Online Crusher JNandez Resigns from Upswing Poker

(Photo: Upswingpoker.com)

In a surprise announcement, top online pro and PLO coach Fernando ‘JNandez87’ Habegger has left Upswing Poker, taking to YouTube to explain to fans and students how he was “unexpectedly kicked out” of the private Facebook group where members share insights, strategies and organise tuition - only for Doug Polk to later accuse him of planning to steal his customers.

“Today I want to talk about my break-up, my resignment from Upswing Poker and I want to give you an internal perspective of what led up to this moment”, says JNandez in his 12-minute video, explaining: “First things first, this morning I got unfortunately kicked out of the PLO FB group – a private group where we only have internal PLO Lab members.”

Doug Polk, founder of Upswing Poker along with Ryan Fee, took to the 2+2 forum to express his displeasure at Habegger, claiming:

"Fernando has decided to exercise his option to leave the PLO lab before the agreed upon term has concluded to offer a competing course. He has been removed from the appropriate Upswing facebook groups, as he plans to steal our customers and use that to begin his own site."

The PLO Lab opened to great fanfare just this past October, ‘JNandez’ teaming up with Doug Polk to discuss his involvement after joining the Upswing site last February, having previously produced coaching videos along with Phil Galfond and others on RunItOnce. Polk himself used his podcast in April to heap praise on Habegger, who worked his way from $1/2 up to crushing the highest stakes on PokerStars…

YouTube ‘resignation explanation’ sees JNandez explaining how producing firstly the PLO University, and then the PLO Lab was a team effort, an enlightening and enriching experience for him as a player, as a coach and as a person, but he then goes on to discuss the “internal problems” which have resulted in his departure.

Just an employee

Habegger, having described how he apparently unsuccessfully tried to persuade his Upswing bosses to allow or help him to design an updatable approach to the PLO coaching, states:

“Basically Upswing Poker hired me personally to do the content, which means I’m an employee of the company – a freelancer, I’m supposed to just make videos, submit them, and get compensated. In general that’s fine, but it kind of reminded me of RunItOnce, and I didn’t want to go backward, I want to go forward.”

Doug Polk touched on the departure in a video last night, stating Nandez “is not breaking any terms of his contract as long as he continues to make content for the next few months," but his later posting on 2+2 went into detail, adding:

"We had Fernando sign our contract stating he intended to put 18 months of work out for us. We told our attorney what we wanted, and he for some reason put in a clause that allows either party to cancel after 90 days. I do not know why he did this, and we did not catch that this was part of the contract.”

Polk added: “Fernando has pocketed his share of all the 6 and 12 month courses after making these promises, before making this decision”, which was swiftly met by a rebuttal from JNandez who replied:

“This is infactual, I am not pocketing anything. I have already talked about this with the whole Upswing team (including you) prior to your post and agreed that we are together refunding the members in full.”

The full JNandez resignation explanation video can be viewed here…