Hi everybody.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to respond to what has happened over this past week and a half, and what the tone of my response should be. Thank you all – especially Mason – for your patience, as I’ve put a lot of time and thought into the following statement:

Poker players – including lots of high stakes players – borrow/lend money from each other all the time. They always have and they always will. The deals and arrangements they make in this regard have always been private and I believe they will always remain private. It’s nobody else’s business anyhow.

Why would I borrow money? When the global financial crisis hit many years ago, it really took a hard toll on my business. I lost a lot of my personal wealth. But I still wanted to play in high stakes games. The “right” thing to do would be to drop down in stakes, but I didn’t want to, so I borrowed to keep playing in the same games. I don’t play for super high stakes anymore. I get plenty of buzz and enjoyment playing for lower stakes.

When a poker player decides to lend another poker player money, they do so with the inherent risk that it might not be paid back. At no time when I borrowed money did I ever make a promise to pay loans back the next day. During the Full Tilt days, money flowed like water and when it came to paying people back it was never an issue.

Almost $2 million is owed to me by poker players to whom I have lent money over the years, but I have never gone public with their names.

I never hide from my debts. To the best of my knowledge, every person to whom I have had an outstanding debt (I can count them on one hand) has been OK with the arrangements I have made with them to pay back. For the record, this includes Shaun Deeb, to whom I still owe some money and with whom I am on great, friendly terms.

For whatever reason, Cole South felt the need to make a public post about a private arrangement, and I already made it clear in my original response that he has a misunderstanding of the facts. He could have contacted me privately or even by private message here on 2+2 if he wanted to. I don’t ignore text messages and haven’t seen him or gotten a message from him in years. I haven’t been hiding anywhere and it’s not hard for anyone who wants to get in touch to find me.

It seems like a lot of the forum posters have tried to make connections between things that are not connected at all. What do public records of court cases (which don’t tell the whole story, by the way) have to do at all with my IDF army days?

Using this platform to try and tear down my reputation affects many people beyond just me. A lot of people worked very hard to make this book happen. If you don’t want to buy my book that’s fine, but leaving 1-star nasty reviews on Amazon based on forum hearsay without actually reading the book is just plain wrong.

I didn’t invest YEARS of my life in this project, first in Hebrew then in English, with a primary goal of making money from the book. Mason chose to share that 2+2 put $20,000 into publishing my book (I didn’t know the amount until I read his post, by the way). He warned me before we signed our contract that this book likely wouldn’t make a lot of money because poker books just don’t sell like they used to “back in the day.” I just wanted my life’s story to be told and I’m glad to have a business partner in Mason who feels the same way. Bashing him is misguided, to say the least.

People make mistakes. I go into great detail in my book about many of the mistakes I have made in my life. I didn’t have to, but I chose to. As a matter of fact, many people who know me and who have bought and read the book have come up to me to express their shock at how open and honest I was, and that I didn’t need to say as much as I did about a lot of episodes in my life. For all of the poker glory I have achieved, I’m human, too. That’s what telling a life story is about; sharing both the ups and the downs.

I apologize to anyone who feels personally offended by the mistakes I have made. I’m not perfect, but that’s no reason to hold my mistakes over my head for the rest of my life. I’m sorry, Mason, that you had to deal with a lot of the fallout from my silence over this past week and a half. Throughout my life I have done my best to learn from the mistakes I’ve made and become a better man.

If anyone out there still wants to believe in baseless allegations against me, or in general be skeptical regarding whether my LIFE’S STORY is true and what my reputation ought to be, that’s up to you. All I can tell you is that anyone who has ever played with me, whether they’re a pro or a recreational player, and whether it has been in a cash game or tournament table, knows how passionately I love the game.

I will continue to participate for another 48 hours here on 2+2 and thereafter it’s time for me to move on. Aside from that, I’m at Aria/Bellagio five days a week and am happy to see any of you and speak with you in person, and of course to sign a copy of the book if you have purchased one.

To address the obvious, yes I had help writing this statement. I’m not a computer whiz and of course I am not a native English speaker.

Finally, and most importantly…. my favorite color is purple.

Mod Edit:

Mod edit #2

YES!
Purple. Knew it!

Appreciate the statement regardless of your actions. But. . .

you gotta take responsibility for YOUR behaviors. No one from NVG or 2+2 put you an this position, you've done it to yourself.

