BFWCOP Update - URGENT

Hi,

I've just spoken to The Klup again and can confirm that tomorrow's game will go ahead exactly as original planned expect it'll be at the Gosvenor Gunwharf in Portsmouth.

4pm start
£100 FO
Added money and a small bar tab as previoulsy advertised.

Joe

just a brief message
as previously mentioned - Duffs full house wont be the venue for tommorrows game , however the game will still go ahead at the grosvenor casino in the gunwharf quays in portsmouth
i will give a more detailed post tommorrow

According to the Facebook page, Duffs place in Waterlooville has ceased trading.

Good luck to all involved.

Hope that isn't true

Yes, the main event is now tomorrow at the grosvenor in GunWharf at 4pm.

It's a good venue and the staff etc are good so there's no problem with the switch imo.

Hope duffs & co can sort things out ok... good luck.

aye GL to mandy and tony.... turned out to be a good night after lookin pretty bleak at one stage... massive respect to Klup for lastminute organisation with G casino

Keith A™ won the freezeout last night, top 7 paid. Chop180 was 2nd. Locals 3rd and 4th, I was 5th. Variance 6th and another forum chap who is also local was 7th, apologies your name has been lost in the alcohol I consumed. Mavis bubbled.

Was good to catch up with old faces and meet some new ones. A shame about Duffs poker club and I hope Mandy if you get a chance to come along tonight please do, we could use some extra dead money now that Keith A™ has gone to the cricket.

on a side note I won more on the roulette tables in approx 12.3 minutes than I did after playing poker from 9pm to 2.30am, not sure what that says really.

Dooberama
Joined: 11 Jan 02
Replies: 755 13 Aug 10 22:24   
According to the Facebook page, Duffs place in Waterlooville has ceased trading.

Good luck to all involved. 

Is this true ???

it's true in as much as that is what the facebook page says. I hope that it's only a temporary thing.

best wishes to all.
dibs

Says the same on the duffs web site. "ceased trading" sounds quite permanent for Waterlooville, but Basingstoke is on-going.

it does but it also says on the duffs website that they're looking for an alternative venue.

well played duffs

Duffs is broke he got secured loan on basingstoke place to start up waterlooville, he didnt pay rates so now he is losing the lot and will have to sell his house also

Duffs coming to a caravan park near you soon

Duffs is broke  he got secured loan on basingstoke place to start up waterlooville, he didnt pay rates so now he is losing the lot and will have to sell his house also

Duffs coming to a caravan park near you soon 


your humility is outstanding
would help as well if you actually got your facts correct before posting

Hope all went well in Pompey, I'm sure the little distraction didn't didn't stop a good night being had by all.

Six of clubs, i am the elusive 7th place local from Friday night. I want to thank Dinos and all of the players there for a good night of poker. I hope there will be more of these events as i will enjoy meeting up with you all again in the future.

re Duffs, I am sure all of Tony's friends wish him well and hope something good will happen with the Waterlooville club in the future. Hopefully it will re-open.

Time to visit Basingstoke and say hi to that club.

Had a great night apologies to all on my table if I was too loud and drunk

WE ARE VERY SORRY TO HAVE TO ANNOUNCE THAT DUFFS FULL HOUSE IN WATERLOOVILLE HAS CEASED TO TRADE.WE ARE VERY SORRY FOR THIS SAD NEWS BUT BASINGSTOKE IS UNAFFECTED AND WILL CONTINUE AS USUAL. DUFFS FULL HOUSE IS NOW LOOKING FOR ANOTHER VENUE AND WILL HOPEFULLY ANNOUNCE DETAILS OF THIS VERY SHORTLY.

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR DUFFS FULL HOUSE BASINGSTOKE
DUFFS FULL HOUSE BASINGSTOKE

Well it's on the site now so I guess it's official. Pity

Duffs has now reopened a venue near Fareham and with a new Poker Manager onboard.
They are now running some really good tournaments and cash games aswell in a lovely card room in Stubbington, all previous Waterlooville memberships are still valid. Check out the website at www.duffsstubbington.co.uk.
Looking Forward to seeing you all at the tables !!

i have to lol at the new cardroom being promoted on the same thread announcing the fiasco in the first place. then there is the issue (tbf only heard one side) of mandy being replaced by yourself as card room manager. atm not something that would endear many forumites to turn up imo.

gl with the cardroom.

i'm confused

is carl involved in any poker rooms now?

just to clear things up a little

Tony was offerred a venue in Stubbington where he exploits a grey area in the gaming laws by effectively hiring a room within a private members club , this is similar to how he is currently operating at basingstoke as has been refused a gaming permit there and has not even bothered applying for one at Stubbington

I looked at the venue immediatley after the old club closed and was offerred the position of card room manager (albeit on a reduced salary) this offer was made prior to me going on holiday
during the holiday i tried to contact Tony on 4/5 occassions by text and e mail to see how things were progressing , he was very sketchy with details and suggested talking when i got back

