A charitable gesture from Phillip Nagy took a dark turn this weekend when a player allegedly faked cancer in an effort to win a staking deal from Nagy.
The story began with the charitable gesture.
Nagy offered to stake 6 players in ACR's Venom tournament, with profits being split 50% to the player, and 50% to breast cancer awareness.
Participants were encouraged to send in a video blog making their pitch for the stake money. It's a solid win-win proposition. Six players get a freeroll in the Venom, breast cancer awareness gets some cash, ACR gets some publicity for their flagship tourney, and Nagy gets to do a nice deed for the other parties.
"Most who know me will vouch that I love giving people an opportunity and I do my best to support noble causes," Nagy tweeted. "I'm looking to stake 6 people to play in this week’s Venom PKO. Profit split: 50% to the player, and 50% to breast cancer awareness. [...] Post a video blog of whatever you want that will make me want to stake you."
Many participants posted videos hoping for a laugh, others talked about how breast cancer had affected them, and some made the case for how +EV staking them would be. However, not everyone entered the comp in good faith.
According to Twitter posts from Nagy and ACR-sponsored pro Chris Moneymaker, one participant faked a cancer diagnosis. This was all in an effort to get a 50% cut of a $2,650 buy-in.
The big C stands for "cheat"
In a post that is no longer publicly available on Twitter, Chris Moore posted a video in reply to Phil Nagy.
Chris Moneymaker retweeted Moore's video with the claim that Moore had "threatened to kill almost every @ACR_POKER team pro and @WPN_CEO. He sent me a pic of him supposedly cutting his wrists when I did not give him a ticket and now he out here faking cancer to get a ticket."
Moore denied that he faked the diagnosis, claiming that he has "a letter from [his] Dr."
Moneymaker then tweeted an image purporting to be the letter Moore referred to, with the caption, "here is image with no address on off chance it is real one. Chris Moore faking cancer."
The letter does not look particularly official. It lacks a signature and letterhead and also contains atypical capitalization, formatting, and spelling of the doctor's surname. It also contains information that would have been more professionally delivered in person or via phone call.
Many of the medical statements are also somewhat unusual. In it "Dr Megan Lawarence [sic.]" writes that Moore's blood test "came back positive for Mesothelioma." Dr Lawarence also specifies that "this stage of Mesothelioma is terminal." Typically, blood tests for mesothelioma are coupled with imaging techniques, especially when determining the stage of the cancer and treatment or palliative options.
Moneymaker offered to pay for Moore's mental health treatment if he will seek "mental help." In the U.S. that's a rather more expensive proposition than staking a player in the Venom -- one that Moore would probably to well to accept.
Featured image source: Flickr by NICHD used under Creative Commons license
