He wasn't robbed. He lost 30k and you made him even, end of story.

Agree 100%. If I were you, I would have cashed out and asked the host to walk you out. Meet the guy the next day in public to settle and be done with this sketchy situation.

yeah i like and agree and try to follow most of the tenets of jainism. but i aint gonna let some unscrupulous bookie know that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

Hard to say if he legitimately thinks he doesn't owe the money or is just saying it to save face as part of the hustle. Ask him if he'd be willing to have someone independent arbitrate the situation where you both agree to the accept the judgment.

If he refuses you're in a tough spot since your contract had no legal legitimacy. Threatening him that you'll call the police to shut down the operation looks a lot like a bluff since it would mean he'd relocate and you'd never get paid. The only thing you hold over him is his reputation in that world and the influence you have over people in those games. If you have acquaintances in the game who would stop going (or that he believes would stop going) because of his refusal to honor debts, that might get you at least a partial payment.

Threatening violence (explicitly or otherwise) seems like a dumb move. Nobody would believe a guy with no history of violence would wake up one day and shake down a criminal for 10k, and if you DID decide to initiate physical force to get him to pay up, in the eyes of the law YOU would be the criminal.

did you ask to see a police report at least?

Update: still nothing. Pretty sure I’m getting nothing at this point. I’m not going to resort to violence. Hopefully he realizes that the right thing to do is to pay me or at least a decent percentage of what I’m owed

Hey can I get a loan? I promise I’ll pay you back

what do you mean by this? you are hoping that he suddenly becomes a moral person and acts against his own self interest? there is about a 0% chance at this point that he will change his mind.

i would argue that the right thing for him to do was screw you over for 10k. he's 10k richer now because of that.

if you want to make him paying you 10k the right thing to do all you gotta do is put a gun to his head. im sure he would then realize thats the right thing to do.

i feel sorry that this happened to you. dont hold your breath waiting for him to do the right thing. just chalk it up as a loss and move on. good luck.

if you tried to use force to get your money back youd have to kill the guy and worry about law enforcement or worry about him retaliating against you.

Of course you shouldn't do anything violent. But it seems like this guy's livelihood depends on his reputation for honesty and fairness. Couldn't you pretty easily destroy that? Or at least you could report the poker game to the police and get it shut down, which would probably cost the guy way more than he owes you in the long run.

What's more likely?

The guy got robbed? Or $32,000 isnt an exaggerated sum?

He didnt get robbed and you are getting screwed.

If your making payments on a loan and on your way to the bank to make a payment and you get robbed, do you think the bank will let you off that payment? Or half of it? Nope, you getting robbed isnt their problem and him getting robbed isnt yours....

As soon as he said do you think i still owe you this, he had made up his mind youwerent getting it and the small amounts you did get were just to try and keep you sweet.

In my opionion you got a few options;
1) Deal with it with violence either you or you pay someone to collect for you
2) Threaten to go to the police about his illegal activities. Im sure you will have texts/emails which could be used as evidence and the thought of losing his 1/3 in this game or all his bookie activities might make him see sense. Whilst it might be considered bad to become a snitch **** this guy. If someone steals from me and i dont think i can take them myself ill let the law deal with it.....
3) Tell everybody in the game about him backing you and then screwing you over. He probably backing others so knowing he doesnt pay will hurt his action
4) Take it as a life lesson, forget about it and move on....

Hope you manage to get your money!

Did you tell him you feel the moral obligation to let the other host of the game and subsequently the players in said game know that he's not good for credit?

Pretty sure the other host is highly interested in continuing to run a credit-based game.

OP, from your posts I haven't been able to determine how the communication went exactly.

At this point, have you told him straight up "I want my money. Give me back my money."? From what I'm reading he is still in full power and you're up to his mercy. If you're not taking a strong position the chances of getting paid are 0%. You need to make him feel like it's no longer up for debate, or that he might be right, he needs to know that you want your ****ing money back and he should pay right now.

