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Comment by Tarsul | Hacker News Reader

she anwers the title question in the last paragraph: "curiosity is everything, losing is a part of playing, and our opponents in life are less important than the choices we make ourselves." I don't know why I expected more, guess I'm still prone to clickbait. Nonetheless, her story is interesting anyway. But she doesn't answer the real leading question of her story, which was whether she won against the misogynistic‎ Dan B. (quick google search didn't help me with that..).

Actually, the best advice in the article is in the middle: "don’t play when tired, stressed or distracted."

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Dan B isn't a poker player, he's an instagram influencer who is most likely just laundering his father's money into legitimacy. There won't be a match.

Being not from the US, when I first heard about Blizerian and did a quick search on him, it kind of became clear that his fortune came from the money his father stole and that the poker story is total BS. But my question is why is the SEC/FBI letting it slide? Too much time has passed?

Obviously, they don't have a solid case against the father.

In general, the FBI doesn't let criminals just slide when the scumbags steal a bunch of money and then launder it in the open if they have enough hard evidence to convict them.

They had a great case against Paul Bilzerian - he was convicted and the government got a $60+ million judgment against him. It seems he is just exceptionally good at hiding his money during the bankruptcy processes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bilzerian

In a linked article it’s mentioned that the son’s money is from a trust, so I wonder if there’s some kind of loophole like the Florida principal residence exception.

They should have debtor’s prison at some point. Obviously going bankrupt from medical debt should not send you to prison but running a $60 million fraud should.

It's funny how death sentence exists in some countries, but I've never heard of a total property nullification sentence anywhere. The tools are right there, it would just be plain old bankruptcy (with all its known loopholes and weaknesses) preceded by an "infinite fine". Historical societies had banishment which I suppose was similar in effect, "you may live but that's it".

But "we take every amount of money of which we can prove beyond doubt that it was illegitimately acquired" is like trying to deal with theft by forcing the thief to give back the goods when caught and nothing more.

Exactly. A convicted megafraudster should be living in a studio apartment eating Hamburger Helper and driving a 2005 Kia.

> They should have debtor’s prison at some point. Obviously going bankrupt from medical debt should not send you to prison but running a $60 million fraud should.

Humans are creative; at that point money will be laundered through various overbilled (or even outright fabricated) medical procedures, paid for in cash.

Just because something will be fought doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried.

I did not mean to imply that it must not be tried :-/

We frequently don't catch murderers; this does not mean we should not investigate new methods of catching them.

Money his father hasn't paid to the government 30 years ago?

You really think they couldnt think of anything lucrative over the last 30 years with completely new and separate money?

People that understand capital markets dont just have 1 lucrative idea their whole life.

The 2014 service providing in St Kitts and Nevis and parlaying that into Bitcoin and Ether would easily have earned them billions by now on its own. So it is impossible to assume anything.

You are referring to the $62 million judgement from 30 years ago that the government had issues collecting due to the bankruptcy and trusts?

My thoughts on that are “hostile corporate takeovers” are completely drama free “Mergers & Acquisitions” now, compared to when they were novel in the 1980s, they perturb no-one and nowadays founders do not start acquirable companies to get married to their company, they start companies to sell the shares they created at a cost basis of $0.00 for billions of dollars. So that specific money would have never had zealous prosecutors looking, and subsequent Supreme Court cases would have made the whole judgement invalid, if there was any due process path remaining for addressing old judgements. But okay, I can play along with the idea that he owes the government what is asked. Which moves me to my next point:

You dont think billions of new money could have been made over the last 30 years that had nothing to do with the 1980s M&A activity?

People that understand capital markets don't just have 1 idea lucrative their whole life.

Its odd to assume its related money, forever.

One factor here may be that due to Sarbanes-Oxley companies aren’t IPOing at small market caps anymore.

Sadly, and they should go public earlier.

I’m not sure how that dictates the change in founder behavior. Unless you mean that it self selects for moonshot founders who don't conflate their business and passions - or founders that form businesses for exits, than the business.

Do you think if smaller companies were publicly traded more often that there would be headline grabbing poison pill discussions? Small companies getting tricked into buying up their own shares at a premium to fend off a large shareholder’s takeover bid - and people calling the large shareholder’s failed takeover a trick, theft, controversial at all?

I really just think the culture has changed and all of this has been normalized. Nobody is incorporating in irrelevant states anymore for protections against takeovers, the entire universe of eligible businesses is in Delaware now.

