From ZeeJustin's blog:

I’ve publicly said in the past that I never outed other multi-accounters (of 2+ years ago) because they were good people, and that I have no reason to believe they’d ever cheat again.

I’ve been criticized a bit for this, so I guess I’ll give people what they want. Normally, I hate talking trash about people, but sometimes, it’s deserved.

For those of you that don’t know the story, a few years ago, Men “The Master” Nguyen and a bunch of the players he staked were in a hotel room together when the fire alarm went off. They were asked to leave the room while the fire was dealt with, and a suitcase full of tournament chips was discovered. This is a big no-no in tournament poker, so Men was asked to leave.

The theory goes (and I’m honestly not sure what proof there is for this, but the consensus seems to be that it’s true) that the players that Men staked were scooping off chips from the table in smaller buyin events, and giving them to Men (and possibly other winning players on the team) to add to their stack in the high stakes events. As far as cheating goes, it doesn’t get much worse than this.

The main reason I’m writing this, is because on a radio show with Gary Wise, I said something to the effect of, “I don’t really know the details of Men, so I’m not going to speak out on the issue. I know he was punished for cheating, and I don’t know if there have been any incidents of him cheating since. I’m under the impression that he’s not allowed to play at Foxwoods ever again.”

Well since then I’ve researched the issue, and even seen some of it first hand.

Daniel Negreanu has a famous (infamous?) post on NVG where he outs Men’s antics. Daniel went into detail, describing the rules the players Men backed were forced to follow. One of the rules Daniel listed was that if Men ever raises one of his players, that player MUST fold, regardless of the situation or what his hand is.

So I was playing at the Commerce the day before the main event started, and lo’ and behold, Men was at my table.

I’ve never really liked Men. He’s EXTREMELY abusive to dealers, and that kind of behavior is just absurd for a professional poker player to display.

I had played with him in tournaments before, where the players at the table didn’t really know him, but at this cash game table ($200/$400 mixed game), it became very apparent to me that the players at the table were all familiar with how big of a scum bag he is.

Within minutes, the whole table was making fun of Men for squeezing his cards. In triple draw games, if you draw one card on the end, and need a specific card (or type of card like in Badougi), squeezing is a fairly common method of slowly looking at your card, first the number of pips (i.e seeing that it’s 4 across and might be the 9 you are looking for), before fully revealing the card to yourself. It’s done for fun to add suspense. Personally I don’t like it because it slows the game down, but if it only comes up in big pots on the river, that’s not a big deal.

Men, however, squeezed his cards on every street. Even when the first 4 cards in Badougi are dealt, he would take an average of 10 seconds to look at them by squeezing them one by one. He did this in every game, on every single street where cards were dealt, and it was just absurd.

Another bad practice Men had was also folding his cards one by one. No big deal, right? Well it is a big deal when you fold every single one of your cards by throwing them directly into the dealers’ knuckles. After three to four hands of this, the dealer told Men to stop, and Men just glared at him silently. FWIW, it was actually a really good, really nice older dealer.

Men likes to make his actions and verbal declarations very ambiguous. This is often the sign of someone that likes to take advantage of things. There was a collection pot that was split between two players, and the players didn’t want to make change, so they made an equivalent bet based on the low card in the next seven card stud eight or better hand. Men made a side bet on one player’s card to be the lower one.

One player was dealt a 7, and Men’s player was dealt an ace. Men refused to pay, stating that ace was low. The whole table (except the one Men bet on) agreed that ace was high. In Stud 8, the low card brings it in, and the ace will never bring it in, because it is high. More plainly, if you are cutting decks for a high card, you want to get an ace, because it is obviously high. Despite the 6-2 vote at the table, Men and his Vietnamese friend refused to pay.

In this same session, I saw a form of VERY blatant cheating. It was in badougi (if you don’t know how to play badougi, pretend this hand is 2-7 triple draw, and the same concept applies).

There was an older Vietnamese player at the table (one from low card story above), that Men was talking to in Vietnamese. Men was taking chips out of his rack as if they were his own. I later asked if Men was staking this player, and someone at the table confirmed that he was.

The player in question is a tight player. He might limp an occasional bad hand in Badougi, but if he is raising and betting, he has a hand. Also note that bluffing is generally a bad strategy in Badougi, and if you want to bluff, it’s generally done by drawing 0 cards on the last draw.

VP (Vietnamese Player) Raises, Men calls, and 2 white guys call. Everyone draws 1 card except one of the white guys who draws two. VP bets, everyone calls. Everyone draws 1.

The bet doubles after the second draw. VP still fires out. By now it is clear to the whole table that he had a strong draw. Men raises. The two white guys begrudgingly fold, and VP has a very pained and angered look on his face as he is looking at Men. Men starts blabbering saying, “You know I got the goods!” VP then does something that is extremely bad in his spot… he folds. The odds that he doesn’t have a one card draw to a better hand are extremely low in that spot. Basically, the line he took is never correct, and would be absurdly uncharacteristic for this player to take in this spot… except for the fact that he is backed by Men, and his deal forces him to fold in this spot.

So I saw this and it looked really fish to me. The player to my left (who I won’t name) was a very honest guy. He played these games regularly and new all the players in them. I thought I was clever when I told him my theory about that hand being fishy. His response to me was a slightly nicer version of the expression, “no **** Sherlock”. A couple of other guys that overheard me gave me a silent head nod.

