Every indication is that Ben is not a sociopath, so relevance?

not saying its not flawed but there's no system in place as a community that does much of anything besides tarnish reputations.

We get it, you made one of the most ridiculous statements in the thread, and you've been trying to walk it back with anecdote and bluster ever since

Take up my offer of a bet then (I win if all investors in the 5k get refunded). Even money up to 1k. Escrowed and settled by fakelogic. Offer open for 3hrs from post date.

just my opinion but trying to bet on threads like this just feels so ridiculous

"I busted the main event on day 1, and had some free time before the venetian main. I started playing casino games and as you can imagine, started losing. I started to feel disorientated being here and became desperate. The cash i had for the tournaments had gone. One mistake led to another and i sold more action for the tournament, and also lost the money. I played on more than one occassion with some swedish guys who were sitting down at palazzo.. It reached the point where i just didnt have the buyins i needed to. I was not thinking straight and sold more action to the Venetian $5k than i should have. It reached 90% which was fine as 35% went to a backing deal. From there, the day before the tournament, i made the biggest mistake. I messaged two close friends and they bought 20% each of two bullets, (sergio and adrian) which took the tournament from 90% to 130% and from there I made swaps of 5% with 4 guys, Ankush, Jono, Goran and Rocco."


just reminding everyone how scummy this was since we're getting off on a weird tangent, really 1 of the most scummy things ive ever heard of in poker.


the lengths he went to to scam multiple parties etc when he might have had the bankroll @ home overseas(speculation from pads and others)? the man has no conscience.



and why praise him when he came clean after being caught red handed and confronted with evidence of his lies... praise him when he makes everybody whole.

Rehabilitation and being treated humanely does more good in the long run than harsh punishments. Just compare the USA prison system and Norway's one for example.

i'd respond to this in earnest but i fear i'll get banned for a personal attack when i give you my honest assessment of your critical thinking abilities

anyway i have no dog in this fight so i'll just go back to lurking and lol'ing at the dolty apologists, then i promise i won't be surprised when this guy is back in marketplace selling action again

With the almost monthly uprisings of "scam threads", statistically speaking, i wouldnt be shocked if at least one person ITT who has proclaimed outrage, didnt in turn become a scammer. Sad, but definitely not out of the realm of possibility considering our current climate.

this is a complete non-sequitir, wtf does this have to do with anything?

Norway's prison system surely imposes at least some sort of negative repurcussions above and beyond "feeling guilt" and "having people say bad things about you", I'm sure

One of the reasons I don't get into the threads too much is I really don't have too much time to always check back and see if there are posts which warrant my response, and people get mad when I don't respond to them lol. But given all of that, and with the disclaimer that I might not be able to followup in this thread to its "conclusion" whatever that is, I decided to at least chime in. I will do my best here.


Yes I had 35% of Venetian Main and the rest of his under 2k summer package.
Yes I backed Ben for years and he never screwed me (as far as I know) until now.
Yes he came to me and admitted what he did (I think)- but did so only after Herm caught him and was going to post.
He sent me receipts of everything he played. With the disclaimer that even these are unreliable at times, they matched up with everything else aside from the Venetian 2 bullets obviously.

There are some more issues with the timeline that concern me before I can consider his explanation complete. (Not that a complete explanation absolves him from guilt, but a complete explanation will at least allow others to properly gauge how to look at it.)

On Wednesday July 8 I got a message
> My wsop is over
> I may stay To play the venetian main if u were to take action Lmk

In his explanation he said that he has busted the main event and had nothing to do before the Venetian Main, so he played casino games. That implied that he had already planned on playing Venetian main. His email can be read several ways. One is that he would only stay to play the main if I were to take action, or he might have just meant that he was offering me action to take.

Also, he mentioned in his explanation that he had nothing to do between the WSOP main and Venetian Main so he spent some time playing cash games, and by the time the Venetian Main came up, "the tournament buy ins were gone"- To me this means that he had already sold for the Venetian main.

Throwing into the mix, is that between the WSOP main and the Venetian Main, where he said he had nothing to do so he played cash and lost everyone's money, he was supposedly playing the Venetian 1k re-entry for me and others during that time.

"Th July 9 1k reentry Final tourney in the summer package I sold for So 35% to us"

Sent from my iPhone

Fri July 10 1am
Out
Wil play again tomorro

Fri July 10 546 pm
I will double check tonight and confirm
Starting 1100 venetian day 1c

Fri July 10 703pm
Re entering with 15k at 200/400/50
Too soft not to

Sent from my iPhone

Sat JUly 11 1226 am
Out
1010
< KK

Sent from my iPhone

So was he playing cash games between the main and the venetian main? Or was he playing venetian 1k reentry? I guess both are possible.

I just think alot of the story needs to be understood, and I am not sure I have the patience to sift through it all.

I have no opinion on what the marketplace should do. Anyone have an opinion on what I should do in regards to staking him in the future? If I end up thinking this was a one-off thing and he has xxxxxxx makeup do I owe it to the community to drop him and let the makeup go? I struggle with this a lot.

