Tom Dwan - the missing man

The idea is that basically it is easier and better for the business to ban/limit everybody who wins then to have a proper risk department, to actually have good traders and all that. Believe it or not to run a good sportsbook can be incredibly costly.

I have been working in gambling for quit a while now and excluded many advantage players from campaigns i came up with. I remember spending a lot of time and effort on making my campaigns unbeatable just for my boss to tell me mate i dont give a **** if this is exploitable our benchmark is not exploitability but other operators. To be able to compete with what they offer we need to have beatable promos and lines. We just exclude everybody who abuses them.

Some people get caught in the cross fire but nobody really cares. It is a bit weird though as i know of huge punters that have been limited or banned for going on a run in some casinos while when i look at their betting patterns they obviously are a fish on a heater.

Thats obviously nonsense. If a book cant limit or exclude winning players the business becomes inherently unsustainable. A single guy could bring down all books.
Odds would have to become super secure and unbeatable. I dont think anybody wants that.

That is also absolute nonsense. You have no idea how much a good well organised betting cartel can do in damages in a very short amount of time.

Books can be and have been broken.

Now if a casino/ book can not limit or ban players anymore it would take weeks for all and every book to be bankrupt or closed.

You honestly believe that casinos/bookmakers etc should be allowed to only target losing players? With the main way of doing this is to trick and convince them that they can win?
Seems a bit, i dunno, wrong?

That's a little too ironic, don't ya think?

I got the same impression.

These situations can't be that complicated. You either borrowed money or you didn't.
This whole thing doesn't make Tom look good.

Amazing how many of these high stakes famous players you think have it made in the shade,
then so many stories like these come out.

how is dwan supposed to pay peter when he owes the chinese?

how is Dwan supposed to pay anyone when they're not being nice to him? :(

sometimes you have to rob peter to pay paul (phua)

If I have 10k outstanding with a backer, and I then go into giga makeup and claim "hey dude, sorry but I quit poker, Im never even going to try to get out of makeup, tough luck", according to horses I am still entitled to the 10k. Sounds like this is how backing deals are handled. How is this not a great opportunity to just massively freeroll your backer in a big game. Why do backers accept such deals? Just banking on the fact that degen poker players wont be able to quit poker?

If Jetten was still playing poker and trying actively to get out of the makeup I would have some sympathy for him but as is, it seems as if he just thought "Im never getting out of this hole, so **** Tom, I quit". If this was his intended plan IF he ran bad in the games, then he was basically freerolling Tom super hard (either I win and take my cut, or I lose and quit poker), a clear scumbag move. Trying to weasel out whatever relatively small sums he could have a claim to later as well just adds to the scumbaggery.

lol, winner!

Backers are always at risk of getting freerolled at some point

That is how they make money. It's not about what you think. It's standard business practice. Most businesses around the world have it posted right at the door "we have the right to refuse service for any reason we choose"

Someone who chooses to do it is still a douchebag. Especially to a friend. And once you choose to apply the freeroll and quit, you shouldnt be entitled to get any outstanding money from the backing deal.

I agree.

Still a scummy practice.

tbf I think I remember jetten on twitter saying he wanted to continue to play but tom ran out of money while the deal was going on

If someone dumped 1.5 mega I’d run out of money too.

Backing deals usually don't work out. It is inherently going to change the behavior and play of the person and just makes poker even more difficult than it already is. The moment they're down or into makeup it just feels like an insurmountable hole they're in, and most relationships end poorly with the backer cancelling or the horse going outside the bounds of the deal and losing. Someone being willing to stake you in a game where you lose 1.5m is very close to a gift, the same as people backing tournament horses or their idiot pal Bellande is mostly a donation. I would estimate that a similar number of horse/backer relationships and bookie/customer relationships end poorly.

If someone doesn't have the $ to gamble, it is almost always the case that they did that to themselves. There are infinite opportunites along the poker ladder to make $ and save it and adhere to proper bankroll disciplines. The game is solved now, but the players who play top tier poker are a select few professionals. The person you're backing is already in theoretical makeup to themselves, and you're mostly just betting on hitting a good patch of variance.

yeah after a certain point the horse is actually incentivized to play worse so their backer drops them and they can get a fresh start. Once the situation reaches the point where even a final table will not get them out of makeup the horse is basically just trying to play for either first or last place at that point and definitely not playing anywhere close to their optimal game.

Well yes obviously. I see nothing wrong with it. People can win so thats not a trick. At least in the jurisdiction i work in every casino has to make it very clear to its patrons that they are not likely to win in the long run and warn of the dangers.

We obviously still take advantage of and cater to problem gamblers but we give them every chance to stop and get help.

I have been working in gambling for a long time so my view is probably skewed but this all seems very normal to me.

I mean are carpenters only supposed to take profitable jobs? In the end for someone to offer a service it needs to be profitable or subsidised.

If you say there shouldn't be casinos at all because they cause harm I would disagree but get were you are coming from.

Personally i respect advantage players. I mean i used to be one myself. I also have excluded quite a few but never confiscated their chips/balance even when i could legally have done so.

I just respectfully tell them mate i know what you are doing and I have to put a stop to it.

Congratulations on your winnings and have a great day!

I think a lot of people have no idea to what extend betting rings and cartels exist.