On returning i finally got to speak on the thursday and he indicated that his current Landlord at Basingstoke didnt want him to open in stubbington for various reasons and in fact it may not go ahead etc etc , he had however come up with a new idea where i was to take the Brand name (Duffs Full House) mobile and get venues in the region where we visit once a week as opposed to finding one venue and needing to fill it 7 nights a week , he offerred to supply tables and chips and had the first venue lined up - the agreement would then work on a % split and in return he would promote venues amongst the current membership and website
bearing in mind the possibilty of Stubbington not happening and the promise of me being allowed my own way on the running of the new venture , i was left with little option but to take it
Surprise surprise 4 hours later the new club is announced , with website all in place and of cource a new card room manager (Joey James) - to say i was a little annoyed at yet again more of his lies was putting it mildly

Anyhow i bit my tongue and during the week building up to the first mobile venture ,Tony spoke to me and demanded to know how many other venues i had found and what work i had done to promote etc  etc , conversation as you can guess got slightly heated but effectively i told him i wasnt prepared to waste time until the first test venue had taken place

on that night 1 person turned up to play despite Tonys insistance that he had distributed a couple of thousand leaflets ,sent e mails and texts and advertised on the website - this being the case its clear that either the idea isnt working or the venues were wrong

on the sunday night i e mailed my thoughts about this and insisted that his offer of the Card room manager he previously made to me , be honoured as i needed to work , over the period of the next hour it became clear that he wouldent be doing this and our e mails and texts became somewhat heated and eventually led to me giving him the ultimatum of starting the job the day after or our working relationship was over for good - he refused

so thats where we are at the moment - hopefully i will be in a position very shortly to announce something on here as regards my future

i will leave it with the following points though

i am unaware on how much imput Joey had on me not getting the Job at Stubbington , i suspect it was very little though and once again tony saw the opportunity of getting the job done a bit cheaper instead of doing the honourable thing . Bearing that in mind i have no axe to grind whatsoever with Joey , i will if he wants show him the offer Tony made me so he can make sure he isnt getting ripped off  (e mail is Pontepoker@aol.com)

Everyone who i have spoke to has had nothing but praise about Joey - he is clearly talented and i wish him every success

I also wish him all the luck in the world - as he will find out when dealing with Tony he will need it

I am happy that the Stubbington venue has the correct management to make it a success.

as things have turned out so am i

Details of the latest winners can be found here

http://www.duffsstubbington.co.uk

There seems to be quite a few people who have had runnings with Duffs. Many similarities between the tales of woe. The entire betfair forum was let down by him also yet he comes back with a 'great new club'. If he robbed the heroes fund or not can only  make things worse. I am happy to sign a petition to banish Mr Duffs from all of UK poker and if it can be proved he did not give the full money to help the heroes I would sign a petition  to ban him from all EU poker. Poker needs to be regulated and I am sure if there were people to punish the evil there would be a lot less duffers

I am a friend of Duff's and I have had this sent to me and requested that I post it on their behalf and after all the comments I have seen I feel that i should as I know there are two sides to every story and we seem to have only heard one.
I regularly play at the Portsmouth casinos, and last week visited the Card Room in Stubbington and was very impressed with both the venue and the customer service. Joey and his staff made me feel very welcome. Me as a player bases my opinions on my own experience and not on various chit chat which is why i visited the club in the first place. The new club is extremely professional and a breath of fresh air tbh. Would definately recommend to anyone. Anyway this is the email that I have been sent and I hope this helps everyone get a balanced story :)


I feel that with all the bad press being spread about me by Carl, there are always two sides to every story and it is only fair that I give you my side – THE TRUTH.

I have been watching with interest what has been happening behind the scenes with Carl and some of the exaggerations he has been putting around. Carl is a very manipulative person who works solely for his own goals.

For those that don’t know he was made bankrupt a couple of years ago after working for a company cleaning bins, however whilst working for the company where he was receiving a wage from them, he was also at the same time (behind their back) stealing their business/clients  - He has now done the same to me, Carl owed the company money, they chased him and hence he was made bankrupt. He then  went self employed and set the new  cleaning bins business up in his wife’s name and hence they then worked for cash and without paying tax for a few years. He then moved down south to work at Duffs, his bin business was being run by somebody else and Carl still received a % of the income from the bins until he sold it earlier this year (without declaring it of course), hence the Vegas and Florida holidays.

I set up Duffs Full House with every intention of it being a success and believed I had the right business model. To set it up cost a lot more than I anticipated and left a small working budget and hence had to borrow money along the way. The club quite simply was in the wrong area and when we opened The Big Slick in Portsmouth didn’t exist.