So many things are different in the minds of individual humans involved that none of this would be controversial.

The culture may have changed, but the way I meant was first, with small IPOs is that the founders may expect exponential growth post-IPO, and that gets cut short, and second, it’s much easier to hostile takeover small companies. Whether it’s Amazon or Dunkin Donuts. Instead the company’s older, founders are more tired, the payout’s higher, and (I assume) being more expensive, they’re less common.

I would guess companies now keep voting power among insiders after IPO with special share classes instead of incorporating in odd states, if they’re inclined to avoid a takeover.

When it comes to the modern day version of this sort of drama, the first thing that comes to mind is pre-exit startup founders losing control. That’s still a thing.

A friend of mine, who played poker was very strict about only playing friday and staurday evenings, when a lot of opponents would be pre partying and drunk. He won a lot.

I used to play professionally and played weekends religiously as well. On a less serious note I especially loved playing on Friday 13th as I'm not superstitious and would rake in everything from the "unlucky" players.

His name is all over the article. Why are you referring to him as Dan B. ?

Because Dan B doesn’t deserve more publicity. That’s what he wants. The news organization has a duty to publish his name so we know the facts, but we have no obligation to increase an influencer’s reach.

I guess they've never heard of the Streisand effect, and caused many people, including me, to google "Dan B" to understand who they were talking about.

I probably would have skipped over and forgot after half a second the existence of this person if his name was written in full in the first place.

So… you admit to not reading the article.

actually, it was simply because I didn't want to write the name wrong :)

Hahaha. That is actually very funny.

Dan Bilzerian?

Don't know if it's been edited since you posted, but at the end of the article, second to last paragraph:

> If this was a fictional sports movie, this story would end with a blow-by-blow account of my match against Bilzerian. You'd see me struggle, battle and beat him, despite the odds, then the credits would roll.

a subtext of that advice, don't play too big

you don't feel curious if you bet your house on a poker game, but 50 bucks you get to enjoy the downfall

Risk management is the most important life skill, with rhetoric (persuasion) being a close second. If your risk management is sound then you can play as much poker or options trading or futures or any other hairbrained dipsy-doodle you like. But if your risk management isn't sound then you can still lose everything in a game (broadly construed) with an edge < 1 in your favor.

do you have suggestions on books or others ?

The Kelly criterion[1] is a good starting point. When it was run as an experiment, a game with a .6 player edge had 28% of players go bust.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

And just to add:

> If the bettors had followed the Kelly bet, 94% of the participants would have been expected to reached the cap [of $250 after starting from $25]

"Skin in the Game" by Nassim Taleb

>> . But she doesn't answer the real leading question of her story, which was whether she won against the misogynistic‎ Dan B.

If you care weather she won or lost that match, you haven't really internalized the lessons yet.

Well then, can you at least care if she played all of her hands perfectly and won "in spirit"?

And I think its safe to say that when a women is playing against a misogynic douche like this guy seems to be in spades no less, that she actually does want to take as much money from him and crush his ego.

They seem to have internalized the major lesson that "curiosity is everything," and (if the duel has happened) by not mentioning if she won is ignoring the lesson that "losing is a part of playing."

no, "losing is part of the fun". i learned that from nethack.

Almost certainly Dan Bilzerian. But that shouldn't even be particularly special, because he is a rich guy who plays poker, not a guy who got rich playing poker. (his dad is corporate takeover specialist/criminal Paul Bilzerian)

To disambiguate, the question is who won, not who Dan is.

I believe he is a rich guy playing poker with other rich guys who play even worse so he's still made some money from it. That was at least the word in high-stakes poker circles back then.

I thought it was an open secret that he laundered money his father embezzled via poker.

a bit more context for those that don't know the story (I didn't, and i'm into poker.)

( I don't know the info host nor their credibility, was just the top-most answer on google for 'Dan Bilzerian laundering')

https://easy.poker/dan-bilzerian/

Most famously known as that dude who had the gal to ask a police officer for a gun during the Las Vegas mass shooting.

Misspelling “gall” for “gal” in that sentence is very confusing. Especially knowing Dan Bilzerian’s background!

Doubt it. Many decent poker players have moved into areas where they can make money off of rich guys. From my minimal research many years ago, nobody knew of Dan B.

There are games in which such players are not allowed to play.

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