All of these people stiffing him, going around telling everyone that he cheated them, based on the fact that he consistently beat them, and who the hell is he, so he must be cheating!

Ruin his reputation, despite him offering to play everyone live and doing his best to disprove the unfounded allegations, to the point where he can't get a game. Tell everyone you know. Drag his name through the mud. And then don't pay him, because after all, everyone says he's a cheater.

That's pretty wretched behavior to lay on a guy, just because he took a few degenerate gamblers to the cleaners in a game where everyone knows a very small skill advantage can make a very big difference.

Everyone stiffed him and they rode him out of town on a rail. Nothing about the way the so-called "community" treated him is cool.

I've followed this story since it first started and I gotta say, if OP is not cheating then Jason screwed him out of so much ev (not to mention literal dollars of debt) it's insane. I don't think Jason did it on purpose because he was salty about losing, I think he legitimately thought OP might be cheating and was trying to protect his friends but damn this is brutal for OP (assuming no foul play).

ul op. good job name-and-shaming these scumbags. put a post in the negative feedback thread too.

in the old days you had to pay even if you knew you got cheated. its the cost of doing business . these people have 0 reason to not pay.

fwiw i dislike ops strategy to get action, paying people %s of wins, messaging people he doesnt know, etc. its shady and probably the reason he isnt being paid back. something to think about.

I offered Abernathy free mixed game coaching. I started by offering LHE, then a couple days later 2-7, few days after that PLO8. By the time I'd offered the 19th game, she slapped a restraining order on me! Some people just can't help but bite the hand that feeds them. Fyi there was nothing creepy about my free coaching offers to a complete stranger, in case people are wondering.

OP doesn't come across as the most street smart individual, given his lack of self-perception of how his aggressive offers and thirst for action come off. But it seems pretty clear he's an OFC specialist who thinks about the game at a deep level. These random below avg tourney pros likely had no shot.


It's pretty ****ty that they band together to look for excuses not to pay legit gaming debts. I've heard various things about Natasha Mercier - none of them are good. These people should pay. It's absolutely shameful to welch on gaming debts.

I just wanted to point out that offering freerolls or rebates if you get him (Fernando) more OFCP action is not in itself evidence of guilt, as if Fernando was merely only studying with solvers (which we know to be the case 100%) he would probably do the same thing as he would probably feel he has a large edge on anyone.

That being said, I think also it was clear no one wants to play a very large winner, whether they are cheating or playing legit doesn't matter, so it makes sense that really good players can't get action in their preferred game. I'm not sure how many players declined to play as a result of Mercier, you can't really say all of them because many of the players that are declining already lost large amounts and might have declined anyways.

Everyone is missing the point. This guy had amazing ONLINE results, but has not successfully played LIVE against others.

As we all know, online poker is open to different ways of cheating (superuser, hacking the opponents' computers, etc). So it is not hard to think he must have found a way to fix online play in his favour, so that he knew the opponents' hole cards, and could play accordingly.

So unless he started playing live and had generally similar successful results in live play, the suspicion will remain that his ONLINE results were so abnormally successful, he must have been cheating in a way that is not yet proven, and that it is therefore best to avoid playing him online.

So rather than trying to throw up a fog about unpaid debts, and claiming unfair treatment, he should play live, and then let his live results show just how good he really is...

pretty sure he said he'd play team gender reveal live in that thread and the argument came about about because he was a nerd fumbling with his chips live

If they won theyd of happily collected, therefor they should pay.
If you have no concrete proof of cheating then you need to pay still of course.

You absolutely are a creep. Thats exactly what you are lol. Did you even know Sam and were friends with her prior to offering her free coaching. Also, if you offered her like you said limit holdem and didnt get a response, why offer her 2-7 ? then you get no response or no interest out of her and then you offer to coach her in plo8? Why couldnt you take the hint and stop bugging her? She obviously wasnt interested because you are a creep.

You even said you were a complete stranger, why dont you go offer your coaching to someone who has hours and hours ni those games? Why try to binng someone to the top from no history? The truth is this was just an attempt for your own personal gain at the end of the day, some will say financial, id say physical gain if you know what i mean :-) I dont blame you one bit but you certainly had one thing in mind from the getgo and its super obvious, therefor you got hit with a justified restraining order.

The person you're replying to is not OP, just someone mocking him.

I have to agree that he comes off very pushy and weird. I can understand why people find this unsettling. That's no excuse to welch on bets with him though.

You are the one missing things, as already stated he agreed to play Mercier live when he was challenged. And regarding him not having results live is irrelevant. Most of the online beasts doesnt have any live results (baron for example).

OP your situation sucks, but you have to realise that you are pretty much ****ed. Mercier is clearly the villain who screwed you, these other people are obviously not going to pay if they can get away with it (which it seems like). Most poker players have pretty low ethics and they are very selfish. You can only learn from this and dont play vs people you dont trust (or get a escrow vs non trustworthy people)

Thanks for pointing that out. I publically apoligise to Macbound.
I have zero sympathy for OP now

You know whats fishy is him trying to get X and X sent to charity as if that would make them more likely to pay. If they paid you the day after the game was played you wouldnt of donated these % to charities. IF you truly thought you were owed 8k from Sam, you wouldnt just "be happy" with a lower amount.
If you are right you shouldnt be happy with anything less than the 8k

No one knows if you cheated or not but we all know how shady this makes you look. Saying that the people who owe you should pay up as there is no proof just hearsay.

That, as tough as it is to hear, OP might have to write these off.

