Duffs - the truth

noone lives here anymore

true mate its a shame  , but i sure there will be a few in the morning

Ok. Since noone has posted, I will.

Feel free to answer what you want:

1. How can there be more poker places under the same brand opening up when the original branch was closed down in such acrimonious circumstances?

2. Are you still living down sarf and will you be staying?

3. Are you still on speaking terms with one another?

4. Betfair paid the club some money just before it was shut, is this all returned now along with everything else?

5. Is everyone squared up now (staff etc) or is that being done once the other places start making money?

6. Do you blame Tony for what happened or do you think it was an easy mistake to make?



OK. I'm not going to start rubbing anyone's noses in it but there are a few qs to get started with...

Mavis "Hacksaw" Handbag Joined: 31 May 05
Replies: 2181 04 Oct 10 03:14   
Ok. Since noone has posted, I will.

Feel free to answer what you want:

1. How can there be more poker places under the same brand opening up when the original branch was closed down in such acrimonious circumstances?- the original brand was a private members club , the new ventures seek to exploit a grey area in the gaming law - namely having a private room in a members club
tony did apply for a gaming permit for basingstoke and was refused it however when i informed him how to curcumnavigate the rule i didnt recieve praise but a bollocking for not telling him earlier, the reason that the club went bankrupt was that tony was made bankrupt and he didnt have the forsight to put the lease in the clubs name but preferred the ego trip of having it in his name

2. Are you still living down sarf and will you be staying? yes im still here and intend staying to educate you lot
3. Are you still on speaking terms with one another? not expecting a xmas card
4. Betfair paid the club some money just before it was shut, is this all returned now along with everything else?- no it isnt the extra cash for the team game and the main game were returned (£1400 by tonys wife to klup and £1000 from me to klup) however there is still approx £1800 outstanding  that was paid into tonys account and he withdrew it that day - where that has gone you will have to speak to him
5. Is everyone squared up now (staff etc) or is that being done once the other places start making money? everyone that has been offerred jobs in tonys other ventures have been paid , those that havent are still unpaid

6. Do you blame Tony for what happened or do you think it was an easy mistake to make? - blame is a big word  , however the project was ill advised , in the wrong location  and underfunded  - the fact that he was borrowing money a month into the club opening was worrying(if i had known) and a touch ironic seeing as his money came from beeing a financial advisor


OK. I'm not going to start rubbing anyone's noses in it but there are a few qs to get started with...

Thanks for clarifying Mandylou

Therefore - seeing as the entity still operates, and we still have £1800 of unclaimed funds (which I know is the amount of the shortfall paid to us) I can, on behalf of the Betfair forum with their approval, approach duffs for the £1800 in order to fund other games or promos for the forum?

Any idea on how I can best contact duffs direct about this? or do I just use the contact numbers off the website?

Klup

Sorry to hear of your problems, Carl, hope things work out for you.

Best of luck Klup...me thinks you need it [;)]

Carl. ditto of matty1's comment above....Do you know if Duffs is still thinking of opening in Bournemouth??

cheers all
Klup - approach him via the website WWW.Duffscardroom.co.uk, on his e mail duffs16@hotmail.co.uk or the club mobile 07982730052 although be warned he does tend to avoid the people he doesent want to speak to
danse - yes that is his intentions although as some of his other ideas i feel it may be a little far fetched

Oh dear :( Sorry it didn't work out. Though if you hadn't tried you would've been left always wondering What If....

Hope alls well otherwise.

Cliff notes please re this saga. Is it like blatchgate

you know does any one give a f..k 2 degenerate gamblers turn out to be liars and bullsh.tters,shock horror.stop whining like telling the teacher it was hes fault honest miss.PS GO GET A JOB SOCIAL LIMPET .

well actually berit people do give a fck , if you had been around for a while you would have seen a few threads on the matter
and i arent a degen gambler , odd nibble on the nags,  weekend footy acca and a bit of low level cash omaha
and the job is on its way hopefully but thanks for your concern

what happened?

