i mentioned it quietly to a floor buddy of mine and they put eyes on him but lack of cameras and no way to prove in the moment. so yeah i spoke up and they did what they could but i saw what i saw

Do you care to mention who? Initials would be fine as I’m aware of all the floor staff, but I personally was not made aware of this situation and I should have been if that is the case.

Glad to see everyone is getting paid. I think in a really competitive market here in Houston I would steer clear of this club, it just doesnt look good so early to have this publicity, but they are going to be on poker lab radio on 790 if your interested. I will say the majority of the new legal rooms in houston have been great. Yes they are legal, when questioned about them the attorney general did not state they were illegal, and he is the authority in the state of texas. I just hope it stays that way, it's been great for Houston, and then the illegal gambling trolls that post on here can wonder why their lives are so empty that they have time to make random posts attacking a hobby people love.

until we have confirmation its just another promise to pay. as of 10pm tonight the ones i knew didnt get paid. Id prefer not to say which floor in case it wasnt handled according to procedure im not gonna throw my friend under a bus when i was just trying to illustrate how extra chips got in the tourney. If I didnt name the guy who shot the angle im not naming the floor for sure.

As I sit on my couch and rarely go out I have been a conduit for some people that wish to pass info to the general public - if you have something that you would like to have posted but are fearful to come forward yourself - have no fear - smith is here - lol

I will post for you this information with your permission and will not identify the source - be advised that I will either say this is not verified and therefore take no responsibility for the information.

My goal is not to pass innuendo or malicious attacks but to merely pass first hand accounting - that being said - I avail this for the purposes of people getting paid - not to attack any parties but hopefully resolve the situation to everyone's satisfaction.

I want to touch briefly on the Dex aspect of this thread - Dex has been a friend of mine for over a decade - I have interacted with him on many levels - as a player both in games he has and as a fellow player on the felt. At no time have I EVER heard him bad mouth a player or organization and he has always conducted himself in the highest level of ethics and have NEVER heard one bad word about any action he has taken or wronged another player. In addition he is a superior player and I almost always refuse to sit at a table with him due to profitability issues.

I may agree that this task was overwhelming for him in its size and complexity but I truly believe he is (almost - nobody is god) beyond approach in his integrity and honesty.

That being said - I will defend his reputation that not one dime was taken intentionally under his watch either directly or indirectly.

Take that for what it is worth and he should not be used as a scapegoat of any malfeasance in this issue.

Didn't the AG decline to offer an opinion, so he didn't say they were legal, either? And, if he had said they were legal, wouldn't his opinion be advisory in nature and not legally binding?

True, but there are various people on here who arent really poker players, but with a special interests group serving their own purposes saying they are definitely illegal. When the AG had the opportunity to say they were in his opinion illegal, but declined to say anything the door was opened that they were legal. It's definitely a gray area, but I don't see where anyone can claim they are illegal when the AG did not even make that claim.

More info on Scammer Trent Daniel, how does a guy who has no money able to gamble on the one cash game that was held at FreeRols WPT event was a 5/10 game with local pros. He actually bought in and went bust and rebought. I’m pretty sure it was not paid for with cash cause was told by a staff member that he just had it written down. Do you guys think that he payed for the chips with his cash, very doubtful.

its pretty confusing now to sort out what the hell is going on here.

Lee made a very detailed account of operations and made it clear that:

#1) No internal controls were in place for this event, and any controls that were in place appeared to have a goal of obfuscating the flow of money (i.e. player prize pool)

#2) Dexter totally stiffed the staff.


#2 is might not be considered a "scam" by some, but maybe just idiot operator with no idea how to run a business. appears this is still playing out.


As far as #1, the term "missing prize pool" has been used several times ITT, but nowhere I have seen a player come on and say " I cashed and didn't get paid"

three questions

1) Does anyone know if all players who cashed got paid full amount they were due?

2) anyone know any player that did not get paid?

3) Or, is the assertion ITT that some buy-ins were pocketed by Dexter and not added to prize pool. (Lee alluded to this as a possibility in his interaction cage lady and Dexter). Anyone have anymore info about this?

I recorded about the last 1.5 hours of the meeting on 10/15 when dealers showed up to pick up their paychecks and we were told they didn’t have the money for payroll

https://www.dropbox.com/s/71jehzmryn...g%204.m4a?dl=0

For you people defending Dex, he may not be a thief, but based on Lee's post, he is waaayyyyyy too stupid to be running a poker tournament.

And for the player who witnessed someone cheating, but won't out the player or the floor who did nothing about it, that makes you the next level below cheating scum.

Imbeciles and scumbags like this just make it tougher to get fair regulated poker in Texas.

Thanks for clarifying, I thought it was the religious right and anti-gambling folks who were the opposition.

Poorly run events are the poster child for regulating an activity generally speaking..... or at least that was the PPA dogma.

Religious right and anti-gambling folks, and folks who profit from the casinos in Oklahoma and Louisiana are the opposition. Events like this give them ammunition as to why it should be banned.

People who are on the fence or generally inclined to think of poker as degen gambling don't see this and think "hmm, if there was an industry with regulations, that would be great" they think "yep, this is what these people want to put in our neighborhoods, scumbags, thieves, and incompetents. Nope."

So far I've only listened to first 35 minutes of audio recording. Staff feedback is a bit difficult to hear at first but then becomes clearer around 10-minute mark. Trent Daniel can be clearly understood throughout. Mr. Bradbury speaks shortly after the 23-minute mark. It gets a little heated just before the 30-minute point, and then again at 31:15 and stays that way. More heat just after 37:00.

It's so frustrating hearing from those who have already performed the labor that was asked of them, and are now having to run around trying to get paid.

