It came out today that the portuguese “prodigy” is a straight up thief and fraud. He logged into teamviewer with high stakes players to sweat them and/or coach them and then proceeded to play against them while looking at their hole cards and steal thousands and thousands of dollars from them. He also has strong ties to Jungleman and Haseeb/Internet Pokers whose reputations are also being drawn into question for their association with him (they were all planning to move to Portugal and live together). They apparently backed him and may have played on his account for him. To quote a post from 2+2:
“On a scale of 1-10 in scumminess, multiaccounting tournaments is on the absolute bottom. (A lot of live guys STILL don’t even think its cheating even though anyone smart realize its consensus cheating now, funny I still talk to some that don’t think its cheating)
and what Jose did is 10/10 lock him up throw away the key. (with regards to poker community metaphorically speaking)”
-The Bear Jew
Link to 2+2 cliff notes thread
It doesn’t get any worse than this in terms of levels of cheating. In the gambling world all you have is your reputation. It is the SINGLE most important thing you can protect. It is your most valuable asset. If you ever go bust and need a loan or stake this is what it will be based on. It’s like your credit score in the real world. To be found guilty of cheating is to be banned from your ability to make a living and is the equivalent of being fired. You can get permanently banned from the WSOP ala Russ Hamilton or have your online accounts banned and be unable to play or deposit. I think a lot of younger players take their reputation for granted and don’t do enough to protect it or do enough to establish a good one. If you ever make it to the high stakes if you ever want to be invited to the juicy private games or TV games you do NOT want to be known as the quiet nit who never gives action, the asshole who berates the fish for playing bad and scaring the easy money away or worse the guy who cheated people for thousands. Of course all us US players are banned for the time being anyways, but when poker comes back you’ll want to have your rep intact for the second golden age of online poker.
All this reminds me of an old blog post from Taylor Caby’s blog (second half of the post) about a month before black friday. It’s no secret that I went on a big downswing post wsop 2010 in the mixed games and when I tried to rebuild at midstakes hold’em and plo found the games to be pretty much unbeatable. Not to say that you couldn’t make money in them, just that the rake was so massive that it turned everyone into rakeback pros. The rake was draining the poker economy so much that by 2011 especially I believed it was impossible for someone to ascend the poker ranks and become the next Tom Dwan.
If you look at all the big money players I believe they are all a product of their fortunate circumstances rather than a result of their amazing poker abilities. All the older(30+) rich live players made all their money from Andy Beal and online sponsorships and all the younger rich online guys made all their money from Guy Laliberte or pre 2010. Jungleman and Jose Girah of course were the two exceptions to this and now one of them has been revealed to be a complete fraud. In Taylor’s post he makes the argument if you just work REALLY hard and adhere to bankroll management maybe you too can be an online poker millionaire! I remember reading it and thinking, yeah, maybe I’m wrong, maybe I just don’t work hard enough or put enough time and hands in to have success. I mean Jose did it.
WRONG. This recent development just reinforces my earlier thoughts that there really is not much money in online poker these days and you’re much better off pursuing something else or developing your job skills as opposed to working really hard on your poker game to become the next phenom. With the amount of new players turning 18 and joining the poker community if there weren’t so much rake being taken from the game, there would be five new jungleman’s a year, but that’s just not reality. Now, I’m not saying that the rich nosebleed guys aren’t fantastic poker players, I am just refuting the notion that the REASON they are so successful and rich is because of their phenomenal poker skills. The new players these days coming up are just as good, they just do not have the benefit of ever hoping to attain a winrate that older players were able to attain in their rise through the stakes and as a result, yes I believe it is impossible for “kids these days” to truly “make it” in online poker.