public scrutiny is good to resolve complicated issues. i think its a good idea to bring things to light and get feedback.

Pretty confident that you're wrong. Bye.

PA did come up on the internet.

I'm pretty sure Doug would've gotten near identical feedback (probably better) if he just asked a handful of respected, logically-thinking HS players familiar with the scene and how things should work while maintaining privacy of both parties instead of airing it on YouTube and 2+2.

Probably saw all the drama topics here and thought to himself that he didn't want to take part, but he wanted to take over. I mean, why else bring the matter up a few years later when the situation itself was laying dormant all this time?

That said, thanks for the lolz.

This wasn't about feedback. Doug has said multiple times about how he feels about those who wrong others/scam and continues to out them -- he thinks the noble thing to do is make sure others are informed and don't get scammed as well.

Great stuff! Personally I like the ben86=sociopath? discussion best. These high level sociopaths are very hard to ever expose, friends can know them for years and still dont have a clue. If things are like they seem its no surprise that its Doug Polk who exposes a hint of the real person behind the vail. Doug Polk is probably a genuis but comes across as a pretty normal guy and that is the perfect combination to get one of these high performing sociopaths to drop the guard. They feel superior but doesnt realise they are outmatched. This may or may not be true

You are 100% right about that. Being noble and wanting to protect others is why Doug continued to do business with Ben after the coaching issue, then waited 4 years before telling the community and made sure to time it to coincide with the launch of his twitch poker/youtube podcast ventures. Not to mention the personal details about Ben getting bullied to add icing on the 'noble' cake. Doug Polk is a real classy guy.

The coaching swap is only a scam if Ben didn't make the agreement in good faith, right?

Have we established that Ben never intended to follow through with the swap?

The term sociopath is being thrown around very liberally in this thread btw.

We haven't even established if Doug actually coached Ben. Ben already mentioned him giving tips to Doug on an opponent he was going to play in a match. This feels more like information sharing between 2 extremely good NL players. Given how little HU NL experience Doug had 4 years ago compared to Ben, I don't see why people are thinking it's 1 way coaching from Doug to Ben.

Fair enough, not arguing that - more the timing of it. Why years later, why now?

Doesn't the all that time in between open other people up to being potentially scammed?

Why didn't he post after their mini encounter? At the urinal (lol)? A forum post by Ben triggered all that pent up anger to be unleashed after all these years? Eh, sounds off.

fyp

exactly.

let's face it. they were simply together in the same room at the same time on several occasions and they happened to accidentally interact with one another. who knows how they got to that room in the first place? can we really draw the line between talking poker terms at each other and actual coaching (as in, incepting ideas of poker strategy in another human being's brain)? i think this is the question that needs to be answered before anyone gets carried away here.

Unfortunately I've had to deal with more than my fair share of them. The actions/ behavior that has been described itt are huge warning flags imo. However ftr Im not a medical professional- just basing this off my experiences with sociopaths and of course lots of reading online.

Again, it's just my opinion but I believe sociopaths would naturally be gravitated to this "profession" all things considered- guessing most who have stuck around forever are in this spot moreso than the naive guys just starting obv. Just like there are solid studies that say lots of CEOs are probably sociopaths.

Someone else told a story how they were in a bathroom with 10 urinals and no one else in there and Ben came next to him to pee and claimed it was sociopathic.

It was also a joke tho.

Also the timing has to do with Ben talking about the Alex Dreyfus situation in a very hypocritical way related to this situation and it set Doug off and he called him out in that thread and people told him to make it into its own thread.

It's not.

TIL being introverted and/or dumb while drunk = diagnosed as sociopath.

Yeah, you are right, it's a lot more like a scientific breakthrough.

Deeeeep!

Threads getting repetitive, it's like that time Isildur1 had a 5k deposit limit on the untracked euro sites or something.

It's been a busy thread, but if you sort this forum by views, you'll find it on the 11th page, which puts it outside of the top 250 viewed threads in NVG. I don't know where it would fit in overall on the site, but I count 15 threads just on the front page of Internet Poker with over 200,000 views.

Post count will give you similar numbers.

A very active thread, but it has a long way to go before it even breaks the top 100.

/derail

Punc So in your opinion Doug is a sociopath as well? That is what this sounds like, and frankly I would have to agree. Both of them need help, this is ridiculous. Doug's past outing of other players and Ben's lack of human common sense scream sociopath for both of them.

The more that is added to this thread the bigger their boners are going to get because they are being talked about.

Oh wow, didn't realize I was only looking at the past 2 months. Silly me

I get the feeling people don't know what the term "sociopath" means . A+ thread. Keep going.

The person you quoted said scientific breakthrough, but it applies to any technical/technological advancement.

Your analogy is awful and shows you're just another person chiming in on the software debate who has absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

There are so many people complaining about the unfairness of a few top professionals having access to privately unavailable software but how many of them utilised the publicly available software that's been around for YEARS to advance their poker game?

How many of the people complaining about the privately designed software are using the publicly available solvers like GTORB and Pio to improve their game currently?

Even with the knowledge of these private software programs existence being made public, there are absolutely no details of what it is these programs do that other poker software does not. Why are so many people talking about what these programs are and do as if they're facts when it's nothing but wild speculation and guesswork?

You're making your awful stock market analogy stating the affect this software has when you have no idea what the software is or entails.