Really, click here and look at who is behind this. "Financial insider" who has developed a system to present poker players in the best light? That guy? The shady-looking guy wearing a woman's blouse and a smug grin? Yeah. LOL.

The only useful person of the 3 is clearly the HR guy but paying those people that much money is crazy. I never really believed Art made any money trading but you really can't say for sure. The posters here who are legit though are very obvious and I never thought he was anywhere near that group. Shady.


Ship it!

i should be clear -- i meant to say that just because some poker players think it's too expensive doesn't mean the guy is a scammer. i hadn't even looked at his site until just now.

Hey guys,


I'm going to chime in as I've worked with him as his first "client"

I'm going to be honest -- I was already deep in interviews when we started talking. That being said, he put together a nice package for me about my career options and put together some of the potential questions I could face. I also did some mock interviews with one of his associates.

At the time, it looked like it had all of the makings of a good service, and I still stand by that sentiment. That being said it could have easily not panned out and could have caused him to change how he is doing business. I don't know how he does things now, but I did just want to chime in that he did have a semblance of a business at the time of my testimony

Art actually PM'd me about this "business" when he was getting it started and chatted w/ me about it once on AIM.

My thought was, he is trying to charge for what anyone in BFI who can actually help someone is already doing for free and has been for years (minus the "website design" and so forth). It seemed a little odd and unlike my previous impressions of Art but I didn't think much of it at the time - assumed nothing would ever come of it. Sorry to see it turn out like it apparently has.

Several BFI posters have given me extremely valuable advice, looked at resumes, etc., and never asked for anything in return. And I try to return the favor whenever possible. To me that is the beauty of 2+2 is that we are a community and we help each other. There is very little Art was offering tangibly that anyone couldn't have gotten a half-dozen perspectives on just by politely asking around, and the tangible stuff he did provide is (at this point) clearly of dubious value, and he was specifically targeting people who were not in a position to know the value of what they were receiving.

Another really bizarre aspect of this is the name of his "company" - Sixth Street Careers. (http://www.sixthstreetcareers.com/the-team/)

wallstreetpro, who Art went to great lengths to expose as a scammer, had/has a "company" called...Fifth Street Trading. (http://www.fifthstreettrading.com/)

Coincidence? Conspiracy? If ya can't beat 'em, join 'em?

P.S. wallstreetpro's ratio of satisfied customers was higher than art's currently is.

to clarify i was saying that web design is way harder than data entry and that the implication the poster is making that 27 is too old to do webdesign like it's a ****ty job for kids is very silly. my post may have come off the opposite, unless im misinterpreting your post, which is entirely possible

does argentina have extradition laws?

since i brought it up i'll answer this but in general let's not derail this thread (i.e. let's end the discussion after this post. if you have further questions, pm me).

- i offered $25/hr for fast turnaround work.
- she said she worked some ridiculous # of hours and produced 1/3 of the work that the other 11 people i paid and who responded did.
- i discussed this with her and said i would like to reach a fair agreement and asked if she'd be ok receiving compensation based on the productivity rather than her hours worked given how far off of an outlier she was (avg min/fact was like 1.7 with a min of 1.4 and a max of 1.9 and she came in at >4 and only did 1/3 of her assigned work so i had to reassign it and pay again anyways. further, the work delivered wasn't of the same quality of the others' either. I explained all of this to her).
- she noted that she thought she'd have done better than she did and said my proposal was fair. i paid her immediately the settled amount and she emailed me confirming receipt and thanked me for being fair.
- we both consider this matter resolved.

Here is my experience as a client:

His services are advertised as for poker players transitioning from no-education to a career, but I have a degree in Engineering and decided to take a gap year off, so I was just looking for some advice / assistance in landing a job. I thought his post about post-poker careers was really informative, and our initial consultation sounded quite promising - he never promised a job for me, but it sounded like a great way to enhance my job search overall.

I had a consultation with Colin mid-march, and we came to an arrangement around late March - I paid via FTP transfer and he put together a LinkedIn profile and a personal webpage for me over the next while. Him and his HR guy offered me some input / advice on better tailoring my resume.