I feel that it's the responsibility of an employer to communicate these things in the first place before contracting with workers. Like if there's a chance that investors are going to withhold/delay payment if something doesn't go right on their end, I feel this should be communicated beforehand so prospective staff members can be aware of this risk from the outset.

People who think that aren't necessarily wrong.

From what I can tell, though this is just a deduction from the info given, the problems began when money vanished from the prizepool, likely because of poor internal controls which allowed unscrupulous people to steal rebuys.

When that money came up short, they had to find a way to pay the players, so they took they money from what was initially reserved for payroll.

This left staff members (including dealers) unable to be paid. They've been given false promises and stalled ever since, while Trent attempts to scramble and come up with the money.

if there were cameras and i could prove it i absolutely would but its ****ty to put people in a he said he said thing when he cant prove it and i cant prove it.

I think both are right, things like this if anything outline why poker needs to be legal here. You can already see there are much nicer places that are way more secure than 3 years ago. This happened, but if anything it shows why there needs to be regulations and competition to give players, staff, and the community better options. The religious right, anti gambling, and lobbyist for casinos in other states are going to spin this as what would be the norm for events like this. I partially blame the poker community in general, there are ton of people in favor of poker, but it's way to disorganized to get anything done. There are people trying to shut it down all the time and instead of working together you have one club suing another. I just hope things continue to improve.

Lack of cameras is just another LOL for a $1k event. How big was the pot? Were yellows 1k chips? It seems to me that if you knew for sure that those 2 chips weren't in the pot, it would be pretty simple to say stop and recreate the pot size.

I'm listening to more of the audio that was provided in Post #135. The shenanigans with the tips are brought up at about 56:30 and s*** hits the fan for a couple of minutes.

At about 1:02:30, FreeRolls communication with WPT is brought up. Mr. Daniel informs those in the meeting that the WPT told him to "fix it."

Interesting back-and-forth at 1:05:15. One person references contacts they have "nationwide" with the poker community, and Mr. Daniel suggests that FreeRolls has the WPT on its side.

Harris County scrutiny over fire safety along with building codes are brought up around 1:07:00. FreeRolls being on the second floor of its leased building and being more than 10,000 sq. ft. means that the business is under increased scrutiny, according to Mr. Daniel.

At 1:13:50, Mr. Daniel defines the payroll issue as a "$40,000 problem." Says he once facilitated a deal in California where he was able to get together $600k in a short amount of time.

Meeting ends around 1:16:00 from what I can tell. After that its convos among the staff.

Let's focus on the real problem here. In Texas one needs a license to fix air conditioners, electrical, plumbing, practice medicine, practice law, sell securities, operate a restaurant or bar but not to run a poker club. Since no license is required, any person that has the inclination can open a poker club and operate as he or she sees fit. The poker community is at least partially to blame for the problems that currently exist as we allow anyone to handle our money. It is astonishing that the poker players handed over close to one million dollars in cash to people who apparently have a less than stellar reputation. I do not know any of the people involved in this mess, but I believe it would not have occurred if the state, city or county regulated the transactions at the club just like they regulate the businesses mentioned above. All other businesses that handle large amounts of money are regulated (banks, lawyers, CPA's, bars, title companies, insurance companies, financial advisors, etc.). Poker clubs are destined to continue having these issues until the clubs are regulated by some government authority so that the operators have a real downside if they do something shady (steal buy ins, stiff dealers, steal tips, allow chips to be snuck into tournaments, steal re-buys, offer unregulated loans to players). Until there is regulation, it is the wild west and players should understand that they play at their own risk. They have no recourse if there is a problem created by the dishonesty of the club operators.

^^^

firstly... paragraphs my man

Secondly, this is not a question about licensing, its a question about Texas state law.

Municipalities cannot regulate/license what could be argued is illegal.

Texas statutes, clearly state that anyone that profits from operating a game of chance is breaking the law.

We can go round and round, about seat fees, membership fees, etc, and whether or not those skirt around current law, but unless a change is made to Texas state law, these clubs will never be licensed/regulated and the whack-a-mole between operators and local authorities will continue.

Listened to the whole thing and Trent is a "salesman". It's obvious he overextended himself and doesn't have the capital backing he needs to run a business. I'm pretty sure the fire code issues re: his new club not opening is a cover as well, in that he doesn't have any electricity etc because he has no money to open the place. Any investor who gives him money now is a fool (calling Clive on line 1, JK)

The only thing you should have done is probably spliced off the last 15 minutes or so where you are talking privately to some of the other local dealers. You are heading to FL so you probably don't care but as hard as it is to believe that they would even consider wanting to work for Trent again, most dealers are living paycheck to paycheck and if by some miracle he gets funding and actually opens they might want to work there so it's probably best that he doesn't hear those private conversations at the end. It would be pretty easy to identify each of those people. Dex may not like that convo either and the guy has pretty much worked all over Houston and am quite certain will be dealing somewhere else once Freerolls implodes.

Yeah I agree that the file would be best if the post-meeting part was edited out. It's just staff discussing how their predicament is affecting life stuff (very reasonable), perhaps with an assumption of privacy. Mr. Daniel does come back into the audio near the very end, but there's nothing there. It was all covered in the actual meeting.

Hopefully Easy11 or someone else has an opportunity to consider re-uploading when there's a convenient time to do so. It's apparent from the audio that the staff is being inconvenienced already and some are having to make other arrangements while they await a resolution, so very understandable if such an edit isn't a priority at this point.

This is obviously a broken business model if they need to get investor money to make payroll! ...

To make people drive , thinking they were getting paid, only to give them hours of BS lame excuses... Seems like all the dealers got "FreeRolled"

Also, LOL at the SEC filing, they raised ~$12K over 34 investors? That averages about $350/investor.. I would never consider myself an investor putting in $350.....what a complete joke.