Tom Dwan - the missing man

Imo this is far and away the most apt analogy.

I think what people are failing to consider is the totality of volume of all the various deals and stuff ppl like Dwan are doing that when the facts are all aired out sure he can seem like a scumbag, but we really dont know all of the interpersonal **** that also is happening btwn both parties that build up to these moments. If you for example are going out of your way to help your friend, youve poured millions in buyins into him and the first time he wins something he immediately wants to get paid, that'd be sorta annoying.

Then in the coming weeks after this win and asking to be paid you havent seen him irl yet, but in this time hes lost 1.6m of your money youve backed him that would also be frustrating. We dont know all the deets, but its sometimes silly that we make such damning character assessments when I'm sure we've all done things where until you were able to explain your side and the context to a situation that on the surface you could seem like youre in the wrong. I know I have.

yeah i mean i feel like you're missing the point. jetten most likely wouldn't have played the tournaments if he knew he had that amount of his own action. why would he get penalized for doing his backer a favor by advancing him money? what would the point of chopping out even be if he had to give it back if he lost? being friends with someone or feeling bad that you lost them money gambling isn't really enough reason to write off 200k that they owe you. you guys are looking at it like this is 50$ that you owe your friend from a home game or something, not large amounts of money that have serious ramifications on taxes / lifestyle / opportunity cost. its wild to be honest

i do agree that backing the way its set up sucks for the backer, but this isn't some random rec he tricked into doing business; durr has backed hundreds of people since the full tilt days. im sure he knows how the arrangements work (as evidenced by him agreeing he owes the money).

That's how staking deals work. They carry risk for the backer. In compensation for that risk, the backer gets a large percentage of the profits. You don't have to try and frame and muddy the narrative with leading words like dumping. If they settled at 500k, then barring outside circumstances, that is a debt that Tom owes regardless of what jetten went on to lose.

So according to your logic, if I loaned you 10k, and then in a completely separate venture, you invested 10k in a business of mine that wound up going under, you think you don't owe me 10k for the original loan anymore?

Nobody is trying to say Tom doesn't technically owe the money, just that its a real c*nty thing to expect a friend to pay out in this situation after losing 1.6m of their money (if the story is true which it easily could not be)

I think the issue with this whole Dwan/Jetten thing is that Jetten sees it (as does a lot of people here, like in the post just above ^^) as completely logical and separates the different loans and deals. He is technically in the right.

However, Dwan seems to believe that their friendship impacted the deals. Sometimes with friends you give them deals or opportunities that are -EV for you, because they are your friend. I sometimes make some smaller % swaps with friends in tournaments, even though I am a much better player. Its -EV for me and +EV for them. They know this and they are grateful for it. We both understand that I wouldnt do this if we werent friends.

If these friends then went and hardballed me in other situations/deals, I would be very annoyed and I would see them as a shitty friend. Psychologically, you expect to be given something back later if the opportunity arises, when you knowingly give someone a deal that is bad for you because of your friendship status. If I buy a round of beers for friends, I expect them to buy me a beer at some point later. This is just basic social psychology.

Dwan gave Jetten an opportunity that he wouldnt have done if they werent friends, where Dwan risked a lot of his own money. Technically Jetten doesnt owe Dwan anything from this, but Dwan feels like Jetten "owes him" because they were friends when the deal was done.

Would it be ****y of dwan to collect 1.5 million dollars if jetten won 3 million dollars straight without a single losing session?

when jetten cashed in a tournament to get the profit, why didnt he just take his half then when he held the money?

Do I understand the Jetten / Dwan situation right?

1. Jetten was fully staked and ended up 1.6Mio in MU.
2. Dwans doesnt buy action anymore, but they never made a fix agreement about ending the staking. Dwan just didnt take further action and as he saw it as friendly staking and Jetten being busto, he knew that he doesnt get paid most likely.
3. Some time later, Dwan buys 50% of the action of Jetten for some MTTs, Ike frontloads the funds (as he most likely has the rest of the action)
4. Jetten doesnt cash and wants the 50% from the buyins.
5. Dwan doesnt pay because he claims that he never got the accounting, that there is another party involved that owes 50% (not Ike) of Dwans share. Once Jetten goes public, Dwan doesnt wanna pay as he wants to deal with Ike (who frontloaded the buy ins) directly and is pissed that Jetten outed him and wants to "activate" the old staking again as they never really talked about the exact ending terms.

if the fee for the loan is 1/3 of the total sum then i'd rather deal with a bank and not involve a friend at all.

