he was NEVER folding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubKfNBPIYJQ

Here is the hand.

If you look at his body language at 8:40, he is CLEARLY not thinking about raising.

10:30 thinking out loud "He said he liked his hand", you think he is doing this if he is thinking about raising? If not, what is he thinking about if not folding?

11:10-11:30 Is someone who is about to raise making those faces? We are now talking about a professional player not some amateur who is on a Hollywood act of a lifetime.

Somebody needs to make a strong argument for him considering this long raising in this spot that it would be more believable than that he was considering folding.

The more I watch this I find it amazing that some people believed that he was considering raising. I guess that's how he was also able to scam people out of money if people believe his bs.

I fully admit that I use Live Tells/Hand Flow way more than most .. it's VERY useful in PLO.

I was screaming at the TV during the Firas bluff of The Professor on Hustler. My wife came in room and asked what was up .. I said "This dude from Detroit is going to bluff for big bucks here, you watch". It was 100% The Professor who allowed himself to get bluffed. I talked to Firas and he was surprised that I saw what he saw in the moment .. as well as the fact that The Professor had just won a huge pot and probably didn't want to lose them all in the next hand.

The body language was one of "OS, what if I'm wrong here.", not a call/raise spot.

If you're not a Player who makes these types of folds yourself then, IMO, you are lacking some of the 'stuff' it takes to spot a Player going through the same process. Big Folds suck, especially if you're wrong. My NL game is so much better now that I've learned how to fold in PLO.

Dwan is a different person now .. he's been through more than most. 'Young Dwan' would've snap shoved, no doubt. There's no filter, no previous reps, nothing to work over all the data in your head when you're new to poker. 'Whatever, I'll reload' I don't think was an option and it's certainly should be less of an option as poker players get older and have all those coolers in their closet. I don't care, while you may not think that those memories affect present day decisions, they do. GL


PS .. It was/is 100% Handz' fault for getting bluffed as much as he does. He wears his holding on his heart and if a Player has the guts they can take advantage of it at the right time.

Noted you didn't answer one question btw.

Um lol? So he is trying to sell a weaker hand than he's got. And you fall for it even though you see the cards?

Did you even pick up on that everyone thought he was getting back at doug while torturing him with the long decisions? Do you know their history?

I'm not gonna try and explain poker like I'm some hot shot. But you can't go around folding third nuts in 3-bet pots when you've played it like a weaker hand. Whatever.

Tuco you're wrong buddy. He called it off for 3m pot with 1 pair, he's never ever folding here, he was just thinking about raising.

Edit - he probably knew all along he was just calling, he just wanted to put Doug through the ringer for the fun of it.

The hand against Wesley is completely different.

Him ”wanting to torture Polk” doesn’t make sense because there is also many recreationals on the table who want action and fast play and after the hand you could see for example Rob Young’s reaction who was in complete disbelief why Dwan took so long.

That is the moment that Dwan realizes he must defend this tanking by saying he was thinking about raising which in reality he wasn’t.

Somebody show me some proof that he was thinking about raising except that he said it. We already know Dwan’s word can’t be trusted.

If we think about the hand also from theoretical perspective, folding makes more sense than raising although call has to be the best option against a player as capable as Doug.

Tom should be banned from all things poker until further notice.

If there was misconduct like this taking place in basically any other arena like with sports or chess it would’ve been dealt with by now, and for good reason, too.

He literally owes people millions of dollars. And not even in a cool Phil Ivey, “I hustled the casino” sort of way, more so in a rat like “I’ll pay you next week (year)” way

What good is that for the game?

I think this is correct since they are 1000 deep pre, raise probably isn’t great. He was never folding though. People tank for all kinds of dumb reasons. Doesn’t mean it was actually a close spot.

The game doesn't really exist outside of us. There's no commission to make a ruling so even though your logic is sound I don't think that gets us to a resolution the fastest. If Tom owes you money, it is frustrating to see him gambling (especially if he wins and you don't see a payment) but it is also the main method he'd use to pay people back. In spots like this I think you have to consider that Tom is maybe in over his head, so organizing is best. Get the main debts organized, find out which are really impacting any of the creditors' lives in an actual or significant way (likely small #s go first), and that's who he can pay back first at a rate that is reasonable but doesn't impact Tom aside from "you have to work hard now lol fix ur ****". I'm not saying Dwan is just off scot-free for giving ppl the run-around but the best case scenario for everyone involved is that he just makes amends as best he can. That doesn't happen unless he plays poker.

Communication is key with big debts but really this is not a unique situation. Lots of people have dealt poker to pay off credit to a game. Lots of people have overestimated their future and taken on debts they couldn't then afford. How many tournament players are deep into make-up? How many staking deals went wrong? How many bookie relationships ended because one side didn't really think the # could get that big and wasn't rolled properly to pay. I'm not saying it's a good thing, just that if you remove the values and the names this is a common situation and almost seems to feel inevitable for some with gambling as a career. For every poster who will pipe up and say "I never did any of that!" there are ten more on this forum who did. It's crazy how the casinos turned on Ivey, and how people are so quick to turn on Dwan who likely has had the reverse situation exist throughout the bulk of his career. When you tally up the $ he owes now (that yes 100% he must pay) I would guess that he's been stiffed or cheated out of a similar total over his career. Gambling is unique and it shouldn't be a den of thieves, but it is and our nature while losing is not to want to eat the loss. He messed up, but I don't think we need him banished from the village.

