Jason Ho: scumbag extraordinaire.
If you haven’t heard yet, eccentric former stoxpoker coach Jason Ho has been outed as a scammer, deceiver, and complete douche. I always had a lack of respect for him, with his blog posts always including some bit about how great he was, or pictures of him at poker tables with some Asian chick wrapped around his arm, obviously photo shoots he could very well have paid for himself for an ego boost. I mean just google his name to find his website and his blog if you need a feel for the type of person he is.
Cliff’s notes on the thread, and Jason’s history at stoxpoker:
- Jason becomes stoxpoker coach, claiming somewhere along the way that he made $1M in 2008
- Posts very salesman-esque threads promoting his coaching programs, including a costly (~$5k) ‘poker crew’ program in which several students would live in a poker house in Macau and pool winnings
- It’s outed that he was bankrupt and/or owed money to the UK government and never settled up, running away to southeast Asia
- Accusations are unclear early in the thread
- Jason posts weird videos of him dancing to DDR, obviously a ploy to detract attention from the problem and lighten people’s views of him (lol DDR)
- Eventually it comes out that there was a scam/disagreement with the coaching
- Several people come forward to tell their messed up story of how Jason treated them like shit, was obviously not a qualified coach, wasn’t even present to coach nearly half the time, and the cherry on top was him convincing his students to invest a total of ~$90k as what amounted to essentially a backing deal for Ho, a losing PLO player, with false guarantees and an unhappy ending.
- Tries to a) avoid replying about the scamming and terrible coaching, and b) moves attention to the ‘winning player argument’ by trying to generate interest for a 6 month to one year-long prop bet to prove he can win at poker.
The first post in the thread below pretty much bulletpoints all the interesting bits from the pages ahead of it. Enjoy!
[edit: above link is in the private (read: paid subscriber section) of stoxpoker's forum. Here is the thread on 2p2 about Jason.]
Moral of the story? TRUST NOBODY BUT YOURSELF.
9 Responses to “Jason Ho: scumbag extraordinaire.”
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Yeah, I’ve been reading that thread for a day or so now (btw it’s in the private forum so only Stox members will be able to follow the link). Always seemed like a tool to me from his blog posts but, of course, I never suspected he was a POS scammer.
Since you’re in a unique spot to comment, mind telling us what type of vetting process, if any, you had to do before becoming a Stox coach?
Didn’t realize the thread was in the private forum; edited.
I believe I’m a bit of an exception with regards to the application process in that I was coached by two stoxpoker coaches and had a good word put in by them. The extent of my application was basically the referral, showing them my overall winnings graph and a trial video for them to watch.
Not exactly sure what other coaches had to go through.
ok good post but gotta disagree with your conclusion: Moral of the story? TRUST NOBODY BUT YOURSELF.
There are many people I trust especially in the poker world. I could send them my entire BR on accident and not even feel worried because I know I’d get it back. The bigger lesson is to investigate claims yourself rather than relying on reputations. I mean he claimed to have all these references and coaches paying him big bucks but no one really confirmed these. If they had they would realize he was full of shit (as leatherass pointed out in his blog).
So I wouldn’t say trust no one, but I’d say be very careful with who you do trust and if someone provides you references by all means check them.
Man, another disaster for Stox which has taken their share of punches lately. It’s funny, the day before this broken WV said he watched one of this guy’s videos so that he could fall asleep. I watched it too and disagreed with just about everything coming out of his mouth. I just chalked it up to differing opinions on smart play at small stakes … I guess I know better now.
Anyways, this is a pretty significant news story … thanks for weighing in on it.
@zach: yeah just kind of jotted that down, not exactly what I meant. This post was quickly written before my afternoon grind, sorry for the nonsense line at the end :p
@sean: never was a fan of his videos either, and was really surprised the way many of his viewers kind of blew up with excitement over him.
[...] you guys haven't heard about the thing with Jason Ho yet, it's a pretty interesting read: http://chuckts.com/featured-articles…xtraordinaire/ /end blog whoring. Seriously I spent the good part of yesterday looking through the thread I link [...]
Obviously stox has such shoddy mods no wonder this happened.
Another poker scandal… sigh. Feel bad for the stox community, but this will happen from time to time in cases in which due diligence on researching your coaches is not done (as Zach pointed out). Another reason to be happy to be a part of the smaller stud sub-pokerculture — you hold ‘em guys just generally are shady and untrustable. Present company excluded of course.
[...] If you guys haven't heard about the thing with Jason Ho yet, it's a pretty interesting read: http://chuckts.com/featured-articles…xtraordinaire/ /end blog whoring. Seriously I spent the good part of yesterday looking through the thread I link [...]
Man just because Jason organised a few KOS events in Troc everyone kisses his ass. I mean sure, it’d be cool to Bong Thomas…