To me, this is just disgusting. These guys know that there is blatant cheating going on, but since there is no proof, there’s nothing they can do about it.

I’m probably being naïve in hoping that sharing this story will somehow help solve the problem, but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t say something.

Interpret the facts however you want. This is just one person’s observation and impression of everything. I just thought this was something too disgusting to keep to myself.

-thanks for reading
-Justin Bonomo

big ****ing suprise

loldonkaments

Justin Bonomo is just jealous of Men the Master's house.

He has to pay for his whole neighborhood back in vietnam to live in his house.

You see all those people living in that tiny thing?

no surprise here, a Cheater hates a fellow Cheater.

I wonder if Raymer will be outing Men at any table he sits at like he plans on doing to JJ. Seems to me they both do the same thing. It will be interesting to see if Raymer sticks to his moral high ground or is just a hypocrite and only outs the "not famous players".

maybe zeejustin should have joined men's apprenticeship program!

which JJ has raymer said he will "out" at the same table?

and where does this fall in poker etiquette? verbally "addressing" a cheater at a table in front of all the other players? bad manners or good?

Justin should retract his story or Men's wife Van Dam will checkraise his azz in the future, Men knows he's a cheater, u dont have to tell everybody, now everybody will be watching all his posse(David Pham, 50 other people with last name of Tran, DAvid Williams).

I didn't know DW was in Men's posse. Is this true?

Well as we'll know David is busto and Men has lined up some fetish porn movies for him, Men is investing in David's other asset not his poker abilities if u know what I mean.

shouldn't the cardroom be able to do something about this? i'm not sure if its the dealers or the floormen or whoever but the integrity of games especially that big should be a big priority, right?

Im sure people have been shot for accusing others of cheating live before. Prob not a good idea. Besides, that is what 2+2 is for.

Someone needs to harden the **** up and do something about this, seriously.

Prodigy

Walker, It'll be DY-NO-MITE!

ive played with men on several occassions and while ive never seen him personally cheat, im disgusted by this guy just based on his reputation. i really do believe that hes a frequent cheater/angle shooter from all the stories ive heard, and believe me there are many. he has cleaned up his act/reputation quite a bit in the past year or two though. hes more respected and welcome to many games, but i dont know why people are so forgiving of such a character. i think that most people dont like confrontation and they also want to kiss his ass to some extent because for whatever reason hes a B list poker celebrity. these players should be held accountable for what theyve done and what theyre going to do in the future.

I read some posts from DN Men and John Juanda from a few year ago. Guessing everyone had seen them. What is Daniel talking about when he mentions the incident at the final table with Minh?

'I know what you did with Minh
the previous week at the final table. I kow all about Minh sending
the old man over. I was hoping that you wouldn't stoop quite that
low. The rail was cleared by a security guard the following day
BECAUSE of the incident that occured with you there. Do you deny this
one too? There was only about 40 witnesses there that saw that
chaotic incident.'

Anyone know what happened?

So that's why one of his "apprentices" folded in that 7-card draw Event final table. It was the one with Ted Forest, and Chad Brown. Back then I didnt think nothing of it, but a couple of weeks ago I saw it again, and was like WTF.

ZeeJustin calling Men a cheater is like:

[x] pot kettle
[x] Roger Clemens calling bonds a cheater
[x] just f-ing stupid

I assume that when he slipped the chips back on the table, he entered another player into the tournament to negate his advantage.

Lori

Men definately still plays at foxwoods, when shaundeeb and I were leaving after day 5 of the ME there we saw him checking out with tons of suitcases and a few 24 packs of corona's. We laughed about how he probably had a whole selection of tournament chips in those cases.

He really isn't any good at poker, thats why he lives in such a ****ty house

Actually, there is no problem in my mind with one (reformed) cheater calling someone else a cheater.

This isnt major groundbreaking news as its pretty much accepted by all that Men skirts the rules at best, and cheats at worst. But having the message reinforced is not a bad thing and i just dont see how anyone can have a problem with it coming from someone who cheated years ago and hasnt since.

If this were JJProdigy, who still cheats, who is calling out Men saying something should be done - then yeah, that is a case of pot kettle black.

treatment of guys like men is one of the reasons i dont have a lot of respect for the poker 'journalism' industry... Men wins cardplayer POTY and is celebrated, and they make no mention of all the cheating allegations (not just random, as DN and JJ got in on it) i wish there would be an actual poker journalist magazine, instead of publications that basically serve the interests of casinos and only paint the good side of poker.

also, there were a ton of people who multiaccounted tournaments a couple years back, ZJ has taken way more flack for his actions than he should have.. hes apologized and moved on and ppl who still criticize him should think about the hundreds of players who never got caught, and also the guys who are still doing it. I mildly criticized his long-winded SNG articles back in the day, and the multi-accounting (but i knew many people who did it also and i wasnt calling them out on it or reporting them to the sites) Uh but as many people know he is a good dude and any animosity or criticism directed his way over multiaccounting is misguided and misplaced.

On one hand i agree that poker needs a publication with journalistic integrity which isnt afraid to turn over stones and crush what crawls out from under them.

But then at the same time im pretty glad that there isnt one - poker doesnt need to be examined under a microscope at this point in its lifespan. When the US comes back to market fully and there is international licensing, great, but right now poker doesnt need bad PR.