Must be cliff notes about.

ok roy cliff notes

Tony (duffs) opened a poker club near portsmouth in June 2009
i was approached to re locate from yorkshire and be the poker room manager
club isnt as successful as tony estimated (although profitable)and he has no cash back up
tony borrows money from various people
tony struggles to pay this cash back every month
missed payments means the people he owes go legal and ends up in a bankruptcy petition on the 13th august
club is closed as lease was in tonys name and insolvency people seize it as an asset
that weekend was forum game at the club and the game is moved to a nearby casino
i am left to apologise to all involved (betfair and staff)
tony opens up other venues and a promise of a job at one of those venues is made to me
when i get back of hols the offer is very flaky and tony indicates the new club may not open
i accept a differrent offer as i need to work
within 5 hours of this the club that may not even open suddenly bursts into life with its own website and surprise surprise new card room manager
the offer that he made me turns out to be unworkable
as i have no income i approach tony and request that the original offer of the club is re instated and tell him i need to start work there immediatly
he refuses and i inform him that his loyaltys should lie with me not someone who he met 4 weeks ago
he again refuses and i cut all ties with him being sick of his lies and false promises
the questions which i politically avoided in the past as i was loyal to him are now going to get answered as the loyalty i have shown has all been one way - he has stitched me up for the last time

Keep your chin up carl, lifes a Journey with ups and downs, Just got too battle on and work towards the upside again! Best of luck in the future too all!

Everyone knows ive had my own fair share of bad press and bad times, but even being the idiot that I am, you learn from your mistakes   (well i did) and progress into the future a better person.

Take Care Smokes

Hmmm, sorry to hear that. How long had you known him before accepting his offer in the 1st instance?

probably about 4/5 years

Fair play.

Life and poker are very simerler Mandy, you make the best decision beforehand utalising all the information available,after that its in the lap of the gods.No one can blame you for taking the chance and as you say few people had bad things to say about Tony two or three years ago,You did not make a bad call just one that you have to accept went wrong on you.
Its always best to have tried and failed than never have tried at all.
You will bounce back, no ones died and (I presume), your hands eyes and brain are still intact, the bad thing is you are living daarn Saarf with all them Southerners but you cant have everything !! Perhaps thats the lord punishing you for leaving West Yorkshire. [;)]
Be lucky and may all your rivers be golden (as usual.)
Hope the familys all good,We all are fine.
Phil,Jo & Lucy.

:( 

GL Carlos....  must admit the Punterz loan thing a while ago did have me wondering

cheers Phil, all the family are well and glad to see yours are - regards to them all

i was assured jim that all that was a misunderstanding

Jeez, very sorry to hear that Carl, especially after you have taken your family to the other end of the country only to be treated like that.  Hope that you can turn things around and that you can put all this in the past x x

hi carl what has happened to the £2000 plus collected for help the heros!!!!as they are telling me no moneys have been forecoming from duffs full house waterlooville and that event took place in may!!!! I do hope this money is in the system and not been used as this bad form  and to cheat our boys and girls on the front line whos life at risk 24/7  365  is the lowest of the low

Sorry to hear what's happened Carl, and hope your luck improves in the future. Sounds like you haven't been treated at all fairly, although we are only hearing one side (not saying that anything you have said is wrong)

LOL turtle - thats a back handed sympathy post if ever i saw one, cheers though  and i assure you all ive said is indeed fact

whatsupdoc - a couple of people have mentioned this and i know of one of the players who was supposedly contacting the charity to find out exactly how much had been paid in although tony did mention it was over £2K, i assume he has paid it in somewhere along the line

It wasn't meant to be backhanded, honestly Having met you a few times, I know you are geniune, it's just my natural instinct to like to hear two sides of the story before I leap to conclusions. No doubt we will meet again at some point in the future, like I say gl

Does this mean you will be reforming Right Said Fred and going back on tour?

More seriously, good luck in whatever you do next and hopefully will be able to meet up again at a poker event somewhere.

so no more duffs homies then

I felt at the time that Waterlooville was a strange place to open a poker club, didn't want to say anything though because I would have appeared really miserable.
But you need to be near other people and at least have a train station so people can come along and have a drink.
So surprised to hear the private members room has opened up in Stubbington, which is just south of the arse end of nowhere.

And I thought you were both partners, didn't know you were an employee.
Hope Duffs doesn't owe you any money and good luck down south.

When I spent 6 weeks in Portsmouth at HMS Sultan I drove through Stubbington every day from Fareham and thought it was a tiny little village.

