Bond18 - Around the World in 90 Days: Day 95

Posted by Bond18 | Filed under Bond18

The poker world can be a depressing place sometimes. I’ve stated more times than I can count that I think poker is an awesome career/occupation, but every now and then something happens within the poker community that creeps me out and makes me do a double take at the whole of poker society. In the case of the last few months, there’s been a few of those.

I remember not long ago the topic of Dr. Pauly’s blog came up in the ‘News, Views, and Gossip’ forum on 2+2. A number of people mentioned they didn’t enjoy his writing lately because it seemed he intentionally focused on the seedy side of poker, ranting about the various degenerates that populate the WSOP landscape and how it seems just about everyone is an asshole or an angle shooter. Regardless to their opinions, the posters were more or less right that such items tend to be the favored topics of discussion in his blog. Lately I’ve been thinking that Pauly doesn’t set out to focus on the shit side of things around him, but that the shit is so constant and prevalent he can’t focus on anything else.

Unfortunately for me, the last few months offer too many examples to be able to ignore said shit. It began with my horse and close friend stealing the money I staked him out of the account and running off to Macau with it to lose in pit games. He went underground for three months after doing so, avoiding every form of contact with me. In June he won a major tournament online and my knee jerk reaction was to brashly make a post in MTTc questioning just how much I was entitled to, which can be read here.

Did I handle the situation perfectly? Certainly not, but I was angry and felt betrayed, leading me to shoot from the hip before thinking everything through, as I often do. The horse sent the money he took back with a little extra for my trouble and we haven’t really talked since.

Not long after that another major cheating scandal broke online. Yet again it was super-users seeing hole cards, but this time the cheating was active as far back as 2005 with involvement running all the way up to the owners of the company. It’s the kind of story professional writers would make up, but in this case it was all real. The cheating was on an enormous scale, yet still nobody knows what form of justice the perpetrators can be brought to, if any.

Compounding my disgust of that situation was watching the sponsorship war for would be poker star Tiffany Michelle end in her outraging everyone who invested in her by her decision to take the sponsorship of the aforementioned cheating site, right during the height of the scandal. The resulting fall out had public statements full of nasty words like ‘sue’, ‘betrayal’, and ‘lawyers’, leaving everyone disgusted and nobody happy.

Leading the charge against the scum of the cheating organization was 2+2 mod and personal friend ‘Cornell Fiji’, aka Steve. Steve made the original post elaborating and explaining every piece of evidence in the scandal, a post that more or less forced that organizations hand into admitting to the scandal. When Chief Joe Norton (who has or had some form of interest in the scandal ridden company) sent Steve a cease and desist letter demanding a retraction of certain statements, Steve responded with a sarcastic retraction statement that cited dozens of pieces of evidence pointing to every assertion he made being true, a hilarious piece of spiteful yet accurate and poignant revenge that can be read here.

So imagine my horror upon logging on today and reading that Steve has been accused of agreeing to a transfer with another 2+2’er but then gambled away the money and failed to pay back. It didn’t take much investigation (seeing as Steve came out and admitted it) to find out the story was true. On top of this Steve had also lost the money of two of his WSOP backers and had attempted to cover up the scandal by deleting posts on the subject, resulting in his being demoded.

I know now that the degenerates of the world around me rarely make their decisions out of any malice or ill will towards the people whose money they steal or lose. I know that when I make jokes about TJ Cloutier or whoever else being a broke degenerate I’m really making fun of a guy with a legitimate problem. I struggle between wanting to see these figures named, shamed, and crucified for their greed and stupidity and wanting to see the quality in them make amends and overcome their weakness. I want to see the people who piss on the world around me suffer and pay the consequences of their actions. Simultaneously, I want to believe people can fuck up hard, genuinely mean that their sorry and do everything they can to right the wrongs and fix the disaster they’ve created.

What I’ve really learned though, is paranoia. When the people closest to you will put a knife in your back for a few thousand how can you not look over your shoulder? When the people with power abuse it for personal gain how can you not view others in similar positions with suspicion? When the people with the most potential decide to fuck integrity and throw it all for a pay check, how can you not be disgusted? When the people you admire make offenses similar to those they fought so hard against, how can you not be disillusioned? How can you not be so fucking angry about it all!?

That’s the kind of shit you can’t see past. That’s the kind of shit that keeps Dr. Pauly up at night, spewing sarcasm and insults into his keyboard.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still got lots of great people around me I could probably trust with my bankroll. I tried to write that sentence without the word ‘probably’, but I can’t do that anymore. I’m left wondering too much.

In the end I channel my frustration the same way I always do; I write something making fun of everyone and everything involved. That’s where detective Cookier comes in. I won’t explain that outside of this link.

Sure it’s just another shoot from the hip reaction to write a cartoon about a degenerate talking cookie in order to address the things that bug me. Maybe that’s not the most mature way to respond to things. I don’t give a shit, it makes me laugh, and I could use one right about now.

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