I had several sessions with his HR guy (including 2 or 3 interview sessions of several hours) and they were pretty insightful and useful.

Around Black Friday he became difficult to get in touch with and he had personal issues so I didn't really bother him too much. I kept in contact with the HR guy to provide a weekly / biweekly update on my job search.

When Colin finally contacted me again (early May), he had provided a spreadsheet with some job postings (some of which I had already applied to myself), some recommendations, and the sheet was supposed to be regularly updated to keep track of my applications / interviews. The sheet never ended up being updated, and we had planned to aggressively message recruiters on LinkedIn but that never panned out as well as we had hoped either.

I was applying to several jobs a week on my own that I would find through job posting sites and such constantly for the entire period as well.

I ended up getting a job in late June without hearing much from Colin through a position that a friend of mine referred me to, and overall the Linkedin Profile / Job Strategy Sheet / Personal Website did not really serve of any direct assistance in helping me land my job. Out of the services rendered, I would only say the resume tailoring and the interview techniques were directly influential for me. However, the rest of the his services definitely did help me from a morale perspective and helped me maintain my constant job applications rather than slacking off.

I have no doubt in mind that he had great expectations for this project - it was in no way intended to be a scam. It just seemed like Colin became alot busier after Black Friday, and he also explained his lack of internet and his staying at a friend's place. I was always able to contact the HR guy and he usually replied promptly.

I also spoke with the HR guy shortly before landing my job and he said that he would speak with Colin since the lack of updates / service for me was unacceptable given that I was one of their earlier paying clients.

I PMed Colin after the other thread went up and he offered me a paypal refund for part of my initial fee, and that he would take a little while to transfer money onto there and send it to me. If / when I receive that money I'll provide an update.

Having actually met Colin in Argentina a couple times, I'd like to chip in my two cents.

1. I think some of y'all are piling on when this thread has only been open for 12 hours or so. Maybe there's another thread that has been open a bit longer, but I think we should give him a bit of time before replying. I think I saw somewhere that he went home to Australia for a few weeks as well, so he might not be checking 2p2 very much right now.

2. Colin has been one of the best BFI posters for years. I don't think anyone would disagree with this. He's a bright guy, and he puts real effort into his posts. His modding has also kept BFI as a forum with a half-decent signal to noise ratio.

3. His amazingly high post count is probably indicative of someone who procrastinates, and might not be the best at followthrough. I think some of his ideas were good, but it wouldn't surprise me if the execution were lacking.

Despite having gotten into a snit with Colin on the internet a few months ago, I think we should try to not prejudge the situation. I hope he'll come here and answer the questions. Also, I'll message him on Facebook to make sure he is aware of the situation.

the problem is that weeks of avoiding a contact is absurd, especially when he has been posting on 2p2 for much of that period.

i'd agree with that, but when you only hear one side of the story, it's easy to call things absurd.

ArturiusX
Carpal \'Tunnel

Send Message User Lists Last Activity: Today 08:39 PM
Current Activity: Viewing Thread Calling out ArturiusX and Sixth Street Career

it's admirable to stand up for your friend. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/55...areer-1088692/ was started on the 24th after he nuked the first one.
and this is someone who shows signs is out of control. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...8&postcount=83

If he is your friend, maybe he needs an intervention, because to date it's his actions that are the other side of the story.

as I've said, I've met Colin in person a few times. Twice specifically that I can think of. He's not a "friend." I don't claim to vouch for him personally, in fact he blew me off for lunch once or twice iirc.

But I do think we should give him a few more days before assuming. It sounds like he is well aware of what is being written though.

My thoughts as well.

No.

I also have gotten the impression for a while now that he uses his mod status in BFI to self-promote his own businesses. Trade grinders was one, I remember there being a few threads about people getting screwed by that one that were locked. Then that long thread he made in which he was talking about "when to move on from poker" just smelled of self-promotion, so it's not surprising to me that he was sending PM's to people on the low about a business related to it.