Doob Joined: 11 Jun 03
Replies: 315 05 Oct 10 12:58
I felt at the time that Waterlooville was a strange place to open a poker club, didn't want to say anything though because I would have appeared really miserable.

This.

It's sad to see it has come to this. Did you know before when they were trying to organise the forum game that the club was in trouble? I mean you spent a lot of time on here making sure the forum game was at his club and not in Brum. Either way I guess it doesnt really matter now.

Best of luck in future.

its a shame on many levels, personal and business.

the club did seem to be in the middle of nowhere, and if you didnt have a car you were always going to struggle to get there. then again i contrast that with the opening of a poker club in debden, essex,  which i also felt was in the middle of nothing, albeit with a tube station 200 yards away. they got upwards of 250 players for their opening night, with many more turned away. go figure?

carl in your opinion would the club still be going if the lease was in the clubs name and not duffs? and re the forum game, did duffs plan to turn up at any stage to help you with the situation?

albeit with a tube station 200 yards away

I think this is quite a key point!

true, but can you find it on the tube map? before last week, i'd never heard of it!! not exactly central london imo

It's on the end of the central line. Okay it is not exactly central but so long as someone is prepared to sit on a train for 45min is easy to get to.

Doob - i dont really think that the clubs location was that bad
obviously you have to bear in mind venues dont come up that often that are absolutely perfect and if they do then the cost is astronomical
the town could do with a bit more life but there is supposedly a new weatherspoons opening in the spring
and we did end up with a customer base of 3200 in 14 months
No i wasnt a partner just an employee and no he doesent owe me any cash

Flop it - no mate i had no inkling whatsoever that it was going to happen when sorting out the forum game , had i knew then i would never have dragged people down  to us , the first i knew was when Tony rung me on the thursday about 5 pm telling me the official receiver was at the club trying to close it down
i went up there and managed to stop it that night and Tony tried speaking to them first thing friday morning in a bid to at least get a postponment until Monday so the forum game wasnt affected - at 11 ish it looked as though he had acheived it  but certain other facts were revealed and the receiver instructed us that we had to close at 4pm

SOC - at that time then its probable that we would have got over the weekend at least, had the club lease not been in tonys name 
tony turned up at the club on the fridayafternoon afetr most people had gone to the hearoes , he was in a meeting with the receiver for a couple of hours

Are the other clubs in Tony's name?

Do you know what happened to the old Big Slick clubs? (I noticed there has been a name change in portsmouth and the other one on the south coast)  Any chance of getting involved there or doing anything else in poker?  I will definitely make an effort if you do.

Does Tony still give financial advice?

Good luck Carl

Dooberama

The other "clubs" are effectively a group of members hiring a room in a snooker/social club to play poker

re big slick - all i know is that there was some fallout between nick (big slick croydon) and the current owners in portsmouth , im not sure what exactly it was about although obviously the roumour mill was quite active , it wouldent be appropriate for me to comment on them

the poker industry is my livelyhood now so i will be looking for something else , i will hopefully have some good news soon

Financial advice ? - yes he does, apparently he has just landed the bearings bank contract so all good there

good luck m8

Good luck mate.

Having the electric cut of in this first month wasnt the best start I spose. I have fond memories of trying to wipe my bum in the dark then introducing myself to six of clubs straight afterwards with a firm handshake.

Never wen to the homies but I read/heard he had some residence. Is Duffs towers listed on rightmove?

joffy - that was a power failure mate , eventful night

PPB - he was considering selling at one stage but i think that possibility has gone now

Did the Bearings Bank bit fly over our heads?

The whole Licence trade is struggling at the moment. I've been involved in a holiday social Club for the last 30 plus years (Klup and a few of the lads came and saw me Sat night of the weekend tourney when you closed) and for the last few years we've just been treading water - we take a similar amount each year but just can't keep pace with the utilities, rent, insurance, business rates etc.  There is just so much more vying for peoples money and attention compared with what there was 10 - 20 years ago. Add in the smoking ban & cheap booze from the supermarkets and it really is hard work. So many places have closed on Hayling Island where I live.

