If you’ve never heard the expression, “If I invest and you win, you owe me and if you lose, you still owe me,” it’s probably because it doesn’t exist. However, that is what one poker player and staker seems to think. The dispute has boiled up so much that the backer is now being accused of trying to extort money out of the player.
It all started about two years ago. Poker pro Cate Hall, with three WPT final tables and over $1 million to her credit, found a backer through poker pro Chad Power for a summer run at mid-stakes cash games. Unfortunately, Hall wasn’t able to find Lady Luck and ended up losing her staker’s $60,000 that summer. It happens – no one can be a winner all the time and, as with any investment, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
According to Power, however, losing still means winning. He argued that Hall was still on the hook for the $60,000. He asserted that the two had agreed that she would pay him a cut of her winnings, as well as the investment if she lost.
When Hall refused to pay up, things turned ugly. She felt it was time to take the fight public, and launched into Power on Twitter earlier this week. She said, “Chad claims to be motivated [in making the dispute public] by interests of potential backers, so I’m posting a full account of the dispute to negate that. If you’re interested in backing me in the future, know I’d never agree to a deal where I’m on the hook for 100 percent of losses but only get a share of profits.”
The obviously flustered pro continued, “He says that unless I pay him the full amount of the makeup, he will publicly drag me as a scammer. It’s been awhile since I practiced law, but if that’s not outright extortion, it’s at least extortion-adjacent.”
Power still continued pressing Hall. At one point, Hall asserted, “[I]t was pointed out to me that Chad has likely attempted similar strong-arm techniques with people less familiar with the law. You have no legal obligation to pay a backer the amount of makeup in the event you leave poker, absent a written agreement to the contrary.”
With no ability to produce documents verifying his claim, the two decided to let an arbitrator resolve the issue. The unidentified arbitrator agreed with Hall, saying that there was no proof that she had agreed to those terms (as if anyone would agree to those terms). He added that the pair should try to resolve their differences amicably through some sort of “buyout” deal or by resuming their arrangement – in writing – when Hall decided to return to the felt.
Hall asserts that, even though they mutually agreed to allow an arbitrator to decide their fate, Power didn’t accept the result since it didn’t go his way. She said, “Despite agreeing to binding arbitration, despite the arbitrators agreeing with my position, and despite the fact that Chad has explicitly acknowledged that nothing I’ve done violates our agreement, Chad has refused to abide by the arbitrators’ determination.”
In what would appear to be a continuing saga of “he said/she said,” Power denies Hall’s claim that he didn’t accept the ruling, and the soap opera drama continues.