I’m not throwing any stones

Eli c'mon man you lied to all of us. That is at the heart of everything imo. You said Cole has a different understanding of this debt than you. Cole showed a screenshot that had you apologizing and claiming you would try and pay back the money you owe him. You never did but yet you came on here and said you paid back all your debts. So you lied to everyone. Your word cannot be believed. How easy is it to say you're owed $2,000,000 BUT you won't put anyone's names on here lol. C'mon dude that is lame and you still haven't addressed the Cole South debt. This statement is a crock.

ok , purple. Now i dont have to buy the book thats all i wanted to know , thanks!

While I'm glad you are making a public statement about the matter rather than ignoring everything, this sentence rubs me the wrong way. You are saying that like it excuses you in any way.

I doubt most loans expected to get paid back next day. But like a week or month later or maybe in very rare cases, a year. Anything beyond that is basically delinquent/deadbeat and puts a scar on an otherwise beautiful community imo. If you intended to borrow for ten+ years maybe you should have told them so when you started rather than just have them operate under the assumption that it would be more than one day.

I'm just speaking for myself but when I have debts they are usually my first single priority to square up. Regardless of whether or not I have outstanding loans with other people. Using an excuse of other people owe me money so I don't have to pay other people is pretty bad circular logic.

Spending 10 years paying back a 100k debt is inexcusable by any cultural standard. I doubt Cole would have cared if you paid back the next day or not.

Do you owe Abe Mosseri 7 figures? How is your relationship with him today? Do you use a vpn?

Glad the statement has finally materialized.
It's pretty articulate and well-written.
Not sure how much is the real truth, but I defer to those who say no one is without sin, and everyone has his own dark side, so don't throw stones.
I give Eli credit for offering to meet anyone face to face at the Aria/Bellagio locations.

That is more and better than any of these anonymous internet cowboys who make allegations and judgmental attacks on their keyboards will do.

This is not accurate, and the difference in what he said is significant. Whether you believe he is really on a path to paying off Cole's debt is up to you, but it is not correct to say he lied by saying his debts are already paid off.

I guess you'll never be interested in a 30-year mortgage then?....

You're annoying enough without quoting entire OPs.

I've reached out to you via both text and Twitter DM pretty much every year for the past decade when I see a headline about you cashing in a tournament. This is from June 7th last summer (2018) when you had a big score at WSOP:



There was no room for misunderstanding on your debt. It was an extremely simple spot where you borrowed $100k from me, slowly paid back $60k, and then eventually stopped responding to messages from me. You never disputed any of this as the text message I shared in the last thread showed (which was ~18 months after Full Tilt went down, this has nothing to do with Full Tilt).

I kept this "arrangement" private for ten years until you decided to run a PR campaign about how you've always paid your debts. You've ignored messages from me for the past 5 years, and are now implying there is something more to this situation (there isn't) so forgive me if I'm not interested in now all of a sudden discussing this privately.

Don’t most debts, such as mortgages take, 15-30 years to pay back?

This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, you are admitting that you haven’t paid back your debts (which you previously denied), and yet you announced you are playing poker 5 days a week?? Shouldn’t paying back your debts be a higher priority than playing poker?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Would you be willing to escrow your earnings from sales of this book to repay your creditors ?

Would you provide the escrow agent a list of creditors whose claims would be undisputed as to amount and terms ?

There is nothing "special" about debts owed by poker players, even to credotprs who are also poker players.

Did you have 100 percent of yourself in this statement or did you use a ghost writer?

This quote should be in bold and caps and stickied. If that is a fact then everybody needs to drill it into their minds that loaning money to a poker player is not too far away from lighting the money on fire.

I could understand a bit more if people were charging 1000%APR, but they don't.

high popcorn potential thread it is.

The book isn’t going to earn much.....

You couldn't even make it to the end of the statement. Work on that attention span.

For winning players Poker is his Job/income and a lender should always want the person who owes him money to make money.

He then has to pay though when he does make money, Eli just ignored CTS it seems on purpose.

And it seems very disrespectful to make statements without first reaching agreements with CTS privately, and either pay in full or agree a resumed payment calendar on the remaining amount

So you missed this?

You claim you've been in the black EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Why can't you pay back your debts?

Wow can’t believe your statement is actually making you look worse . Get a job man.