Haven’t read it yet but Blesk is basically the Czech version of The Sun. So take anything written there with a grain of salt.
Quite a read. Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein apparently won and lost dozens of millions playing high stakes poker. He was also “Thomas” the masked VIP on Hustlers million dollar game a year ago, the one who mucked a winning straight.
I will brag that I knew it was him in real time.
The indictment includes a crazy story about a “hollywood actor” who won 16 million dollars playing a “texan billionaire” in a game organized by a “producer” who had 50% of the actor’s action.
Texan billionaire did not pay. Actor hired Goldstein who recovered the funds and got 500k for his effort (which he did not report).
Any bets on who the actor is? Still Spidey?
Has to be unless Bilzarian is an actor. lol.
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Could be Bilzerian (or maybe Bilzerian is “the producer” in the story?). They are friends and the lawyer represented him in at least one case (yeah, the one where Bilzerian threw a woman off a roof)
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“To this day, I have never met anyone with less respect for money proportionate to their net worth than Tom," Bilzerian wrote of Goldstein, “And I’ve met some true degenerates.”
What a compliment.
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Saw this on an iPhone ad. Neteller still exists! Receiving a card that I could use to access poker winnings in cash was a revelation and a memory I will cherish.
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The progression of poker payment options has been something else. I remember in the darkest days I’d request a paper check and be happy if it arrived in under 5 weeks. It’d look shady as fuck and I’d deposit and hope the bank would accept it.
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Man, Neteller was so awesome. Put a couple hundred in there, deposit on Poker Room #1, bonus whore, withdraw to Neteller, deposit to Poker Room #2, bonus whore, withdraw, etc.
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My best friend was like employee number 5 in that company back when they had a small office above the pub here in Calgary. He followed them to Costa Rica and was there till close to the end.
My very first check (from Pokerroom!) was from like The Bank of Antigua or something, and literally had “Corner of Main and 1st Street” or something like that listed as the address. I was like “no way does this clear” but of course it did. I was hooked.
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In a different timeline, I’d be rich off of online poker right now. I was one of the first employees at a big poker affiliate - we might have been the first to give people poker chip sets for playing on Party. When the legal environment in the US started getting murky, the company moved to Costa Rica to play it safe, even though they were confident they weren’t doing anything illegal.
The owners bought a four-house compound and offered my wife and I the fourth house - I would’ve been COO or some shit. We had just bought a house in the US and had our first baby on the way, though, so we didn’t feel like uprooting our lives and moving to Central America would’ve been a great idea.
I’m totally comfortable with the decision - the site’s founder told me years later that he hated it there and was thrilled to move back to the US when he left the poker world - but yeah, I probably would’ve made a bundle in that job.
(My wife and I did visit them once and the houses were quite nice. They even had a private chef.)
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At the peak couldn’t you could clear 100k in a year poker and sportsbook whoring?
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Probably. I didn’t go that hard and didn’t use sportsbooks. Still probably made at least a couple thousand a year just from bonuses. I’d probably have $200-$500 in a bonus to clear, which did take a while at the low stakes I played.
The absolute best was when the casinos didn’t understand the best way to do bonuses, so you could easily make money just betting $1 blackjack hands.
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I put $50 on party poker back in probably 2006 or 2007. I never deposited more and never went broke. Definitely used Neteller as I started out hopping around bonus whoring on about 20 different sites. Definitely got some shady checks that I was nervous taking to the bank but they all cleared. I had 6 figures tied up in full tilt for a couple years even though at that point I mainly played on stars. I got supernova elite one year.
Off the top of my head, sites I remember playing on.
Party Poker
Paradise Poker
Pacific poker
Pokerstars
Full tilt poker
Absolute poker
Ultimate bet
Bodog
Doyle’s Room
Titan poker
Cake poker
There was another group of sites, pokerroom or something like that was one of them.
I’m forgetting a bunch. That seems like a life time ago.
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$100k might be stretching it but someone was probably doing that.
I was a broke college kid starting at penny stakes and still clearing thousands.
I think it’s likely my buddy never even deposited. Back in the day Absolute would give you a free $10 to mess around with just for signing up. He ran that up to low 4 figures playing limit then eventually moved to Party. He was a great player, but risk averse as fuck, so probably made a fraction what he should have. Although maybe if he’d busted the $10 he never deposits, so who knows.
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