Carl was paid £650 cash in hand each week to manage the poker room. He did a good job when we had big tournaments and on those days earnt his money, but the majority of the time (as you know), we had one or two tables per night at best and Carl spent most of his hours at the club sat on his lap top in the Cashiers Office (doing what, I have no idea) or sitting at the cash table (earning himself more money), he never tried to drum up business even when the club had no games on, basically as long as he got paid at the end of the week he didn’t give a damn. He didn’t even deal himself to save money on costs just maybe once or twice if we had an extra few runners leaving us short of dealers. So basically I was paying £650 per week for someone to run a 2 table game which a monkey could have done.

We had numerous heated discussions along the way as I always felt that he added no value to the club and didn’t do anything in order to get more players in. It was clear for a long time that we needed more runners and getting 5 or 6 tables going was essential and Carl never did anything about it. When discussed he told me he wasn’t bought in to do marketing but to be a poker manager. That was very true but indeed if you are only getting a few runners every night then there is no room to manage and hence the job is redundant. The only reason Carl wasn’t gone in the first few months of us opening was because he had moved his family down and hence I owed it to him.

Carls only contribution to the club was he kept the spreadsheets up to date, posted results on the website and organised the dealers rotas. He spent every waking minute that he could on the cash tables, not a bad job – managing 2 poker tables doing an hour of admin every night and playing cash all for £650 a week.

Below are the poker room figures (which are what Carl used to keep for the club).  As I say these have come from Carl. You will see that over the last 6 months, according to Carls figures the Poker room made a profit of £58 per week and the last 3 months was a loss of £158 per week. These figures include any money made from tournaments, cash and include his £650 and dealers wages. They include nothing for the extra money we had to put into our league finals, any freerolls that we ran, any guarantees that we lost out on. Some of these figures are inflated as some days we had special events on such as LPPL finals where we had to pay them for using our venue. They also don’t include any costs at all for advertising , websites or even myself .The poker room quite clearly lost money and paying Carl was a huge factor – He simply wasn’t needed and added no value to the club but against everyone’s advice I stuck by him. Quite a few people knew my feelings about Carl and can verify all of this.

Shortly after the club closed there was an opportunity to open up in Stubbington and Carl expected this to be his. As I felt obliged with the family having moved down I initially offered it to him against everyones advice. He came back and wanted more money and I came to realise that we were always going to be at loggerheads and I just couldn’t see what value or input he would have to the club and asked him that – as you could guess he couldn’t really answer that one.  I then met Joey James who is one of the best dealers around young and passionate about poker and realised that he would be a far better person than Carl.

As Carl and myself did not always see eye to eye I offered him the chance to do poker mobile setting up on different days at different pubs, he was all for it until he realised HE had to find the venues and do a bit of work for himself, I found him one venue, got leaflets printed – he never looked for anymore venues and did not give out one leaflet, he turned up at the venue2 hours before the event and said ‘see I told you it would not work’.  He fell out with me big time over this and at present is withholding my chips and cards and says I will only get them back if I pay him for them!!! He knows I have no money and as he isn’t owed a single penny from me so what gives him the right to keep them? Incidentally when we got news on the Friday that the club was closing down he was the one who cleared out the safes, machines, till etc and then met all the staff at The Heroes to tell them what had happened and pay them. He paid them all half of what was due out of this money although paid himself in full – I note he mentioned on a post that I don’t owe him any money.

Basically if you ran a business and felt that the person who was bought in to do a job wasn’t the right one or the job simply wasn’t warranted then would you continue to use them just because you knew them? It cost me the club in Waterlooville and a whole lot more.

As I have tried to explain at the beginning of this letter, I have only sent it as there are two sides to every story and I can’t just sit back and allow Carl to throw anymore lies and hurt my way, believe me  both myself and my family have been to hell and back the last couple of months and I really did not need him to kick a horse when they are down, all I am trying to do at the end of the day is keep a roof over my children’s heads.

Both myself and my wife worked tirelessly at the club to make it work and indeed I was working 16 hours a day with it all. We tried holding quiz nights, race nights, pool comps, darts leagues, beer promotions, discos, bands etc. None of which were successful . We advertised through newspapers, mail shots, leaflets, market stalls, radio, facebook, etc and spent fortunes on this – even with this our average bar take was slightly over £5,000 per week over the 15 month period we was open. The club was simply in the wrong place and does not have the revenue to make a profit. Carl will no doubt argue that it did but anyone who is in the pub trade will know that with all the enormous overheads going out that a business needs to have more than this coming in to survive especially as the poker room makes a loss.

Quite surprisingly Carl has managed to convince a private investor to put money up and get the club opened up again and they are going to call it The Pheonix . They have applied for licences and have till the 29th of this month for people to object. If the club is non profitable now then how can it make a profit in the future – figures were going down not up. Carls job was to manage the poker room which as I have shown lost money so why does he suddenly think it’s going to make a profit. If he did the best job for me then surely he would have got the best out of the club then – what’s going to be different in the future? Unless of course he was fleecing me with the figures he used to show me.

