin.

At this point I already have $50k+ tied up in her, and I know she can win when she plays well, and I expect she will play well again.

She had a mental breakdown and I respected her space.

Worth saying that your heart wasn't in it on your first stint, and I dropped you as a courtesy so you didn't have to grind out of the hole because you were a good horse and friend. One the second stint you took on your old makeup figure, but when you quit in makeup you didn't have to pay the original makeup figure back.

imagine staking in 2018 and not having a contract

I'm not sure why this reply was moved to this thread, since it doesn't involve the Cate Hall dispute.

But the short answer is that while two players playing under the same staker have a common financial incentive with the same third party, they have no common financial incentive with each other.

If Player C is staking A and B, player C will care about both A and B's outcomes. But A shouldn't care about B's outcome, and vice versa.

Maybe not to you, but if I were a potential backer for someone, I would love to come across this in my background check on them. Arbitrators are welcome to chime in, but I'm not going to ask to drag them into this.

Everything sheets said sounds completely reasonable to me, but again, I'm not even trying to get paid or make a legal fuss. She played her last session in March over half a year ago, I've made peace with that money. I'm responding to her Twitter and warning any potential future backer when she likely "forgets" about our arbitration like she "forgot" about our staking terms. I'm still going to hold her accountable to arbitration.

gotta agree with my mans BP here



despite tweets like this making cate an infuriating person

Well, she had the option to not accept the stake given my terms. If you don't want to be on the hook for makeup when you quit, and you want to freeroll stake, go find a backer that lets you. Please give him my info too that sounds like fun.

Ultimately I went with the arbitrators as well since I don't have proof of our agreement, but personally I know it's wrong because I know what agreement I've had with every horse.

I would never stake someone who didn't agree to pay makeup if the event they quit playing poker, otherwise they're incentivized to just walk away if they dig themselves a big enough hole.

I wonder how Dentale feels knowing he was playing against someone with only 20% of their action.

If he's a rational person he wouldn't give a damn because it doesn't matter.

by cate's own admission she was drugged out all of the time and one of chad's rules was you can't play on drugs.
just on that alone she owes him the money.

If someone is hugely in make-up and wants to quit poker, you should want them to walk away, because they have absolutely no incentive to actually try to play well. The only other incentive they have is to deliberately continue to lose money until you drop them.

not true.
dentale for all of his crazy antics was correct back when they played that he wanted her to put up her money when they played.it makes all of the difference in the world when you're playing in bigger games whether or not you're playing your own money.if you play over your head you are going to play timid and make sub optimal decisions. it's way easier playing poker when the money doesn't matter to you.

all in all i'm not the least bit surprised cate is a total fraud.

Both she and Chad agreed to binding arbitration with respect to what she owes.
Therefore, she owes whatever the arbitrators say she owes.
Any other information is irrelevant, as it should have already been accounted for in the arbitration decision.

Chad's post definitely changes things a bit imo. She's technically still allowed to walk away but if what he says is true than she def handled things horribly and she should not just be walking away from it. If she really was taking a bunch of drugs while playing and playing higher stakes than she was supposed to be than she definitely should be willing to agree on some sort of fair buyout number. At the minimum she should be paying him back any money lost playing in games she wasn't supposed to be playing or was playing while under the influence.

Chad definitely made some errors in judgement though. It's nice that you gave her some space while having her mental breakdown but it sounds like you were way too lenient about letting her continue to play when you were having people telling you she was punting off. And it appears that there was already a long history of being a bad horse before allowing her to take shots in those big games. Having someone who already has a poor history of putting in volume and being a bad horse in a number of ways play in such a big game, especially while already in makeup, seems like a big oversight.

This is my take. Not sure why anyone would stake under this agreement. It seems like everyone is incentivized to take a shot under a backer at some point. If it doesn't work out, you walk away and try something else.

Just read the OP, the tweets, and about 50 posts (25 at the start and 25 at the end).

What's the big deal?

Cate and Chad both have spoken their truths. They even agree on the vast majority of the facts and they agree that the arbitrators' decision is final.

If you're a potential horse, don't sign up with Chad. If you're a potential backer, don't sign up Cate.

And get your agreements in writing.

Whole lot of drama about nothing.

Welp did chad stake her before or after he knew she was snorting?

Not a rhetorical question btw, i haz no idea either way

Wasn't aware the deal was it had to be 100% their own money. Did they make a formal agreement on this?