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  #21  
Old 06-13-2007, 03:09 PM
Admo Admo is offline
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Default Re: Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???

"Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???"

Because he thinks we'll all be stealing big cookies and apples after fifty years of not beating 5/10NL.
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  #22  
Old 06-13-2007, 04:50 PM
selurah selurah is offline
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Default Re: Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???

Well I enjoy the stories Johnny, so don't let a few asshats keep you from posting them.
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  #23  
Old 06-13-2007, 04:58 PM
sublime sublime is offline
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Default Re: Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???

dude hes like 90...why even pay attention to him?
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  #24  
Old 06-13-2007, 05:35 PM
Floker Floker is offline
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Default Re: Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???

[ QUOTE ]
"ive always kind of respected a criminal who can steal/profit without ever using violence"

This guy is a boss.

[/ QUOTE ]

What's with the disrespect of violence? If we don't care about morals, we shouldn't care whether a criminal uses violence or not. To me it seems kind of arbitrary to draw the line of respect at violence. If a criminal uses violence to optimize his profits and continually gets aways with it, what's not to respect? I mean, the criminal takes from others and uses violence to get it AND still walks around in this society without getting punished. That's a much bigger accomplishment than some pussy criminal who doesn't dare to ruthlessly hurt or kill people to get what he wants.

If we only base our respect of people on how good they are in fulfilling their selfish needs, the successful violent criminal should be on top of our list.
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  #25  
Old 06-13-2007, 05:55 PM
MiltonFriedman MiltonFriedman is offline
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Default Liars, cheats and scum never helped popularize poker, really.

Johnny, I do not doubt your stories are true. They are also entertaining and I enjoy reading them.

You respect "cons", I despise them as the lowest form of crime. They are dishonest and prey upon trust, not greed. (That movies may romanticise them as stealing from the undeserving greedy is a fiction.)

While your stories are fun to read, they describe the sort of sleaziness that plagued poker for years. The advent of online play actually brought the game out of the clutches of the shady players you discuss.

As poker grew, the market returns to be gained by HONEST operations quickly dwarfed the petty cons of back room games.

Sure, todays. games/tournaments are huge and widely popular. That is a good thing and is NO thanks to the "colorful characters" of the past, whether real like yours or ficitional like Damon Runyon's.

Doyle made a nice transition between these eras, anyone else ??
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  #26  
Old 06-13-2007, 05:59 PM
MiltonFriedman MiltonFriedman is offline
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Default Re: Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???

"This guy is a boss."

Do you mean that in a Marxist/IWW sense ?
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  #27  
Old 06-13-2007, 06:03 PM
MiltonFriedman MiltonFriedman is offline
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Default Re: Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word".

I do not remember if that was a quote from The Untouchables or from the Republican Party platform in 2004.
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  #28  
Old 06-13-2007, 06:11 PM
NajdorfDefense NajdorfDefense is offline
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Default Re: Follow-up question for those who respect cons, how about Dutch ?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If you think that a con is due respect, then, (assuming hypothetically he was a con,) what about Dutch Boyd and pokerspot.com ?

[/ QUOTE ]

As a con, that one sucked. There's nothing to admire, because Dutch is either a [censored] businessman, or a [censored] conman, or both.

To a certain degree I understand where Johnny is coming from, but part of that is how our culture has romanticized the grifter to an extent. The scammed is always a bigger villain then the hero (see "The Sting" "Ocean's whatever" "Diggstown" and so on) or the scammee is at least complicit in their downfall (see "Color of Money" - 'I didn't deserve that.' 'Yes, you did.')

What's the difference between a con artist and Enron, really? Skilling set up one of the great long cons in history, he just forgot to leave himself an out. But real people got hurt, VERY badly, through no fault of their own.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Enron remark is total BS. Only 0.01% of shareholders were frozen from selling their shares - those were the Portland General employees who were locked into holding while the 401k plans were merged.

Everyone else who bought actual common shares could have sold at any time. They knowingly took the risk of buying a single stock, perhaps the riskiest public investment you can make, and then got greedy as the price went from $10 to $90 to $40 and 30 and 20 and 10 and finally zero. They got greedy and suffered the consequences.

Let's not forget -- the price NEVER should have been that high in the first place, so you can't claim you really 'suffered' the drop from 90 to 30 as it never would have gone to $100bn market cap without the fraud.

From BW: 'During the fat years, Enron's books were known for being as complex as a Thomas Pynchon novel. Even those who actually read them had trouble understanding...'

No individual shareholder who bought the stock understood the financials, they have themselves to blame primarily for losing money. There is a nonzero amount of fraud in the public markets, if you knowingly subject yourself to that risk, it's gonna happen to you now and again - Parmalat, Worldcom, ACLN, ZZZZBest, Crazy Eddie's are all very famous examples and more going back decades.

There was all the time in the world to figure out the problems, insider selling is public information and they sold hundreds of millions overall, everyone knew Skilling up and quit -- years after several top talented employees did like Kinder, Pai, Mark, et al.



Enron was still killing the Nasdaq for several months after the market started melting down. The company was shedding tens of $billions of market cap before the fraud was revealed. People got greedy and got reminded there's no free money. No one held a gun to anyone's head and forced them to hold throughout the entire decline - only the Portland General employees were frozen as they went from having PortGen stock to Enron stock with no chance to sell.

People bought ENE without understanding it - there's simply no excusing that kind of stupidity. They should have bought lotto tickets since they didn't understand their risk, and the 'fraud' [even if infintesimal] risk exists at every company, period.
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  #29  
Old 06-13-2007, 06:15 PM
glimmertwin glimmertwin is offline
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Default Re: Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???

[ QUOTE ]

What's with the disrespect of violence? If we don't care about morals, we shouldn't care whether a criminal uses violence or not. To me it seems kind of arbitrary to draw the line of respect at violence.


[/ QUOTE ]

Surely this is an aesthetic decision rather than a moral one. Some people will place more emphasis on the ability to maximize returns, others will put emphasis on the degree of intelligence and elegance involved in devising a scheme, and yet others will value the use of force and machismo in achieving the desired outcome.

[ QUOTE ]

If we only base our respect of people on how good they are in fulfilling their selfish needs, the successful violent criminal should be on top of our list.

[/ QUOTE ]

Makes no sense. If we only respected people based on that criterion, then the person who is most successful at fulfilling those needs would be top of the list. You've given no reasons to believe that people who use violence are most successful at that. And a quick glance at history shows that they're most likely to die as a result of violence, or spend long periods in prison, making them far less likely to succeed at their long term goals.
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  #30  
Old 06-13-2007, 06:21 PM
Humble Pie Humble Pie is offline
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Default Re: Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???

[ QUOTE ]
"Johnny Hughes romanticises liars, cheats and scum, why ???"

Because he thinks we'll all be stealing big cookies and apples after fifty years of not beating 5/10NL.


[/ QUOTE ]

LOL
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