Beware of Nathaniel Knox staking

Don’t offer staking to Nathaniel Knox. Beware!

Hello, this is Bocian, the CEO of Pokerninjas.org Staking Group. We are just terminating our cooperation with Nathaniel Knox from Vancouver.

Long story short, he either scammed us or lost the ability to play poker profitably after a mental breakdown. I want to share the full story so that others are aware in the future who they might be dealing with.

First we were staking him for a first half of 2022, then decided to pause the cooperation due to his full time studies. He was an okish player back then, winning up to 5k USD before split per month. Then he rejoined us in April 2024, after finishing (or abandoning) his studies. His skill level went up during the off period. He started winning pretty big pre split at midstakes starting with May (9k and 17k), then had a slightly losing month post rakeback (-4k), then had the best month of his career. Till then he had been playing pretty well with like 8-10bb/100 EVBB after having returned.

In August 2024 he managed to win 43k USD playing mostly up to PLO600 with some 1k HU game vs a specific opponent included. The weird part is that he was playing without tracking back then. We require our players to track their progress all the time, but weren’t able to overcome technical difficulties on his machine back then. We managed to do this in the 2nd part of August and the tracking started running again. The 43k (even a bit more) was won within the first 2 weeks of the month. No other player had such a good run back then.

As a side note – we settle the score and payments with Clubs and Players on monthly basis (based on the weekly reports from the Clubs), but we allow players to “move” the settlement date as long as their weekly hourly targets are met (around 25h/week). So a player can settle month A with just two first weeks of the month and month B with two remaining month of month A added, totalling to 6 weeks. That way a player can have a guaranteed amount of money to split and if the later weeks of the month are bad for him, the negative balance will affect the next month and not the current one. Players often use this feature to help their mindset.

Nathaniel asked to guarantee profit after the first 2 weeks, then after the first 3 weeks of the month (3rd week was breakeven for him) and we agreed, because the requirements had been met.
We managed to get the tracking running in the middle of August. At the same time some regular dumps his several k bankroll to Nknox on one of the ClubGG Clubs chatting “Good luck with the play money”. And his decline begun.

https://gyazo.com/9c8b569f62dad991bb39bd...

Please note that at the same time he was in contact with some players from other Stable on Apps that was having cash flow difficulties. For example the Stable wasn’t able to transfer $600 to one of their players for several weeks (and bigger amounts to other players too). Then Nathaniel thought that the Clubs stopped paying their business associates and his money were in risk. We assured him that we have hard vouches everywhere and we ALWAYS pay our players. But he had already been tainted by this intrusive thought.

Then he dumped 13k USD in a day two days later. We had the tracking running already and it was a mix of bad plays and possible collussions. We asked him to stop playing in the suspected club (the very same he won big before). After getting the tracking to run his EVBB turned out to be -46bb/100 in 10k hands. He finally lost 12k USD in the last week of August and started the next month with further decline of -10k, playing some other, most likely clean games.

Then the August settlement came and we asked him to settle the whole month instead of 3 weeks, to not start September with -22k USD Make-Up. He declined and miracously won 10k USD the very next day in 2h of playing up to PLO600 (mostly HU). Pretty weird coincidence. Then we respected his Guaranteed Amount, proceeded with the settlement and he lost 10k in the next several days of playing. At this point it started to feel weird. As if someone helped him clearing the September balance to get the Guaranteed Payment. We didn’t realize it back then, but it was brought to our attention later, that the huge swings might have been caused simply by chipdumping. But we obviously don’t know that, I prefer to think that it’s unlikely and it might have been variance as well. But the coincidences were disturbing. He proceeded to lose more, playing really bad and not acknowledging any kind of negative feedback. No other player in the Group back then had remotely similar bad results. He ended up losing 14k and all of a sudden, after the very best month of his career he ended up in -26k Make-Up within a month. Quite a rollercoaster.

