Poker Player Drunkenly Bets 5% of Company
10 years ago
14 Sep
A âpoker financeâ story hit the papers this week, but it wasnât quite what youâd expect. Instead of a casino investment or poker network buy-out scenario, the Telegraphâs financial pages carried a somewhat amusing (perhaps disturbing if youâve ever done something similar) tale from a reader.
The tortured UK poker fan asked for help. His problem? Well, letâs allow him to explain!
âWhen playing poker on a drunken night out, I accidentally bet a 5% stake in my company on a hand and lost. Itâs worth about ÂŁ50,000 and thereâs nothing in writing, but Iâm being pressed for payment. Do I have to give up the 5%? I was drunk!â
John Timpson, the newspaperâs business âagony auntâ (and also Chief Executive of the massive Timpson business group) was not short of wisdom. Before consulting a lawyer friend â the readerâs question being as much a legal matter as a financial one - his sage advice was initially three-fold:
âOnly place bets you are prepared to lose. Whether you are betting on horses, poker or a game of golf, stick to cash. Never stake your house, business, or your wifeâs car. Donât bet under the influence of alcohol. You may be hoping that your lawyer can get you off the hook, but morally you should pay upâ.
Excellent advice, of course, but not much good right now to our intrepid businessman on the end of a âbad beatâ! His main concern is â can the bet be legally enforced?
Timpsonâs friend and legal adviser Roger Lane-Smith thinks probably not,
âSince the recent Gaming Act, certain gambling debts are now enforceable, but I think a private card game is unlikely to be covered. As the producer Sam Goldwyn famously said, a verbal contract isnât worth the paper itâs written on,â
The poor (or rather possibly 5% poorer) poker loser was also advised by Lane-Smith that he might try the âNon est factumâ defence - read loosely as âI was so drunk I didnât know what I was doing and the other person ought to have known itâ, which does seem to slot in nicely with the questionerâs âdrunken night outâ admission.
Business-guru Timpson offers less-good advice from the poker player (any poker player!) point of view:
âTry to save the situation by settling with a cash equivalent rather than handing over a percentage of your equity. Do you want an expert poker player to be sitting on a substantial shareholding?â
Lane-Smith, however, might just save the manâs day with his finishing quote
âThere isnât a definitive answer to your query but, if I was a gambling man, I wouldnât bet on the claimant winning.â
If you were thinking that this couldnât possibly be a real story, then think again! The gambling world is replete with stories of bad bets and dubious decisions which would make the ordinary man shudder â or crack up laughing.
The apocryphal story of Australian airline magnate Kerry Packer saw perhaps the biggest bet offered in the history of the entire world. Irritated by a fellow gamblerâs boasting of how much he was worth, Packer turned on the Texan oil-man and offered to âflip a coin for our fortunesâ (somewhere in the region of $100m!) His kind offer was apparently declined.
In Russia Andrei Karpov bet his wife in a poker game, having already bet everything else he âownedâ. Not only did he lose, but his wife ended up divorcing Karpov and marrying her âwinnerâ, Sergey Brodov.
The woman at the centre of the big pot, Tatiana, claimed
âIt was humiliating and I was utterly ashamed. But as soon as my ex-husband did that I knew I had to leave him,â continuing, âSergey was a very handsome, charming man and I am very happy with him, even if he did win me in a poker game.â
Another drunken-poker bet-gone wrong saw a 22-year old New Zealander changing his name to âFull Metal Havok More Sexy N Intelligent Than Spock And All The Other Superheroes Combined With Frostnovaâ after his bad-beat landed.
Should the Telegraph reader (and unlucky poker player) resurface with more details, rest assured we will bring you the outcome of this latest in a long line of poker-bizarre stories.
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