Both this and 99's post are very well played

this thread is still painful, even for NVG

Quoting myself, but, what if jungle knows that Doug has a dream machine too. Maybe ben realized his was better and reneged on the "coaching" offer and then sat him at 500/1k

joey definately taking it easy on Ben. what he did is not cool. How Ben tries to downplay it after the fact is cringeworthy

LOL sometimes when you sift through all the s**t, you find gems like this. WP

Lol what a load of crap. Staying ahead of the curve and knowing about the technological advances in your field are an important part of being a professional poker player, just like it is in other fields. If you didn't realize back in 2013-2014 that extremely interesting stuff was happening in the AI competition, and you didn't bother to check the publicly available info (all the academic papers are public, and there's a ton of valuable info in the ****ing 2+2 poker theory forum even), that stuff is on you. You were a lazy professional poker player, not pushing hard enough or searching wide enough to get better at your job.

That being said, of course there's a higher monetary barrier if you need to pay some guy to go to work with papers like that and program something. But like someone already said, there's a ton of poker knowledge required to get it and use it optimally. Also note that this is essentially the same problem people have with HUDs etc - having to pay, learn about HUDs, pay money and learn how to use it just to level the playing field. It's just more money, there's nothing different about it. And regardless, all of this is moot since solvers have been public for a long time now.

As an equinophobic male (our community prefers that to hippophobic) I really need to know if Bahamas has a horse population before moving there.
Ben thinks not,video seems to contradict.
Who should I believe?

04:25 <3

How much of an advantage must Ben have had in his huge epic HU battles with Isildur1, armed with his secret software?? I know it's not against the rules, but someone was revering him for winning 8 figures from poker. Could he have really done that without the software?

PraguePoker made some very good points a couple of pages back.

All the personal stuff aside, seems obvious that WCG Rider was either intentionally or unintentionally scammed. All the rest is just noise. He is surely owed some (significant) compensation. At best, Ben was very negligent in how he handled their deal.

People forget dates and times, information becomes worth less the more time passes, its the reason the statue of limitation exists on legal claims, disputes and criminal charges.

it is interesting how much time has passed in this case, reporting at a more reasonable date surely helps a person claim, in this case bystanders involved would be more readily available.

Berri you should have reported this way back when it happened, you would of had the support of the whole community to fall back on rather than losing sleep over the situation, i think you would have a bigger chance to get paid then too.

Doug you are an incredibly nice person and you have a great heart,

1. the coaching deal, it is obvious that ben scammed you intentionally, he should never of accepted coaching for NL if he was still uncertain of his ability to offer you something in return i.e PLO coaching, he gave you his reassurance and when he could not delivery made no attempt to compensate you for your time and the information you had divulged which is truly disgusting, i am surprised that you did not press for compensation and to cease on other deals you had with him at this point.

2. I HATE PEOPLE WHO LOOK LIKE YOU! i feel you were genuinely treated awful, comparatively you were new on the high stakes scene and i think ben way predatory in his behaviour towards the new kid, he was interested only in himself, and i think you realise you gave to much credit to a guy just because he played high stakes.

3. no one is immune from mistakes, alcohol does not lend itself favourably to many and negative situations a rise that many never of happened otherwise. there are mistakes made everywhere here by both of you and at what point do you Ben AND Doug think you want to take this to your grave? you are both smart individuals, nothing is going to rectify the damage caused, but to try and understand the situation may help?

This is by far the most tilting part of the argument.

The plebs complaining about dream machines don't seem to realize they wouldn't even know where to start if a top level GTO programmer/expert approached them and offered to make them whatever they wanted for free.

It's a statute not a statue

i agree with kaby, also it was mainly a fight between highstakes crushers when solvers werent public, to get ahead of their opponents, who are all successful great thinkers, sort of a prisoners dilemma, if I dont do it someone else will. So they all tried and probably did to some extent, some bought themselves in into others projects by profit sharing, some developed here and some there. Midstakes and Lowstakes werent hurting during the time solvers werent public, we never played or had to face a guy that had that kind of software, guys like Antonious had to, and he wisely phased out, not that he is hurting though, probably the biggest winner of all time online who had won many millions before even the 4 accounts on ftp that in itself was +$15m+.

They got to highstakes for a reason, and they made sure to stay there thansks to their solvers. Their motivation and financial means made sure they could compete & supress newcomers for a long time. "Fair?" probably not but it´s a cutthroat world, highstakes that is.