At the same time in September we had a several days delay with processing payments, because our main owner had his laptop broken while being abroad and he wasn’t able to authorize crypto transfers. We needed to wait for the computer service to fix the laptop and then the transfers were finally processed as usual. He finally got his 25k USD around 20th September.

But the delay apparently further damaged Nathaniel’s mind. Please note that he had been thinking that he was not getting paid for like a month back then (starting with the “Good luck with the play money” remark at 17th August). And this thought was causing his mental and poker breakdown. He started asking about a transfer on 4th September, although the earliest we EVER were able to finish the settlement and process transfers was around 11-12th day of the month. And August was 5 weeks long, so the settlement needed to be started a bit later (reports from Apps come on weekly basis, finishing each Sunday). So he was constantly worried about the money. Later he told one of our players that his hair went gray during that time. And he is a young guy. So the remark+downswing+delay took the deadly toll on him. And he is sure till present day that he hadn't been paid on time because we had to use hard vouch and because we supposedly run out of money (which is absurd). He doesn't believe in technical difficulties till now (or so he says).

Then he was trying playing to regrind the Make-Up, but his ability to play poker deteriorated. His mind was off. He was constantly losing money. This is his graph since the returning of tracking:

https://gyazo.com/e3c5e982c1593f89216ce7...

He was losing -32bb/100 EV adjusted in 30k hands, totalling -45k USD EV downswing and ending up losing 100 buyins straight. Noone else in the Group had a remotely similar downswing back then – most people were obviously making money, some had very good results. But not Nataniel unfortunately.

And then he decided he wants to quit poker, that poker doesn’t fullfill his needs, he wants to approach other goals. While being -34k USD in Make-Up. At this point our long time cooperation with him ended up with negative balance. We lost money in the long term.

We asked him to regrind the Make-Up. We wanted help him to get back on the right tracks. Offered mindset coachings, database analysis, poker coachings, etc. We did our best to help him. He didn’t want help, he started piling more and more ridiculous demands and he didn’t answer any of the negative feedbacks regarding his play (there was plenty of those).

Multiple times we proposed him a reasonable way of regrinding his MU, but he didn’t want to start or discuss the terms. He only wanted to start on his own rules, which were easily impossible for us to agree with:

https://gyazo.com/46c5ed0e32f0be4562670b...

https://gyazo.com/b09368c4423d811c73185b...

https://gyazo.com/33d1189f29870726d1c2a2...

Then a month ago I decided to arrange him a coaching session with one of our better HS players that had just rejoined us from the other (unstable) Stable. That player told him that he surely was a good player, but his current game was clearly bad and tilting. After the session Nataniel started claiming that the player told him that he is a very strong player and he should play at 1k as soon as possible to regrind the Make-Up. Being in 100BI downswing, not beating low midstakes. At that point we didn’t really know if he was that delusional or that audacious. It started to be clear for us that he was doing his best to get expelled and not regrind his MU. We felt scammed.

Then I added the HS player that had a coaching session with to the group chat with him. He summed up the situation pretty well:

https://gyazo.com/1905bd675c765558ec8a32...

Nathaniel kicked him off the Group Chat without answering. That did it, we gave up and decided to terminate the cooperation. We did our best, but we lost the battle.

I honestly wish that he ended his poker career and not be offered staking ever again. But if anyone wants to risk staking him, we can sell his debt for 1/3 of the price and we won’t care. If no one approaches us within the next 3 months, we are considering taking legal action against him or selling his debt to a third party for a third of the price. We’ll see.

I anyone is interested, I have all the chats with him backupped since August 2024, so if he decides to delete any vital info, nothing will be lost. I can provide a screenshot proving any of the situations posted above. But you need to have a good reason for this, like considering staking the guy.

Did he scam us? Was it just a mental breakdown? We will never know. All we know is that he is not a trustworthy business partner.


Beware of Nathaniel Knox. Be safe.

B