“With a heavy heart”
The poker world is weird. It is an ecosystem that revolves around beating the hell out of each other at the tables for money, while at the same time, many players have no problem loaning and borrowing thousands of dollars from each other to keep the games going.
Of course, that willingness to sling cash around bites people in the ass sometimes. Such was the case with poker player Charlie Carrel, who publicly accused British Poker Series (BPS) Director Shaun Johnston of stiffing him on a $60,000 debt.
Posting on X, Carrel said he went public “with a heavy heart,” but did so mainly because he found out that Johnston has a history of stealing money from players. When Johnston did not “come clean” about his past dealings, Carrel felt obligated to out him.
Real money, private, online games
The situation involves online poker, which on its face sounds odd, considering Johnston works in live poker and there are plenty of online poker rooms available in the UK and Europe. This case, though, has to do with ClubGG, a free-to-play/subscription online poker room created by GGPoker. At ClubGG, players can form “clubs” and play poker online with friends.
Though ClubGG does not accept real money deposits, some players use it and other sites like it to host their own private real-money games. While the mechanics vary, the way it often works is that players pay an agent their real-money buy-in and that agent then pays the game’s winners. Kind of like an escrow service. The games themselves carry on online using play money; real-money score is calculated offline.
Sometimes players just transact directly with each other, like when a group of friends goes out to dinner and splits the bill.
Of course, when the money is handled by a third party, things can happen. That agent can make off with the cash, a player might not pay the agent, so on and so forth.
Trusted the vouch
Explaining the situation further, Carrel told PokerNews that he first met Johnston at a BPS event at Aspers Casino in London. He liked Johnston and enjoyed the British Poker Series, and eventually agreed to use Johnston as an agent for ClubGG games.
Carrel said that Johnston “hard-vouched” for a player who ended up losing $60,000 and did not pay what he owed. As those who have seen the legendary poker film Rounders might remember, a vouch like this often means that any debts incurred by the player are also the responsibility of the voucher.
Johnston has allegedly not covered the debt, even though he said he would. Carrel went on to say that he even has doubts that the losing player is real, that it could have been Johnston using a VPN to disguise where he was playing from.
The post Charlie Carrel Accuses British Poker Series Director of Scamming Him Out of $60,000 appeared first on Poker News Daily.
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