TL;DR
1. Dwan didn't finish Jungleman challenge from 15 years ago. Has paid more in penalties than the amount he would have owed if he lost the challenge.
2. H Bob gives Dwan money to violate the rules of sportsbooks who have banned him and Dwan may or may not owe some of the winnings from that.
3. Jetten wins money on staking deal, doesn't receive payment immediately and then goes deep into makeup.

All most of us know is that 2 people are telling different sides of each story. All 3 of these cases are being speculated on, and could be easily mediated. Additionally, they involve amounts of money, which are negligible among the high stakes community.

That said, we haven't heard a single public case of Dwan borrowing money and not paying it back. So these comparisons of him to Eli, Chino, and even Postle are beyond absurd.

People love to talk about Dwan, which is understandable, because he is a famous and compelling individual. 5 years ago, many thought he was a slave to the triads. Now, he is involved in a few disputes and people want to run with it, because it is human nature to gossip, and these basement dwellers don't know enough about regular pop culture to discuss Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

If Tom Dwan was broke and/or a scammer, there would be someone calling him out for borrowing money to play poker and not paying back. But there are none. Because he is not either. I think it's time we finally admit that Hellmuth was wrong.

how about if he invested in 2 businesses of yours. He made 10k off of the first and and lost 75k in the second (about the same ratio as this Dwan Jetten thing). are you seriously gonna tell your FRIEND where's my 10k? I mean legally you're probably right but you deserve to get paid in pennies.

seems unlikely a bank would let him borrow 1.6 million to play poker tournaments where he had a small if any edge at best.

Much better analogy

I told you this story in confidence. I can’t believe you’re spilling it all over the internet!

It seems a lot of people in this thread believe "bearding" is some horribly illicit act and some even think it's illegal. Is bearding even against the sportsbooks rules??

Are people not allowed to make bets for friends or others? It's not like they are taking other peoples suitcases on an airplane.

Plenty of times when in Vegas with friends, only one would go down to the sportsbook to place all our bets.

Hell, before online betting was a thing and when legal sports gambling was only in Vegas, if someone was going to Vegas all their friends would send money to put in "legal" bets for them. Usually silly stuff like their home team to win the Superbowl or something. This was welcomed by books.

I doubt they had signs posted saying you can place bets for friends but just not for friends who are sharp!

I'm sure books don't like winning players using beards just like they don't like card counters. I'm sure they might deny action if they were sure. But why are people acting like they were doing something wrong? Just because casinos don't like something doesn't make it wrong.

What is it you think you're saying here, because as written it does not make any sense. A friend invests in two of my businesses and makes 10k in 1, loses 75k in another. I am then asking him for 10k back? Why would I ask him for 10k back? How is that analogous to anything thats being said here?

You also don't need to come up with any alternative scenarios because the hypothetical you responded to is its financial equivalent. When they settle, the debt that Tom owes is effectively a loan made by Jetten. The business that Tom invests into is the staking deal with Jetten that is effectively renewed after the settlement. Tom losing 1.6 million in the transaction is outside of the scope of the loan.

Doug Polk just stated on The Lodge live stream that durrrrr owes multiple people in the poker community to the tune of 30 million dollars.

https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/...

Also, as much as Doug loves to stir it up for content and clicks, I don’t think he’d say “I have on pretty good knowledge he owes 30M” on a stream if he didn’t completely trust his sources/info

I assume some Polk video is in the workshop

Bc that's what Jetten did apparently.

Won 450 k or so. Was owed 225k then lost 1.6 million of Dwans money and was like yo where's my 225k?

30 million is probably standard is those macau games. I remember when i used to play poker there was always a rumor going around Dwan played a 20 million dollar pot set over set.

If that's what happened I can understand why Dwan wrote what he wrote and why he thinks he doesn't owe anything (if I read what he wrote in one of his messages correctly). So Peter Jetten apparently is owed 225k, but owes Dwan 1.6m, effectively he owes Dwan 1.375m and Dwan doesn't owe him anything and it would be ridiculous to expect money in this circumstance unless there were stipulations in the arrangements, but unless they were extreme, why not just combine the balances? Just stating the obvious, and I don't know if this is what's actually going on.

no, its not what Jetten did. What you wrote makes no sense like I said in my last post, but the fact that you just completely ignored it seems to imply that you have a reading comprehension problem.

to explain it to you again, jetten won ~500k. they SETTLED. since you seem to have a hard time understanding what it means to SETTLE, it means that the profit is taken among the relevant parties, Tom takes 250k, Jetten takes 250k, and all balances are reset to zero. After that, Jetten lost 1.6million. Since Tom is the backer here, it is his sole responsibility. Thats what it means to be a backer.