Hellmuth is not selling a "financial product". He's selling an entertainment product.

The vast majority of people gamble because they think it's fun, not because they earnestly expect it to be +EV. People might also believe it is fun to have a rooting interest in a celebrity player like Phil, and are willing to pay a premium for that. And if Phil is entertaining people, he's actually providing a social good, which is more than most professional poker players can say.

Several people were willing to pay 1.8 right? In the trading world, it is actually illegal to sell for less than 1.8 if that is the bid. I could see making fun of him if he listed at that price and no one bought pieces. But if he’s sold out, maybe next time he should sell his action for a bit more?

Those calling Hellmeuth a scammer are obviously suffering from the simmering resentment of having been cleverly swindled at the aiport by a man adorned in a Penn State hat.

Agreed, pretty poor form from PH to hustle his fans.

In the trading world there's also a medium to short-sell investments investors feel will decline. Not really sure how you think this is the same thing.

There are tons of investments that are terrible out there that people make pitches for and people buy without it being a scam.... ffs the lotto exists. This is obviously not a scam. It’s just a very bad deal and ironic that a person who criticized others ethics with regards to staking has the audacity to push such a ****ty deal but I’m not really that surprised.

I don’t think it’s the same thing. I’m just saying that if people are willing to pay 1.8 ph would have to be stupid or really not care about money to sell for any less.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there.

The investors don't know what they are willing to pay, even if the market reflects that they do.

He's not necessarily scamming per se. He's monetizing his fame/fan base. What's the difference between him doing that and say Sauce or any other high level pro making training videos i.e. selling the poker fantasy and promising success?

Don't get me wrong, I think PH is a pos, I just think every other HS pro is a pos/hustler too. It makes no sense for these guys to be morally outraged when they are preying on suckers themselves. Calling the kettle black now aren't they?

How many tournament players lose EV if Hellmuth doesn't sell enough of himself to be able to enter a big tournament?

Becoming a winning player due to training sites is something that can actually happen. Getting positive expectation on a 1.8 markup for that field is not.

And what if Sauce actually was purposefully teaching players to play awful poker. Would the proper response be:

"Hey Sauce, stop being a dbag"

or would it be:

"respect the hustle"
"the free market keeps this from happening"
"putting money into training sites is just entertainment"

WRT training sites, it all comes down to what they said to try and get people to sign up. If they're claiming to be among the biggest winners at midstakes PLO and it was later revealed that they were down money lifetime, that's a pretty clear ethical breach. On the other hand if some guy played 25k hands, was up big and put out training content that sucked because he had no idea was doing and was on a heater, that's completely fair. Phil could be the equivalent of either of these examples and we have no way of knowing which. HE may not even know.

How misleading or predatory the 1.8 markup is depends on how he marketed it. He looks like he's getting close to the edge of what would be considered ethical and I don't think he's 'above' working those angles but he seems genuinely ignorant when it comes to the most basic of poker maths. Thinking your roi is > 100 is probably not based in reality for fast structured tournaments but it doesn't require an exceptional level of delusion, and that's one quality nobody would accuse him of lacking.

Do you think that Hellmuth keeps good records of his results so he knows exactly what his ROI is?

It wouldn't surprise me if he calculates his ROI on what he himself put up against the total cash.

he sells 50% of a 10k @1.8, cashes for 20k and calls it 900% instead of 100%

If u wanna ride the train, u gotta a pay the fare!

I'll quote this because NickMPK has 9k posts and is making a reasonable argument and not babyraging. Some other people seem to have similar but less well articulated views.

"Hmmm...I’ve sold two tourneys on @YouStake, both @WPT ‘s, and I cashed for over $50,000 both times (12th and 7th). I showed up on Day 2 for both (late late), does that mean I didn’t put “Some effort” in? Great returns for those who invested! And yes, I’ll prob show up late!" -Helmuth

From reading PH's tweet I got the idea that buying this action was intended to be +EV by PH, and PH described it as an investment. It seems like PH wants this tweet to be taken literally. So I posted in the thread to give my view that I don't think anyone in the field is making greater than 1.3, that PH likely knows this, and so therefore he's selling something with a very high vig that it seems strange (to me) to describe as an "investment".

It's entirely possible that people are entertained by having a piece of PH, and that therefore he can sell people highly -EV pieces of action without anyone feeling like they were taken advantage of. On the other hand, the norm in the poker community is to sell action that's +EV for both parties. The norm is also to call people out if they charge an unjustified markup because other participants in the action selling market don't want the least sophisticated action buyers to get fleeced by greedy sellers, this makes everybody look bad and also costs the more reasonable action sellers some money.

Word salad, try again.

There's only three Tweets from Hellmuth in OP alone, and they mention "return," "invest," "ROI" and his results like three times each. I don't see "try your luck," "let's gamble," or "get some white magic, baby!"

If you think it's fine for people to earn a dishonest living by scamming people and/or that it's no different from hustling people in the game of poker, whatever, but the fact we even have to argue over whether he's a giant con artist is laughable.

EDIT: Whoops, Sauce beat me to this same argument.

A bargain at twice the price

Did Hellmuth tweet anything that was clearly false? Is it still a scam if Hellmuth can get people to buy a piece of him without ever directly lying?

Yes.

Yes. Even apart from the places where he's directly lying, he grossly misrepresents the truth.

As much as I despise Hellmuth and he does have me blocked on twitter would you short him at a 1.8 markup?

Not a Hellmuth fan, but instead of just calling him a liar, why don’t you site your sources?

PH understands hustling that many in this thread don't. He knows so many casuals that he probably can get that markup or more. Bash him all you want but you can learn something from him, it doesn't matter if he's that good or not, all you have to do is convince others you are.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh wow.jpg This is impossible, literally. It's a zero sum game.