Jason Mo is Mad at The Poker Media
9 years ago

26 Apr
High stakes pro Jason Mo has been venting his frustrations on Joey Ingram's Poker Life Podcast. Mo was less than impressed with the recent news piece written by Phil Galfond accusing Las Vegas cash game regular Sammy Touil of scamming him.
We reported the story back in February covering how Galfond had made an impromptu loan of $250,000 to Touil. who is considered a fun player rather than a respected professional. After receiving the run around for long enough Galfond felt he was unlikely to get paid and decided go public, hoping that some moral pressure might materialise from the poker community and shame Touil into repaying the loan.
It seems that not everybody feels this was the right way to go about things.
In the podcast Mo explained how this is such a common scenario in the poker world, and that it was just plain wrong to react in this way and single out Touil as if he's the only guilty party. He went on to say how Touil is also far from the only person to owe money to Galfond, so why do this to him?
Mo claims that as a man in his position he understands better than those reporting just how widespread loans in the region of $250,000 are in the high stakes community. Extremely common he says.
Reputations and relationships are both key in how these deals are put together, so what is so special about Phil Galfond's reputation that distinguishes him from other high stakes regs, Mo questioned.
Sammy Touil has chosen not to defend himself against the allegations, so for now we only have one side of the story, but what seems to be griping Mo more than anything else is how Phil Galfond is using his clean cut reputation in a purely self interested way, and that this outing was not some kind of good will gesture to the community.
As a interested party, with no involvement should we feel any sympathy if the accused are unwilling to give their side and defend themselves?
While it's clear that nobody has been found guilty of anything in a court of law, many must be wondering if the allegations are false then why wouldn't Touil say so?
Apparently there were others involved in organizing the loan, but Galfond declined to give names as he didn't want them connected with what could well have turned into a bit of a media storm. This was something else which Jason Mo was far from impressed with.
Is it Time to Get All These Stories Out Into the Open?
Almost immediately following the breaking of the story, American Poker Awards “Media Person of the Year” Donnie Peters was a guest on the Poker Life Podcast to give his opinion.
Poker has such a chequered history when it comes to lending money that Peters claimed now might be a good time to get everything out into the open for all to hear. He saw nothing wrong with the article that Galfond wrote because he put his name to it. There was no hiding behind anonymous allegations. Though Peters must have conceded that there was potential for this to blow up in his face.
Galfond's story was supposed to be a “conversation starter,” which on the face of it sounds like a sensible idea. Even though a high profile character such as Jason Mo has expressed a negative reaction, it looks like many other players from the community are interested in some kind of transparency.
Another point which was raised by Mo was how Shaun Deeb, another highly respected face in the community, wanted to run his own scam story in the same manner of Phil Galfond but was denied the same platform.
Deeb ultimately made the decision to discuss his own problems on the Under the Gun Podcast to host David Tuchman.
What Do We Know About Jason Mo
Jason Mo is widely acknowledged as one of the very best heads up No Limit Holdem players in the world. He has also accumulated more than $1.8 million in live tournament winnings. An impressive CV.
However he is known as somebody who doesn't look on the poker media in a favourable light.
He's been accused of making himself as unlikeable as possible to minimize the amount of coverage he gets so he doesn't end up with such a high profile in the poker world making it even tougher for him to get action. It's difficult to know what's true. But either way he definitely hasn't gone out of his way to make himself better known to the public.
One major point which he has raised is how there is little news reported that projects online poker providers in a negative light due to affiliations conflicts. You don't have to search very far to see this is not true.
No Stranger to Controversy
On a more amusing note, January of this year saw Mo butting heads with the Pokerstars top brass. Obviously no fan of Lee Jones, Pokerstars Head of Communications, on a personal level Mo sent out a tweet saying:
I would likely pony up a large amount to give a swift kick in the nuts and say "jmo sends his regards" :) “
I'm sure it was meant in jest, but very quickly Mo's Pokerstars account was locked with a six figure sum suddenly out of reach, and it wasn't all his money too.
Three days later it was confirmed this happened because of the threatening tweet, but all was forgiven and the account was unlocked.
The history between Mo and Jones stems from an incident at last years European Poker Tour event in Barcelona where Mo claimed around 50,000 chips were missing from his stack when they were “coloured up” during a break. Pokerstars organizes these events and when questioned about the missing chips they admitted that no cameras were being used because they're expensive!
Mo talks a lot of sense, even if you don't agree with all his points. I hope we hear more from him in the future.
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