Great article Phil Galfond. Hopefully it leads to more outing of these scumbags and people are protected from falling prey in the future.

Greed. It's obvious that Galfond thought this guy was a "fun player" and didn't want him to stop playing. I bet if this guy wasn't a massive donator Galfond wouldn't have loaned him money.

+1

a brilliant op-ed.

i always thought scamming was okay, but phil has completely opened my eyes that it's pretty uncool and bad for the game. kudos to pokernews for this hard hitting journalism. hoping to hear more of phils thoughts on things that are uncool and bad for the game in the future.

why is vinivici always mad at galfond

Writing this didn't increase his chance of repayment one iota. But he may have prevented this guy from scamming someone else.

Clearly in this case he wanted to keep him playing. But it's common for high stakes players to loan to both losing and winning players alike. You play with many of the same players regularly, sometimes they are short of cash, and it's pretty obvious who you can trust. Once went broke in the Bellagio 100 mix game so I walked into Bobbys Room and I saw someone I know, who gave me $4K. I paid him back a couple weeks later.

The big credit risks are usually losing players, but sometimes you want to keep the game going. I've been in medium big games where a group of players all agreed to share the risk so one could loan money to the spot. vIve had friends loan for months and get repaid each time till the guy disappeared.

I've never had a loan go bad, but I'm very selective.

You're bringing up examples of loaning friends money, or people you play with regularly loaning you money. That doesn't sound anything like what Galfond described. My point was Galfond only lent him the money because he was a big loser. He didn't know the guy well, but lent him money anyways purely because of greed.

Kind of darkly funny when you think about it. Winning player loans loser money to keep him in action, but winning player gets scammed.

Yeah, it was obvious from the start why that money was lent. Even the guy receiving the loan knew (unless he was plain stupid).

Still, nobody deserves getting scammed because of it.

People are such sheep lending people they know thru gambling

i believe online poker is ****ed, so this is 90 percent for the lolz and 10 percent cuz i believe in the content, but to me guys like galfond are so much more dangerous than a simple scammer because it's impossible to avoid his machinations and influence. he also slings product with a perfect storm of humility and charisma that makes him seem completely harmless, and gives him the clout to write some nonsense op-ed piece on a trivial topic.

i know plenty of people who just dont loan people money, ever. it's a really easy way to not get scammed, but there's no avoiding the damage phil does to your bottom line.

and its not even close to as simple as the $100 a month or $1.2k/year to tread water. it's the new competition that is gunning for your spot. and it's the concept that there is a GTO limit to poker skill, so if the content is good enough that you can learn it fast enough to play with any shark, it really comes down to has the best script, which drives away fish real ****ing fast because no one likes being targeted.

fun conversation in one of my skype chats the other day:

Aussie: i want to play more higher. but no script and no fun playing short handed at 1k/600 with most of those regs
Israeli: you should get a script then?
Aussie: scripts are great... unless you live in rural australia
Israeli: I mean
Israeli: script not to get the best seat
Aussie: I can't get top 5 waitlist with them
Israeli: ahh
Israeli: ok
Israeli: that's not good
Aussie: yeah is aids
Aussie: at off peak times i may be able to get one

i certainly am not rooting for phil to get robbed and wouldn't argue that two wrongs make a right, but i'd rather get scammed for 5k/yr than for run it once to exist (think timstone's number is more appropriate for ALL poker education)

So, basically the below?


http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...3&postcount=29

no not really. a. cuz you argue it poorly since it seems like you don't agree and b. because i specifically say that obviously phil shouldnt have been robbed. without going into too much detail since it might interfere with a future op-ed piece, i think robbing is bad.

It's so ****ing dumb to think that the guys making videos are the big enemy of online poker. Tens of thousands of people are interesting in poker strat ever year, someone is always going to come around and fulfill that need. It's just such an absurd position, but then again you have been spewing this nonsense for ages, and despite almost no one agreeing with you and your points getting rebutted again and again you don't stop.

I didn't change it from my first post which was after your first post in which you applauded the theft, albeit possibly in a tongue in cheek manner and, yes, a later post of yours does include the statement that you are not rooting for him to be robbed. And you do now go further and state that you think theft is bad.

