A man named Stephen Carmona hosted a high stakes poker game at his house and Pierce showed up. He had no money and asked Carmona to borrow $150,000. He lost it all but only paid Carmona back $10,000. Then a week later Carmona had another high stakes game at his house and Pierce showed up again. He convinced Carmoma to loan him another $40,000 and lost that as well.

Since those games Pierce has ghosted Carmona and won't repay him.

Crazy.

Why would Carmona lend him another 40k after PP still owed him $140k?

..... and where was this supposed lawsuit filed ? Source ?

Yup you got me. Made it all up.

No, I know where you gleaned it. I saw a TMZ blurb, which did not say where the supposed lawsuit was filed but said it had a copy.

You didn't even bother to attribute the story to TMZ.

Because he’s Paul Pierce lol.

What utter foolishness loaning money. The only reasons I can think of is if you are running the game or if you are charging interest. So much of loaning is just a pure sucker move, just bend over the table and see if they want to screw me. "Oh, he's a millionaire, made a ton of money, no problem, are you serious?? It's Paul Pierce or it's yada yada yada." I think there is an actual dynamic of like bovine ego that wants to be loaning, esp to "big shots," with the idea that it makes you cool. The suckerdom never seems to end on this subject. "Do you know who he is?" The whole idea of them showing up to gamble without money is not suspicious? If the game is too high to carry the money ... okay, that's a problem.

PP plays high stakes games in LA and then tries to pay less than he owes (and sometimes just pays less) saying he deserves a "celebrity discount"

Saw him on TV courtside for game 3 and sure I will again tonight. Even as the Celtic legend those seats would not be comped. He obviously has the money but some guys are just notoriously bad at paying back even when they have it. He lost his job at ESPN last year for livestreaming one of his poker games which included strippers and lots of booze. Seemed like a great game and have heard of other exploits of his in the LA private scene.

I still would be interested in "what lawsuit, where, et cetera".

Sounds like a livestream would be sort of "getting caught in the act"also.

Anyone ?

I want to feel bad for the guy but I can't imagine loaning someone more money after they've failed to owe a significant amount back from the first loan. Like, how naive can you be?

Even if he's Paul Pierce, he's not an active NBA player with a salary/contract and basketball players and other athletes are notorious for going broke due to poor financial literacy.

lol was this the home game with strippers that he went live on IG during and then got fired from espn after?

its insane how comfy poker players are at loaning large sums of money. they take pride in that part of that profession as if its "norm"

i guess you need to when youplay for stakes that high as its hard to wire or move money around to that summ degree? I NEVER feel bad at all when I hear stories like this.

Lol 180k loan to a legend like Paul Pierce is like saying you don't feel bad about someone being scammed for like a $400 loan to a co-worker at like a somehow well paid job. Or loaning like $1k to a $2/5 reg or whatever.

To answer your question it's the nature of high stakes these days both online and live. Recreationals like to play on credit. And most of the time they obviously pay

Zero chance he pays for those seats

I always thought it was weird he would play 2-5 w the peasants at foxwoods…

It’s kinda sad to me that these great athletes like pp Jordan and Barkley etc are all big whale/fish/donators..

I think your competitiveness works against you in gambling. You can’t just muscle your way to success in poker. You have to be logical and rational.

I would imagine your ego and being a competitor led to a lot of hero calls gone wrong of him never wanting to be bluffed and outplayed.

playing on credit at high stakes makes a lot of sense imo, who keeps hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash anyway, that's such a dumb play in general

Kind of off topic but I worked at Harrah's in NJ back in 2005 briefly and in their computer system Charles Barkley owed over 500k and a few other previous Sixers. Perhaps unpredictably Manute Bol owed over a million. These debts were over ten years old at the time and apparently they never went after them because of the legal costs, bad publicity, and wanting a reputation amongst athletes and whales you could get credit.

you're overthinking it.

they are just novices with access to too much money so they splash around and do no studying. it's not hard to be terrible at poker, you just have to do... nothing. to simplify it even further: they are gambling addicts.

The amount of money the high stakes home game rakes makes bad debt like this a much easier pill to swallow. That's probably why the host gave him more credit the second time: he's printing money anyway and he probably used Paul Pierce to advertise so he gave him another smallish (from a high stakes home game perspective) marker.

Also, these home game lineups are often hand-picked; if the host has decent poker ability or there are players in the game with decent poker ability (which he is either putting in or taking a piece of), then that's another easy source of income coming from the game in addition to rake.

Jeezus ... we're talking about a 180K bad debt, not the rake or the stake. Go back to sleep??

So if they are raking at least 30k a night - with 30k being a really lowball estimate for this - then that's totally irrelevant right? A home game host with a high stakes game is bringing in 6 figures a month from this home game if he just has a game once a week. But that doesn't factor into it at all right? Not like part of the reason the rake is so high is exactly because of situations like this...

Really strange they would let Bol borrow a million
He made 6 milion for his entire career pre tax


I don't see why they wouldn't go after these guys
If anything it sends a message to other athletes to pay their debts

Lol we're talking about the rake and stake in games where 100s of thousands of dollars change hands so maybe you go back to sleep?

Source?

I'd rather people get banned for posting stuff like this without a link, instead of doing the simple work of posting a source for them. It is on the gossip sites with a quick google news searcn.