You don't need to threaten about doing anything yet; but have you told him that you have to get paid, unconditionally?

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about exactly what's going on here. This guy is a professional criminal. He's ran in rough and dangerous circles for some time and managed to survive/thrive. If he was at all scared of anything you could say or do in response to this, he would have devised a way to rip you off that wasn't quite so blatant. Assuming you don't have any scary/connected friends that this guy doesn't know about, there is no immediate course of action you can take where you end up getting paid.

Your basic options are to continue hanging around and doing business with this guy and try to figure a way to steal your 10k back from him, or learn the proper lesson, stop running in these circles, and maybe file his name away in the back of your head in case you're ever in a position to take revenge sometime in the future.

If you decide to go with the first option, there is an excellent chance this guy will find a way to steal even more money from you before you figure a way to get your 10k back, and even if you do figure a way to take 10k out of this guy's pocket before he rips you off again, there's a good chance he takes it right back from you and maybe you end up getting hurt in the process.

Dude, you have sent him a link to this thread. Not only are you letting him know what you are thinking, you are telling him you will settle for less than the full amount. To the guy that is the bookie, you are completely in the wrong. If you do not pay what this guy is owed in full, you should be outed. Other players in the poker community need to know, you will not honor your debts because of external circumstances. You need to square up. That is all.

Ruining this guy's rep will cost him more than $10k. He needs to pay.

OP, do you still think he got robbed?

OP is totally incapable of ruining this guys rep. His word doesn't have enough clout in the underworld. If it did, he wouldn't have been victimized in this way in the first place.

I agree with those who say he should be paid his money. Just like KGB said, "Pay the man his money".

This story reminds me of a time when my brother, brother-in-law and a couple other acquaintances were making weekly pro football bets with a bookie. They typically won and lost a few hundred every week until the one weekend they hit big on a parlay and the bookie owed the 4 of them collectively about $8K. Well, they were obviously licking their chops waiting for payday (every Tuesday).
Problem was, when that day came, the bookie was nowhere to be found, not answering his phone, etc. A week later, he was reached by phone and he claimed that he got raided and busted by the cops. You can believe that if you want to.
Of course they never got paid and never laid bets with him again.

I could tell a few more stories about bookies, but I'll leave it there.

8k to me. I’ll collect for you

Play one more time at that game and have the cops raid the game. Play on the books of course. "Well the game got raided, I don't owe you anything".

I noticed over the course of my life that people's inclination to do the right things (pay debts, honour staking deals etc) decrease rapidly in general after suffering decent losses.

It's a kind of fine artform but I think you gotta learn the soft approach in these spots, very tough don't get me wrong, but when and how you ask for the money will affect your chances of getting it massively.

First issue, giving the money to the backer at the home game is likely to have been inappropiate for some combination of the following reasons:

1. Attracting attention to someone carrying a lot of cash is not a good idea / frowned upon

2. Exposing details of a staking arrangement / settling debts in front of others is generally undesireable

3. Trying to conduct a financial transaction with someone in the middle of a heated argument makes it more difficult and could lead to subsequent problems later. Maybe the amount handed over is disputed later and since he was distracted there is no way to verify.

If you and your backer had agreed you would pay him there when leaving, its not as big a deal, but still probably could have been handled better.



As for the rest, he certainly owes you your winnings. Like others have said, giving him a reasonable period of time to get the money to you is fine. He should understand that an unsubstantiated robbery claim is unacceptable if he can not get the full amount of $ to you in a reasonable timeframe.

I find it absolutely hilarious that you advocate robbing the bookie with a gun after derailing Truestoryteller's Home Game thread by repeatedly insulting him for...wait for it...threatening people with a weapon, over money. Yeah. Remember that? Pretty hypocritical, dude.

lol, that guy is a deutschbag. and he has so many fanboy shill accounts who attack me over pointing out to him his casually threatening to murder his acquaintance isnt cool. but i guess you think thats cool dont you?

where in my post do i advocate robbing him with a gun?

you are reading into things poorly.