The value here is the (admittedly harsh) lesson that not immediately collecting money owed in poker is most likely throwing money away.

I worded it the way I did because these topics seem to come up with a striking degree of frequency. The topics even have a predictable formula for their titles "(poker player/s) owe (amount owed or just money) won't pay" and usually the cheater or scammer is in there somewhere, but not always.

I think people become convinced it's ok to loan or not immediately collect because they see high roller players do it on streams. But those guys have to keep everything square. To use Abernathy as an example (since op has the most owed from her): she might get to some higher stakes, but she's not exactly playing in Macau. She can play anywhere. Meanwhile, a guy like Aussie Matt has to eventually pay up, because where else is he going?

I do feel for op, but I think this is just another harsh lesson on the perils of not immediately collecting otherwise unsecured debt.

As I recall, this is not how it went down. They said "oh, you have to play Jason live to prove you have skills," but when he agreed, they ducked him a few times and then said that he had to play for an amount of money that was beyond his bankroll, or Jason wouldn't play. Meanwhile not paying him, ruining his reputation, and telling everyone he is a cheater, leading to others not paying him. All based on no evidence beyond, "oh, he's too good, we think he cheated."

I'd rather keep the 10k thanks.

Indeed. But if one is accused of being a cheat online, the only way to prove one has genuine poker skill is to play live, so opponents can see one is not using any device, programme or computer hack to unfairly help one.


So the fact that the guy adopts an "attack is the best form of defence" approach, by slagging off the morality of those he plays with, and avoids the easy chance to prove his legitimacy bt playing even a few hands in public, shows the doubters are fully justified to suspect him, as if he were honest he would have nothing to hide, and would jump at the chance to publicly defend himself by playing well live, and so shaming his debtors into paying him as they would now see he is truly a genuine talent, and not some online cheating scumbag.

I've reread the last sentence a few times and still can't make sense of it. I think you must have meant something other than hearsay. And isn't saying that people who owe you money should pay you just...common sense?

OK, fair enough then I suppose. But it's not like this is something we don't all know already, and I'm sure everyone who plays on apps like this with arrangements to settle afterwards know the huge risk involved. At least I hope they do. Risk is weighed against reward, and sometimes they come out on the short end of the stick.

And while I'm not saying I disagree with you, the fact that someone isn't payed what they were owed doesn't mean, in and of itself, it was a bad risk. If, for example, you have a big enough edge in a game or bet that you think it's still +EV in spite of, for example, a 25% chance you'll never get paid, then it's fully expected that you're going to get screwed quite often, but still come out ahead.

I think that's something that's easy to miss when these stories come out. It's easy to sit back afterwards and say the person should have known better, because after we read several of these stories we conclude that gamblers are all degens and everyone gets screwed all the time. What we forget is that we're never going to hear about the countless times people get involved in bets like this and do get paid.

I'm not saying that OP's gamble was +EV overall - I have no idea. But hindsight is always 20/20.

Did a bunch of posts get deleted out of this thread? Could have sworn it was longer yesterday?

Yes, several posts have been deleted.

I was making some fun, but it wasn't at OP's expense, though I can see how my "comedy" bit could've left that impression, given I was using the coaching aspect as part of the bit.

No worries, I def don't deserve an apology for a 3/10 comedy bit.

I do find it troubling that just bc a guy studied w solvers and would seem to clearly have an edge over any non-open face experts, the burden of proof is on him to prove he didn't cheat in order to get paid. I think poster Alex Wice summed it up the best and it boils down to the fact that it's ridiculous for people to enter a gambling contest w someone and then welch on the bets just bc they got crushed and have arbitrary and until now, baseless claims, that he cheated. That he wants some of the money to go to charity (given that the other option appears to be getting stiffed) is zero evidence of guilt. OP has pretty much explained the methods he used to get this good. It's no different than a NLHE specialist who works w solvers as part of his study away from the felt.

I haven’t played ofc, but I remember reading there was no time for decisions?

So if he was having no time limit and using gto solvers it is a bit hard to believe he crushed everyone in good faith by just knowing the game well?

I don’t think he was playing amateurs in a seniors home, as far as I know jm was one of top ofc players who made the accusation...

That video he made too lol running around the city asking Randoms to play him lol

Also if I remember correctly, jm and gf complaint was he made basic errors while they played live and he basically made no errors on the app, obviously pretty hard to prove anything

Macau, I would like some coaching

I suppose all of this is true, and I'm guilty of tossing chips back as a loan to keep a good game going too.


OP clearly had the same thought we all have had at some point.

In this case, what I think makes the choice poor was that he didn't know these people.


If the details we have are true, the players mentioned are scum. I question some of the details, but it's because they don't make sense to me and not because I inherently distrust OP.

How do we know that one or more of the players who lost weren't also using some kind of software tools? Perhaps they were, and perhaps their software tools were not as good as the OPs or not as good as his natural mental ability.

Hypothetically, if I was a judge on this situation I would rule that the honourable thing is for the debtors to all pay in full, purely because *both* players in each and every game of OFC have entered into a game that is inherently very open to being shady, so it is "caveat emptor" for all players.

It is quite similar to entering into a prop bet. The person who is not the doer of the task or challenge and who takes the other side does so because they think they have an edge, but at the same time they are aware that there possibly could be something tricky or unknown about it and fully accept the risks associated with this.

In the end, if you are going to make any sort of unlicensed or unregulated bet then there is one thing and one thing alone that should be paramount and upheld by both parties, and that is honour, honouring the bet and paying when you lose.