I honestly think you would be better opening some sort of internet poker cafe where like minded players could go and not be in isolation. Have decent chairs, 30 inch monitors, top of the range pcs so it all works well. Get 1 game linked up to a big screen where people could sit watch and talk about what's happening. Get some books & magazines in there, invite pros to gives lectures, try and improve peoples games if they want it. Market it as if you were appealing to the night school lot? Offering a new, different and unique course? I don't know, it's just an initial thought. Don't even know what the rules and regulations on it would be. And forget about booze and just have coffee, soft drinks etc and maybe a bit of simple grub and go from there.

cheers Mccoy - we did have 4 internet terminals but the poker side on that was slow and they were used more by the younger locals for facebook etc . however it was a service  provided that was apreciated by most of the membership

re the trade , agreed its a struggle at the moment and the heady days are long gone - however there is still a need for pubs and clubs and indeed the club was profitable
the problem was, it wasnt as profitable as his initial projections which were massivley overestimated - the fact that cash also had to borrowed from various sources for initial investment, meant that too much cash was having to be taken out of the club each month in relation to its profits to pay those loans back

Loans taken out with massive interest and penalty clauses as well didnt help and as mentioned before,with  his previous job being a financial advisor you would have assumed that this part of a business plan would at least be proffessionally done

joffy - nh wp

:(

GL Carlos....  must admit the Punterz loan thing a while ago did have me wondering


Did he get paid or did he send the big boys in?

hang on you ran a sleaze hole where degenerates did their dole and kids dinner money with a 2 bit fraudster who turned out to be a bigger cvnt than u . are people supposed to feel sorry for u.wow wake the fk up

I don't think Mandy wants sympathy beriteonce - I believe he wants to put the record straight in case folks here misunderstood the situation.

not about sympathy, more about accuracy imo

Well said.

Carl,

I must admit I too thought Waterlooville a strange choice especially when a big casino like the Grosvenor in Brighton struggles for numbers. I hope the Help for Heroes cash went to the right place, would be good if you could get some confirmation. Never met you but you come across as a decent guy and living down south is a bonus. Hope everything sorts itself out for you.

I thought Shaa was involved with Tony in the club and other poker stuff, is this correct and still the case in his new ventures? Are you still mates with him?

danners

correct dib and spud and cheers although i dont pay much heed to keyboard warriors anymore

danners - its difficult to come up with a perfect venue and the original one was basingstoke but Tony was knocked back on it , waterlooville came up at the right time and the facilities were right perhaps more than the location
HFH - ther have been some questions asked and i have found out tonight people have been in touch with the charity weeks ago , those questions will be for Tony to answer although i am sure he would have paid it in

Shaa was a joint affilliate for big slick with Tony prior to the club opening but had no involvement at waterlooville or any other ventures , their relationship soured somewhat but its not really for me to go into details and sling mud

i arent really mates with shaa no but again not the time or the place or did you mean tony ? if so then im afraid that relationship is well and truly over

Hard to believe how all this has ended up hope things work out for you Carl..

On the Financial Adviser bit I would imagine that line of work has gone pear

over the last 2/3 years ,a friend of mine cannot obtain credit for many of his

clients since the crunch ..so perhaps tony was struggling a bit prior to the club venture ..

Sorry to hear about all of this carl, as has been mentioned it looked a bit dodge with the whole mr silent thing stuff at the time.
But you took the risk and went for it, your EV was high, you just ran bad you could say, hope you get sorted asap and bounce back better than ever!

But you took the risk and went for it, your EV was high, you just ran bad you could say,

Nothing like people using poker language in non-poker related things!

Err, but it was poker related wasn't it?

Not really

The day when opening a poker club isnt poker-related is the day black is white.

taxi for james beckton!!

Carl
Sorry to hear what happened mate
Always found you a genuine decent fella, best wishes for the future

Fraser

brisbanerd Joined: 09 Aug 10
Replies: 6 11 Oct 10 00:28 
Carl
Sorry to hear what happened mate
Always found you a genuine decent fella, best wishes for the future

Fraser

That's rich coming from you. You're just a big a kunt as Duffs turned out to be.

Well if you have a problem you could have said it to my face rather than behind your keyboard.
Anyone who knows me know where they can find me.

Text me your address then. Won't post on here again.

Every cloud has a silver lining though mate, i think ur kids are young enough to grow up with a proper accent now instead of that shandy drinking farmer brown jobbie lol ;-)

On a serious note, i wish you all the best.