I’m not saying he should be outed from being allowed into games ever again per se, I’m just saying that he shouldn’t be allowed on to any of the larger platforms or streams because as you pointed out in your response it’s kind of just a slap in the face to everyone he owes money to. It’s not like one hustler stream later is gonna get anyone paid (even after winning a million over the last few streams it hasn’t as far as we know).

From what I understand all the known cheaters like Mike Postle and Ali Imsirovic have been banned/ousted from all the major events in poker and if they’re being banned then why aren’t all the people that owe money being banned as well? Saying you’re going to pay someone for a decade and dodging them/ignoring them completely is basically as bad as robbing someone IMO.

Maybe we should start teaching people financial literacy as well because clearly after winning millions of dollars *ahem Tom Dwan, Maurice Hawkins* you’d think they would’ve picked up a few hobbies along the way that make them income besides poker. Or maybe they should just learn to not be total degenerates.

Either way, while lore/drama like this is interesting to your average 2p2 lurker, just imagine how it might like to new players or people looking to get into the game. Overall it just continues to give poker a shady look. Online poker is federally illegal in the United States because of these crooked types

Online poker is illegal in the United States because casinos lobbied politicians to pass the UIGEA because they were worried online poker was cutting into their business.

The owner of HCL is a proven real estate scammer, so it would be pretty hypocritical to start banning players for not paying debts.

Banning cheaters makes sense as no one in the game will agree to play with them there.

HCL has such a shady cast of characters that if you started properly vetting and banning players with dodgy money, you'd probably have 20% of the players remaining.

HCL isn't exclusive to this either, if you look at the recs in Triton or Kings you realise that they need dark money to keep high stakes games alive.

Proof? So you are right unless someone can provide proof to you of what he was thinking? And that proof can’t be what he said in the moment? What sort of proof would suffice? What, exactly, would you need to see as proof to consider the possibility that you are not right?

I provided my arguments based on the body language + the value of raising vs folding vs calling + taking into consideration that this is against one of the best players in the world. I have seen many time players trying to save their face after a long tank. I know Dwan doesn't want to piss off the recreationals.

I want to hear the other side what suggests so strongly that he was tanking about raising EXCEPT that he said himself so?

The other side says his actual legitimate options are to call or raise. Folding is not even a remote option so obviously he wasn't considering that.

Now can I PROVE what he was thinking as though we were in a court of law? No. And neither can you.

I think he considered raising for the first half of the tank and then was just trolling doug for the second half. I don't think folding entered his mind anymore than paying back his debts did.

Galfond did a breakdown right around the time the hand was played. Gets very in-depth into Durrr’s thought process. Watch and judge for yourself.

https://youtu.be/Zx0AWBMnPqM?si=m-jmPudkx2Vt8SEi

ok but how much is galfond owed?

Funny and true.

Has Galfond ever commented on his close friends debt situation?

It must suck to be the squeaky-cleanest player in the game and having a close friend who is a scammer

No but in his article about Doug being a bully, Galfond acknowledged that he has kept quiet about a lot of stuff, and felt guilty about it. I believe he said roughly (I'm paraphrasing) that he thinks he gets too much credit for being a nice guy because he is nice to a fault, IE he doesn't want to call people out when he probably should.

Yeah but nobody would have bothered looking into it in the first place if Ferguson, Lederer, and the rest of them didn't scam people out of millions of dollars. That just gave the feds a reason. If they weren't stupid greedy scumbags who knows where online poker would be today.

This is just wrong. Daniel Tzvetkoff was arrested and alerted the government to the "money laundering" the big sites were doing through a Utah bank, of which the sites had an ownership stake, so that he could avoid a massive prison sentence.

Are you sure you know what you are talking about?

If I remember correctly, there was no inklings about Ferguson, Lederer and crew being scammers at all before Black Friday when things got shut down. If anything they were well respected and admired for hitting it big in business after starting out as pro-gamblers. The UIGEA which made things "illegal" was passed years before Black Friday, it just wasn't being enforced. Sites weren't sure exactly what types of gambling were totally illegal, sort of illegal, legal, etc. So most sites kept doing business as normal after UIGEA until forced out, including Poker Stars and Full Tilt.

Ironically, they were getting scammed by players much more then they scammed players. As certain players found a flaw where they could keep depositing money and Full Tilt never actually received the money. When players found that flaw, they abused it.

Then after Black Friday came and surprised everyone, **** hit the fan, and Full Tilt got caught with their pants down. Instead pf having player deposits segregated in escrow like they should have it turns out they were just disbursing money to themselves as if it were their piggy bank. This is what made them "scammers." Some would argue their intent wasn't to scam, which is plausible to an extent. This is different then a ponzi scheme in that Full Tilt was super profitable and they very well may have been just them being irresponsible with player funds knowing profits will easily cover tall those disbursements over the years.

Then Black Friday hits and they don't have the money to pay back players. Biggest reason players were pissed is because they sure weren't volunteering to refund all those disbursements they had received of millions or dollars over the years. But in reality that never happens in any type of business unless forced by law. Sort of like when banks go insolvent or need to be bailed out the bank officers still make tons of money, let alone returning any.

That's how I remember it, let me know if I'm wrong on anything.

You are wrong. They were pilfering player funds long before Black Friday. One could argue they thought they would never have to cover all the player funds and black Friday exposed their thieving, but the issue is they took money they had no right to take.