Ram Vaswani speaks about that 'Golf Game'.

[blueodum]

I love it how people think it was cool for Ivey to hustle Ram by misrepresenting his handicap, but it's uncool for Ram to "hustle" Ivey by refusing to pay.

The two are equivalent in my book.

In poker the money is on the table: you win the pot, the chips get shipped your way. You don't have to depend on people keeping their word and paying up if they lose.

If these high stakes golfers were smart, they'd give the money to a trusted third party to hold while the match was going on (or at least a hefty deposit).

When someone gets hustled, there's an increased risk they're not going to pay. And since (it seems) that golf gambling is all about hustling, it seems foolish for the hustler to risk not getting paid.

So who was the big dope here, Ram or Phil? It turns out Ram was freerolling and Phil was the sucker.

[Zele]

[ QUOTE ]
So who was the big dope here, Ram or Phil? It turns out Ram was freerolling and Phil was the sucker.

[/ QUOTE ]

This whole thread, and this statement in particular, make me really sad for the state of modern poker culture. Trying to justify welching is bad enough; romanticizing it boggles my mind.

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

Barry,

are you surprised phil played him for that much money, 1.4 million, without a contract or putting the money upfront?

[blueodum]

I'm not romanticising or justifying welching. I'm putting it on a moral par (pardon the pun) with intentionally misrepresenting your handicap. Is that so hard to understand?

It takes a certain kind of perversion to think that welching is worse than conning someone (or hustling as the apologists put it). THAT is what is really sad about the state of modern "gambling/poker" culture.

[lsuplayer]

Does anyone on here do anything but play online poker. Obviously if you have no friends or no life or haven't ever gambled on anything other than cards then you won't understand the concepts of what happened. I think the sums of money that they were throwing around is the only reason
Ram will not pay. It's obvious from both sides of the story that they were both trying to take advantage, although slight, of each other.
Most people, except for diehards, keep an exact update of their handicap. Any person that plays golf long enough knows how they have been playing lately...They also can feel if they are on or off of their game on that particular day. So when Phil says his handicap is a 10 and it's really an 8, and he doesn't feel quite right about his swing that day, is he necessarily lying? No, he's taking the best advantage of the situation given to him.
Even after all of that said, Ram continue to play under the conditions for multiple days. If what Daniel, Phil, and Barry are saying is true, Ram is a scumbag and I hope he never gets any trust or respect from anyone ever again.

[blueodum]

lsuplayer,

How do you know that your explanation is in fact what happened? Are you saying that it is impossible for Ivey to be thinking - I'm going to add 6 strokes to my real handicap and cleanup? How do you know this did not happen?

Apparently that would be perfectly acceptable behaviour on Ivey's part. Whereas not paying is not acceptable.

Like I said, perversion/degeneracy, plain and simple.

[ESKiMO-SiCKNE5S]

the fact that this is up for debate is a [censored] disgrace to all that we live by.

pay the man....

no more excuses

this is complete [censored]

this sets a new precedence in cheating

i hope every single person that is happy to let this slide gets scammed in the same way phil has been.

[nicksson]

[ QUOTE ]
i think whoever said it's a cultural diff. between the U.K. and the U.S. obviously hasn't seen the dateline (or whatever NBC news show it was) where a man from the U.K. came to america and swindled famous/wealthy americans out of millions by claiming he was a rockefeller and conned them into false business deals. when he returned to the U.K. he was hailed as a hero and even published books about it.


so i think it's just a matter of who did the hustling.

[/ QUOTE ] Hes in prison now

[Jusbe]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
A quote from the hendon mob website I think is relevant:


[/ QUOTE ]

actually, this is not very relevant. that was a nice thing for him to do, but nearly everyone i know would have done the same thing. pretty unremarkable.

ram is clearly not a bad guy, and i don't think his backing out is a reverse scam on his part. he truly believes he was wronged. but that stupid "if you can't spot the sucker" quote is apt. if he was not aware of what was going on, then he is not cut out for the world of gamblers. it sucks, but he needs to pay up, learn his lesson and move on.

that said, ivey is definitely a scumbag. many in this thread have already responded with some variant of "everyone does it", which is brilliant. so you're all scumbags, great!

you lay down with dogs you get fleas.

[/ QUOTE ]
Agree 100%..

[vexel77]

Just out of interest what kind of rolls are these guys playing off? I mean how much would vaswani and ivey actually be worth? I know a million bucks is a lot of dollar period but if your roll is like 50mill its not that much really. I know 50mill is a ridiculous amount and chances are their rolls arent nearly that big. Id just be interested to know, obv 1mill is a lot to them both hence the full scale open warfare waged by phil and daniel online.