Anyway, not sure if my opinion on any of this matters----as I have found that 99% of opinions here remain the same regardless of any post that gets made lol, but I at least wanted to clarify the facts that people wanted me to clarify.

backing him is kind of a sick spot, since i doubt theres any way for him to pay back the community if he isnt playing poker in a timely / or even plausible fashion. kind of like the padjes situation..

Think a few guys in here are missing this dichotomy and hopefully I make sense when I break it down:

In the mainstream, if you're not shady, things can go as they should and you can continue doing what you like (obv w/ life skills involved). If you're shady and caught, there is a wide range of punishment from simply having your reputation tarnished/losing money to being given the death penalty. Rehabilitation is along that spectrum, but it doesn't allow that person to be involved near their area of crime.

In poker backing, if you're not shady, things can go as they should and you can continue with it (w/ poker skill involved). If you're shady and caught, the range of punishment is having your reputation tarnished to being unable to receive further investment, to possibly a physical threat. That's literally it. The only things at risk are reputation, words, and maybe the rare incident of bodily harm. It's actually more common that the shady person's money isn't even at risk.

So it's highly unhelpful for people to become apologists or argue for leniency, since you basically negate the very few tools of response investors have, unlike in the mainstream. If you want to privately forgive them or give them second chances, go ahead--but in the context of poker backing, you're definitely doing more harm than good by acting as though a thread like this or MP removal is unfair or unwarranted or some other sense of asking us to stop picking on them.

It is not that at all-----what you are referring to is the scenario where I did NOT think it was a 1 off act.

I just mean if someone screws over the community, do I owe it the community to not give him a second chance even if I wanted to?

I guess I am explaining it wrong----just ignore me.

I think second chances are fine as a personal choice/risk since there are always more info between you two that others are unaware of. But like any mainstream public policy, they should err on the side of protecting the most people, since not as much information/circumstances may be shared.

i know that u were speaking somewhat hypothetically. im saying its kinda sick cause its probably in the best interest of those owes to have him be given a econd chance, oddly enough. naw mean?

I think its pretty clear cut what the MP should do, banned with no second chances. There is no shortage of action. And posting receipts with chipstacks in play should be a minimum. And if for some reason people are given a second chance (like others have been in the past) then it should be a requirement to post a link to the problem thread in all packages they post. I don't understand why people are given a second chance here.

Sheets, I don't think you should drop him if you think its a good business decision to keep him on. You don't owe it to anyone to drop him and you'd be the one taking the risk, plus with makeup you have a reason to keep him on if you think its worth that additional risk.

yeah also don't think you 'owe to community' to drop him if you think a business decision to back him makes sense as takedown said. whether he should be allowed MP access is a separate issue as that is essentially a community privilege granted to people with good standing reputations (for the most part).

to me, this is similar to if anyone who got screwed decides to ever swap or do business with him again due to personal choice, but maybe even more clear cut since if there is make up you are giving up more.

Wow I thought you were for sure his friend, that makes the 5% comment even more puzzling. I do agree with u there is a big difference between someone who scams and pays back compared with u someone who pays back, but there is also a huge difference between Ben and someone who has and never will scam. And this was a bad scam where he intentionally scammed his friends. I was leaning more towards arrogant than stupid, so I will decline the IQ test for rolls, despite the fact that I have a lot of confidence in my IQ, even though I have never taken an actual iq test. It was so funny for me to read the iq test for rolls comment because recently I was reading an old thread on pocket fives and I came across a post where I said the exact same thing to someone else 6 or 7 years ago and I was embarrassed by my arrogance lol. I still think your comment is crazy, but I'm sorry for the personal attack.

The market place should ban him for life. You have no obligation to the community to drop him. You just have to make your best business decision. If it was me I would drop him no matter how much makeup he was in. I know that's easy for me to say because it's not my money, but I'm sure if I was in your spot that is how I would handle the situation. How can you trust this guy after this? Even if I thought it was +$EV to keep backing him, I would think it was -lifeEV because it would suck to have to worry if he was scamming u all of the time. He swapped and sold action to his good friends, knowing he was going to punt. How could he not be trying to punt if he sold 150%?

Last time I lost in the pits was $20 in 2010 with AChen who just wanted to play BJ once so he could say he has and then bet against you idiots who seem to think it's hard to not degen off your money in -EV games

I'm going to start posting in my staking threads that I'm a lifetime winner at slots/pit games so people will be able to expect me to at least get it in good when I take my tourney roll to the pits. #nittagetowinnage #chainsaw

Perhaps his assertion that he played the same way as if he had not oversold is the most insulting part of the whole explanation. The rest of it has some holes but is something I have seen too often. I also have not decided whether his previous loyalty and honesty made me less mad that he did this, or more mad.

I would wonder what Ben himself would recommend that 2+2 do to his marketplace privileges, if anything.

Seriously, I think we should let him stay in the marketplace and just quote that post every time he tries to sell action. Oh, selling action? Will you promise to try just as hard as you did when you sold 140%?

If a guy got caught scamming me and owed me a lot of makeup I'd negotiate a deal with him to pay some of it back with the alternative being I go to a lawyer.

Apology accepted. Though is it still arrogance if you can back it up? (Probably)

As I've stated multiple times now, I fundamentally believe that many, many people if put in similar circumstances would scam, so ben is only different in that he has experienced those circumstances while most others have not.