That's also why I was in that thread posting because I didn't even think his post offered that much value at all and would end up being used to exploit poker players that were in vulnerable situations with poker dying. There wasn't much value being offered at all. Just was a bunch of irrelevant statistics and pretty graphs being posted to seem impressive that amounted to nothing more than telling people there's an opportunity cost to playing poker for a living, and if you don't succeed at poker then you come out behind. Groundbreaking.

http://www.sixthstreetcareers.com

that is a terribly unprofessional looking website. It looks like a website a 13 year old would make in his intro to web design class.

Why would anyone donate hundreds of dollars to this shady bush league stuff?

Agree 100%. Go boobies4me, you got a good bs detector yo.

My response in the other thread:

seems like a solid response, although we will obviously need to hear the customers responses

I've read this thread with some interest. In all honesty, I'd lean towards giving ArturiusX the benefit of the doubt.

I dislike the guy actually, but he doesn't seem like a guy who would gank you. It's just a gut feeling. Mistakes, maybe, but out and out trying to get over on someone, I just don't buy. I don't know what it is, but I'm almost 100% on it.

But no one listens to me, so whatever.

Woah, some scathing stuff here. Few things to start:

1) I'm not going to defend my professionalism. It was lacking. I also take full responsibility for anything and will make no excuses.

2) None of these business's were about the money. They were all an idea that I never fully developed. I wasn't scamming to make an income, the actual money wasn't important. I was trying to branch into new things.

3) This isn't about the money. There are refunds on offer. Two guys are unsatisfied with the service. So let's calm down and put it in context.

4) I stopped taking customers at 6th street, and was turning away people a long time ago, mostly because I felt the business wasn't scalable. This is also why the website sucks; because it's not in use.

Quick post reply:

Putting my BFI hat on here. Of course it was self-promotion. Your definition of 'exploit' is interesting. I certainly put my service out there, but keep in mind, my service was released before black friday. I only accepted two customers after black friday and turned away about 5. Both of these guys wanted smaller scale services that I felt I could offer in a scalable way.

Also note that, my product was in the marketplace forum. It received positive feedback. This wasn't a secret. I didn't receive much criticism about the idea itself. If you're using exploit as in 'saw an opportunity in the market', I guess I did. Just like cardrunners exploits people who chase the poker dream.

Oh yeah, obviously the post wasn't groundbreaking. I never said it was. but overall, yes it was self-promotion.


Here's some BFIness:

- What I have is contact with 3 experience recruiters, one large hedge fund/private equity database, a database with lists of different recruiters. I paid a lot of money for these.

- My original intention was to turn this into a quasi-PR/reverse-headhunting business. It succeeded for two guys, I managed to get their resumes into what is normally a closed system.

- I wanted to eventually establish a network with HR managers within organisations to get inside info on how to apply for roles.

- Had a PR guy, a web guy, writers, and everyone all set up. Offered interview coaching and ways of explaining the poker gap. The HR people I talked with liked this.

Where it went wrong:

- I took on clients outside of what I was intending. Finance type looking for a job in NY? I could accomodate this. Outside of this? I was out of my element in terms of services that I could offer.

- I had personal issues. Won't get into this too much, but lets say that I had bigger things to worry about.

- It wasn't trading (or poker), and I treated it like such. There's a certain seriousness to the business that I never had, that I should of.

To be honest, I'm glad I can fix all these problems in public. I look forward to winning back everyone's trust.

A little more splainin' please.

What you want him to get into the nitty gritty of where he failed everyone who asked for his help?

You want to know his personal problems?

None of these are your business. Art's first business is with those who failed to receive a service he promised. His second is hopefully through his first by regaining the trust and acceptance on a forum he has spent a lot of time at.


FWIW I don't know Art from anyone else on this site.

Douchery should be stripped from mod status forever

A simple email to explain why you couldn't do any work, why you didn't have any money would have sufficed. Instead you blew people off for weeks and months.

In text form you sound quite convincing. Even the correspondence with the aggrieved party sounded quite convincing. You promised to work on it immediately, do this do that. Then just blew him off. Still managed time to blog and browse 2+2.