Statement from Britney
I have no outstanding debts, and I have always paid out my shares right away.
Background
CYE started out playing in the Monday games at Hustler, but another player eventually started blocking her for playing too tight. She came to me and asked me to get her into the Tuesday game and to take a piece of her action. I agreed to help. In the weeks before this year's WSOP, she did very well on HCL and became quite popular. She was up about $400K in this period. She sells about 80% of her action to many smaller investors, so her own profit was modest.
June 7: Venetian (off-stream)
Players: me, Jeff, Chang, Nik, JackC, Rampage, and Big Mike. I had 30% of CYE, which we had both clearly agreed to. She always messaged me to confirm before a game. We drank a lot of wine that night, and I got very drunk. When the game ended, about $80,000 in chips were missing. Everyone had lost except CYE and NikAirball, and NikAirball said he was only up a tiny amount. The numbers didn't add up.
CYE told me she won $190K. I didn't think much of it at first. Several days later, a well-respected player who had not been drinking told me he believed CYE actually won about $280K. He always bought in to match the biggest stack, so he had been watching her stack closely all night.
Around this time CYE had also started becoming arrogant. She bragged about how good a player she was, openly disrespected me and others at the table, and spread rumors about my dating life. Other people also told me she was talking about me behind my back, so I had already started to distance myself from her.
June 11 Hustler Casino (off-stream)
The game needed one more player and we collectively agreed to invite CYE after some deliberation. Things were already tense between us after I confronted her about an incident a few days prior, and we did not confirm any action before the game. That day I told someone I felt I was being freerolled. Still, when she sent me her loss amount, I agreed to pay it, because this was the first session where our arrangement wasn't clear.
June 12 Hustler Casino (off-stream)
Because CYE had played the day before, the table gave the seat to Big Mike the second day. Many people know that she and Big Mike have a dispute over a staking/autobook situation from when they were friends. They had a falling out and can no longer play at the same table.
She sent me an apology letter and flowers because it was now clear I was upset with her. In the same letter she asked me to raise my stake to 45%. I still have this handwritten letter.
June 14
The player from the June 7 game told me he suspected she had won much more than she reported to me. Before this, I had been thinking about forgiving her.
June 16
I offered to pay her the money if we agreed to stop contacting each other. She refused to take it. After that she messaged me every day asking me to forgive her, because I stopped inviting her to games and stopped taking her action.
June 22: Venetian (without CYE)
My English is not strong, so I asked someone to ask security to review the tapes from June 7. The floor said she had way more than $200k chips. When we asked to see the footage, they spent about 30min advising us on the potential consequences of going deeper, so we dropped it. Because I had no video evidence, I didn't think there was any point raising this with her. I also didn't want to ruin her reputation in case we were wrong.
July 1
She said she would not accept the $18K. She told me that, to repair our friendship, I should use it to buy myself a bag. I already suspected she had underreported her June 7 win, and my 30% of the missing \~$80K would be $24K. Since she also told me several times that I could keep the money, I considered the debt settled. I didn't want anything more to do with her, and I stopped playing in any game she was in.
July 12
She demanded I return the money for the bag. By then I no longer wanted to talk to her.
Summary
The private jet flights I got comped for her and her boyfriend, the comped rooms, meals, and money I spent on them, and the favors I did are worth far more than $18K. I'm hurt, and yes, I'm angry. I helped her a lot when she needed support. Once she felt she didn't need me anymore, she was rude to me, and I believe she likely took money that wasn't hers.
This isn't really about $18K. I go all-in blind for that amount. But look at everything together:
- how much I spent on her
- she autobooked the action while we were already falling out
- she agreed we would forget the amount, then went back on that once she realized she couldn't use me anymore
- she likely misreported her June 7 win. In her video she specifically said it’d be impossible to steal money from stream since everything was tracked, but the game with suspected misreporting was not streamed
Given all of that, I don't believe I owe her this money.
One more thing. CYE said that if she ever underreported her winnings, she’d be willing to pay back 100x or even 1,000x the amount. So please, show us that you actually have that kind of money.
I’ve heard CYE swear on things countless times. The problem is, she often makes promises that are impossible to follow through on.
One thing I’ve learned from this is that I’m not gonna stake young players who don’t have enough bankroll of their own anymore. So please don’t ask me to fund you.
#poker