But the basic idea that you are really pissed at Galfond (and some other people probably) for helping to teach people how to play poker better because it has over time contributed to the games getting tougher seems pretty correct. And it seemed to be strong enough for you to make the initial post applauding stealing from Galfond.

And in such previously referenced later post of yours, you equate scamming and robbery with being involved with instructional poker websites. You may not like the latter, but that doesn't make it the same as stealing.

i didnt say it was the same as stealing or more unethical than stealing (its worse and its not).

i said its more dangerous than stealing because its unavoidable.

i'll make an analogy that one of my personal heroes, daniel negreanu, would probably take to heart: we live in a society where if you dont live on a farm or have a garden, you have to subject yourself to factory farming and all the vicissitudes of it. we also live in a world where you could get a bad batch of narcotics and overdose on them, but you only need to fear the first part, even if it is what the market has dictated as optimal, and what people's dollars claim they want.

and obv the poker world /= the actual world, and what phil does is completely fair game when you don't come from the perspective of being a player, but i do, and so does he when he writes an op-ed piece about scamming or the one he did a few years back about being social with the fish. so to me he's a huge phony and i feel the itch to troll the **** out of him. not sorry.

I don't understand that story about that guy owing him money and not giving it back. I mean this is Vegas after all. In the old days they knew how to handle such issues. It may have involved violence though.

Besides that, there is also some institution called "Police". If you use the magic word "fraud", they go out and grab the guy. That's what I have been told at least.

that reminds me to sign up to rio again, thanks!

A millionaire pro making millions more hawking strat vids is the poker equivalent of a retreating army crossing a half mile bridge over rapids then blowing it up. No one who wasn't from that generation of poker player will ever even have the opportunity to cross that bridge because its been C4'd to hell by poor infrastructural custodians.

It might have been a logical move for any individual, but a genteel agreement among the industry's captains to form a non-competing cartel would have certainly been better. It wasn't inevitable but it was least commendable.

TS and vini are within credible moral bounds to emcee the hatefest imo.

It's disgusting.

I play in a live 10c/20c game in a pizza shop. You wouldn't believe how often I get begged for stakes and by who \. I'm not one to brag so I'll omit that.

But EVERY time I have given in and lent someone a buy in this has never come back.

It's a lot of money and it makes me sick. I understand exactly what Phil is going through here

Sorry to troll but was funny. Hope you get paid back dough.

Ever read the story where dude X got murked by dude Y over 10 bucks down in Englewood? Up 'round the Sears tower they refer to such phenomena as "utility".

Its a real thing.

edit: wow, didn't even notice this one at first:

Nice find, it would totally suck to be a politician, evolving views being primal sin. Luckily I'm just an internet troll.

But since you've now artfully pressed the issue

More like low 10's. On second look this is a more manageable conspiratorial size. Add those who pose real threats on skype. Capitalists require capital. Let's talk business, charts, graphs the works. What would John Von Neumann do? Make a case. They'll listen or they wouldn't be there in the first place. Another device called name and shame which had worked subtle wonders across industries in times past may be of benefit, notably where deployed in tightly knit peer groups.

Indeed its tough to fault any one. But perhaps the aborted conspiracy, the collective could have sailed beyond the isolated actors' limited horizons.

No its not. The state of affairs today is comically removed from that description.

Is it fair for the unemployed auto worker to rage against the proponents of the free trade agreement which, causally, removed him from industrial relevance? These are broad questions far beyond the reach of my own capabilities or, I presume, the welcome mat of this thread.


Pardon my original hagioreflex, it was errant.

And if your wondering, yes I have genuinely pondered this and changed my mind. Again, not that any individual was wrong but that a well orchestrated cartel response could have much outperformed.

Maybe I'm missing something here but aren't Galfond and the other player (assuming they are still splitting the 200K write-off) collectively up 50K compared to if the game had just broken?

Of course they've ended up giving 80% loss-back to this fish but if they are sure enough that he couldn't have beaten them (or would have kept playing until he lost any winnings back) then it seems like they acted pretty rationally. Depends how badly he plays of course.

The other guy should keep his word though.

Vinivici9586

IIRC You made full ring videos for Leggo poker a few years back, so hating on Phil Galfond for evolving poker education is hyporcritical imo.