It´s no different from the factory worker that refuses to educate himself into using the new automatic machinery in order to keep his job, become a controller instead of doing manual labour. IF he doesnt he will get laid off. And that business will obviously come to a point where even the controller will be laid off when everything gets fully automatic even down to repairment, as will pokers. When software go fully automatic and realtime calculating even the toughest spots.

HUSNG already gotten hit by that. Guys that were not beating 200s cartel 2tabling came up and destroyed the very best 1k guys 6tabling in months. That is such a insane feat to pull off as huhypers are a insanely technical game. It´s just balance balance balance and you really need sophisticated software in order to "chart" 6tables of action, that helps you with the randomization aswell. Not to mention postflop.

Doug eats drama for breaky

IMO the most disturbing part of this thread, I mean what kind of person doesn't like horsies ffs?

As an equinophobic male I would like to see you banned for being so inconsiderate to the feelings of my community.
I mean you wouldn't make fun of Jake Gyllenhaal's fear of ostriches.

Pretty good chance both believe what they are saying, don't think the "do you want to talk about it" thing is as important as it's being blown up. Also I wouldn't hate on Ike, it was obviously inappropriate and as most, I think berri should certainly get all 40k. I respect he isn't demanding it since as he acknowledges himself, they agreed on a fair arbitration in the end who ruled - although as I said I think if it becomes clear the ruling is just bad or wrong then there's no reason why the ruling must stick.
The arbitration was handled very poorly but I think there is little to no chance Ike had any shady intentions, only mistake was not realising the inappropriateness of him being judge hearing story already from a friend- and I think Ben truly believed Ike was a fair judge (even though regardless of this, it's still not an appropriate/fair choice regardless of Ikes integrity).

lol. not sure if serious

I don't suppose someone cares to post links for this?

On the Pokerlife Podcast Ben86 says and I quote (eliminating some verbal errors though):
"The crucial thing is, as a professional poker player if you spend two hours with someone who is way better than you, you will gain so much in those two hours that probably no one would charge you enough for it!" (58:44 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VLkb9aSuI8)

He actually goes on elaborating on why that`s the case and it seems that he feels very strongly about this. IMO this statement even increases the significance of the coaching incident in terms of Ben valuing the coaching from Doug potentially a lot more than other players would. So it could be legitimate to assume that Ben thinks his actions we`re absurdly wrong. With this train of thought he maybe doesn`t even stand behind his own defense displayed in this thread regarding the coaching topic at all.

When you ask a close friend to arbitrate, you immediately put him in a lose-lose position. Especially if pressure is put on him to act in this capacity, and pressure is then put on the other party in the dispute to accept your friend, perhaps appealing to the friend's high integrity, good reputation, etc. It's just a bad situation, a clear conflict of interest, and there can be no justification for it.

I don't see how this has anything to do with Ike, however. In any case, he has apparently sent a PM to Berri, who is happy with that, so there is nothing more to discuss from his perspective.

On a somewhat related note, Ike is now probably regretting a bit that he is so well respected within the poker community, as he keeps getting pulled into disputes in which he'd probably rather avoid (e.g. Durrr, etc.)... As they say, no good deed goes unpunished...

I agree the Berri situation was handled poorly but they settled on an agreement so saying that Ben should pay $40k is absurd at this point since they settled on the $20k.

So Doug also owns a dream machine yet is getting crushed playing the micros doing his $100 to 10k.

weirder and weirder

I'm getting The Prestige vibes off this.

Joey You Missed the whole Point on MANY Topics, If I come up to Your drinking or not and you Yell at me and Scream at ME for a 1 Min Were Fighting (Let alone 30 MIn)

Were Fighting even if it's Sauce, I'm not letting it go You don't disrespect people Like that, The fact You think it's Ok to and straight up disrespect is prob why it's a good thing we never got into a argument . . .

I don't care if I'm burring bridges with You Joey Even though I Do Love You Joey and have even when You did the PLO podcast . . . .

And I didn't even play the game but listen to You. . .

Doug Didn't do Anything Wrong other than the minor misunderstandings that have been stated . . . .


Ben took many days to Try and find the GTO response to something he knows was JUST Wrong from day 1 . . .

Two things tilting me about this.

1, the urinal story at the venetian is 100000% true, maybe Ben thought nothing of it and doesn't remember, but it happened. Literally irrelevant I know, but not trolling.

2, All this is kinda pointless, the shady **** Ben was accused of he has already admitted, the rest is going over old ground. Ben admitted to reneging on the coaching that he himself admits is worth a lot of money. He's therefore admitted to scamming Doug, even if he intended to coach PLO, he didn't , he didn't offer any compensation or pieces in tournaments. In my eyes Ben owes Doug $$$.