There are huge very well funded betting cartels with thousands or even tens of thousands of beards.

If you take the ability to chose who to offer services to from the casinos you take away their ability to offer beatable games and promotions.

So that means no more blackjack, no more sports book or at the very least all odds significantly worse, no more free play or with insane wager requirements.

So the experience gets worse for everybody involved besides a small group of advantage players.

If you force casinos to not change their offering but take all action from all comers every single casino will be bankrupt in weeks.

I just dont understand how any of this makes economic sense to people? where does the infinite money that is needed to constantly offer ev- bets coming from?

And I never said you said it was 😀
But your flawed logic is treating both as the same. If that statement is wrong then tell me what would be the difference between owing 1.6 and being in 1.6 make up in this situation according to you? How much money each parties should have in their pockets at the end of those two different situations according to you?

- How long have you been playing poker? Are you familiar with the term "result oriented"?
- If Peter had won Dwan money instead of losing him money, would Dwan still owe the 250k to Peter according to you?
- Let's say you stake somebody cause you think it's +ev, should that person feel guilty if he loses? Does he have a moral debt to you now? (or any kind of debt)
- If Dwan owed Peter 3 million instead of 250k (makeup still 1.6), how much money can Peter ask for without being scummy?

If somebody owe you 250k, would you accept to be staked by him knowing that if you lose you will not get your money???

Staking somebody you owe money to and not paying him if he loses is mathematical a freeroll. Grab a pen, a piece of paper and do the math if it's not clear to you.
Freeroling is scummy, refusing to get freeroled is not.

Let's say somebody ask you if he should call all in preflop in a HU cash game with AA and you say "yes". Would you try to make up for what happened if the next day he comes to you and tell you he lost 100$ with aces??? And like giving him some money back?

I think that would be right only if he wanted to quit to play on his own and Dwan still wanted to stake him. But not sure

if Dwan owed peter 3 mil id say Peter should want 700k- half of the 1.4 difference.

I've never staked or been staked. I've also never lent or borrowed money to play poker or for someone to play poker and I've been playing a long time. I get that in the poker world I'm in the minority to have never done any of those things. I also turned down someone buying me into the 10k plo event a few years ago where he would have given me 30 percent of the winnings. I didn't even think I was +ev in the field at all, and while it would have been a good deal for me (nice free roll obviously) it would have been a bad deal for him and I'd feel like **** for torching his 10k even though it doesn't mean much to him. Now if for example the wynn had said "hey we're not gonna hit some guarantee for here's a 10k entry for free but we get 70 percent if you cash" i would have snap taken it.

I've also had people offer to put me in big games I know I'm a dog in and I would never take it.

Would I played backed if someone owed me 250k ? No i'd want my 250 k first. But Jetten did play backed then torched 1.6 million of Dwan's money. So not sure what your point is.

You keep mentioning that technically Dwan owes him 250k. Most people on here say you're probably right. So this isn't some gotcha amazing point you think you're making. Where everyone disagrees with you is almost all of us think it's extremely scummy to do that to your friend. Now you are clearly a person with no morals or ethics who would happily take advantage of your friends. You would have snap taken my 10k plo deal if a friend offered it knowing fully well he was getting screwed bc it benefited you. Sadly there are plenty like you in the poker world.

would you consider it scummy if dwan dropped jetten? im talking about jetten wanting to be paid after being dropped.

how do your morals feel about borrowing 250k from a friend and then refusing to pay it back because you're allegedly upset about something else? what about slowplaying him for 4 years while constantly telling him you'll give it to him next month? is just really difficult to have a dialogue with you bc u seem to hate poker players / pros from most of your posts

you turning down a freeroll in a tournament years ago doesn't make you a moral arbiter. accepting someone's unsolicited offer of a freeroll doesn't make you a bad person. absurd projection of your (mostly not well thought out) values imo

well to fair you've finally made a good observation. you're right. i don't like most grinders/pros. way too many are scummy and /or have no clue how to act at the table. it's also funny how many are really broke and trying to pretend they're something they're not.i've also played with people a lot better than me, who are super ethical and fun to play with at the table. Those people I respect and think more people should try and emulate. this shouldn't make it difficult for you to have dialogue with me.

as for the bolded depends what that something else is. him losing 1.6 million of mine would probably bother me more than most other things he could have done.If a friend broke some 500 dollar tv of mine by accident I wouldn't say well you broke my tv now you don't get that 250k.
you say "something else" like all something else's are the same.

I don't take advantage of friends and don't have friends who try to get over on me.

Basically poker aside good friends are hard to find. A lot of people think they have a lot of friends- but in reality they just have a lot of acquaintances and very few real friends.

I don't think either person really acted great here. Dwan should have paid the 250k originally, Jetten shouldn't have played on stake until he got that 250k but being he did play he shouldn't have outed Dwan as some scammer when he dusted 1.6 m of Dwans.

Would I consider it scummy if Dwan dropped jetten? i'd consider it smart. The guy is 1.6 m in make up and is never getting out. As others have pointed out a big problem with staking is once someone is buried past a certain point your interests don't align at all. Not sure how cutting a business deal that's clearly not working out would be scummy though.

im asking you if you would think its scummy on jetten's end to ask to be paid if dwan unilaterally dropped him

personally i find it odd that you think its scummier to ask for money that someone owes you as opposed to stiffing