I feel really sorry for this private investor as they must have  had the wool pulled over their eyes regarding figures and costs and there is simply no way that this club can make a profit and personally I feel Carl has gone about all this just to create a job for himself. Everyone has said  that the club was in the wrong place and as much as he has been busy spreading muck about me ,how many of you came to the club regularly or will do so in the future?

With regards to The Betfair money, we were hosting the Betfair event and we had a huge beer delivery on the Thursday and on the Friday morning and some of the cash was used to pay for this – the club freezers are crammed full with this food the last I knew as was the beer. The rest of the cash was given to Carl which went to the added prize pool that Betfair gave to the players and free drinks for the bar so I am sure that no-one lost out. I first heard from the receivers on the Thursday that I had been made bankrupt and didn’t see how this could affect the club. It wasn’t until the Friday afternoon that the receiver said that he had to shut it as the lease was in my name (it shouldn’t have been obviously and was a solicitor **** up) and as they had control of my assets it invalidated the club insurance and hence had to close it down.

At that point I was left penniless as everything I had was in the club and if I was such a bad person would I have not kept all of the Betfair money? Carl has insinuated that I have been living the life of riley whilst running the club and haven’t adapted my lifestyle. We used to have 2 cars now only have one after the car broke down and I couldn’t afford to get it fixed – we also haven’t had a holiday in 2 years unlike some who have been to Florida and Vegas this year.

The club was ran to the best of my abilities and sure I made a few mistakes along the way but my heart was totally in the club and I did everything I could to make it work – my biggest mistake though was staying loyal to Carl for as long as I did. All I ever wanted was to provide a facility for players to go along and enjoy a game of cards and to enjoy all the other areas of hospitality we tried to do.

I heard on the Friday afternoon that the receiver was shutting us down and told Carl straight away and he went straight to the club. When I got there the receiver was there and I was him for about 4 hours and gave him my keys which included the safe. There were only 2 safe keys – I had one and so did Carl. The receiver can verify this is the case. I then left at the same time the receiver did . I am sure that the receiver has been back there as a lot of the financial files and computer were at the club and he would have needed these in order to go through all of my affairs. All of the collection jars for Help for Heroes were at the club as was the money collected so can only assume that they have them. We had a number of people at the club when we did the Help for Heroes 24 hour game and only had sponsorship money in from about 3 or 4 of them and I was constantly pestering Carl to chase everyone up to see if it was all in before sending off. He passed this on to our receptionist to chase up and at the closure of Duffs she had been busy doing so. The idea was always to have got all the money together and presented a big cheque in order for some publicity and if Carl had done what was asked and chased up the money quicker then it would have been done a long time ago.

As already stated all I ever did was to try and run a nice club and as it didn’t get the poker clientele in it needed then Carls job was redundant and with Stubbington simply felt he wouldn’t be the right person and offered him a very good alternative. Stubbington isn’t owned by me and the club members simply use the room there and Joey is a great guy who has a passion for poker and wants to make it busy and will work hard to get there unlike some people who want everything in life for free.

Read into this as you will but I can assure you Carl isn’t the man you think he is. I haven’t bothered posting on here before as thought it best to just let it die but Carl continues to persist on slating me off just because I didn’t give him a high paid job which would have meant the Stubbington club would lose money as did Waterlooville!!!

Kind regards

Tony

DATE
  TOTAL POKER PROFIT
   
     
14/02/2010
  £97.50
   
21/02/2010
  £462.00
   
28/02/2010
  £605.00
   
07/03/2010
  £614.50
£1,779
 
14/03/2010
  £179.50
   
21/03/2010
  -£611.50
   
28/03/2010
  £289.50
   
04/04/2010
  £352.00
£209.50
 
11/04/2010
  -£379.50
   
18/04/2010
  £109.50
   
25/04/2010
  -£330.00
   
02/05/2010
  £651.50
£51.50
 
09/05/2010
  £667.00
   
16/05/2010
  £708.50
   
23/05/2010
  £312.00
   
30/05/2010
  £891.00
£2,578.50
 
06/06/2010
  -£51.50
   
13/06/2010
  -£614.50
   
20/06/2010
  -£427.50
   
27/06/2010
  -£426.50
-£1,520
 
04/07/2010
  £141.50
   
11/07/2010
  -£652.00
   
18/07/2010
  -£730.00
   
25/07/2010
  -£284.00
-£1,524.50
 
01/08/2010
  £389.50
   
08/08/2010
  -£445.00
-£55.50
 
     
  £1,518.50
   
     
Last 6 months
Average
was £58 per week
profit
 
Last 3 months
Average
was -£158 per week
loss