Online poker training sites are a very strong segment of the industry. These sites hire winning players who have shown tremendous results to create instructional videos, which are available through a subscription and watched either through a downloaded movie file or streamed in a browser. Players improve their game by watching these coaches in action or in a classroom format.
Sometimes these same coaches make themselves available for private coaching and such was the case for StoxPoker.com instructor Jason Ho. Ho claimed he made over $1 million in 2008 and accepted jobs coaching players both online and at “camps” he set up. On top of that, he approached students and colleges about a Pot Limit Omaha stake. Recently, a flood of accusations poured in against Ho, who, according to his detractors, could have been scamming all parties during his entire career.
The allegations first surfaced in the StoxPoker.com forums and were later consolidated into a single thread. The first element that the allegations point to is that Ho claimed to have made $1 million in 2008, yet has never offered proof that this actually took place. One fact that his detractors point to is a 2008 bankruptcy in the U.K. that they claim demonstrates that Ho never won that kind of money. At no point has Ho produced proof backing up his claims in a public forum.
Once the first few allegations against Ho were posted, the rest came flooding in. There were many long and detailed accounts of players’ negative experiences interacting with him in a coaching environment. A player with the forum name “NotAJasonHoFan” detailed many different alleged examples of Ho’s actions. Some of the more serious claims against Ho were that he isn’t a winning player and that he borrows money from students under false pretenses and does not pay them back. He goes on to state that Ho “shouts down and berates his students” and places blame on the student when they go into a downswing.
Another serious allegation from this poster stated that several students have gone to Macau for one to two-week intensive coaching courses that were supposed to be “one on one,” but actually involved other students showing up. There was one example of a player paying $7,000 for what amounted to about seven hours of coaching spread over a week. During these poker coaching courses, Ho would allegedly take “personal breaks” for a day or two and lock himself in his room.
The allegations went on to say that Ho claimed he had “solved cap PLO and wanted to put together a poker crew,” which was something confirmed by Dusty “Leatherass9” Schmidt in his blog at Card Player.com. Apparently Ho had the intention of aligning with Schmidt, who claimed that “his advice was ridiculous so I didn’t work with him again.”
The controversy continued on popular poker forum TwoPlusTwo. One player named “rollsucker” claimed to be a small winner at 200nl and signed up for coaching in March 2008. He was sold a guide for $2,000 saying that he could make 10 BB/100 on it. After using the guide, the player says that he lost over $5,000 in 400,000 hands. Eventually in October, this player hired a new coach at DeucesCracked.com, who said that Jason’s guide was “dangerous, unplayable and full of wrong information.”
After that specific post, another surfaced from a person identified as “Positively4thstreet,” who chimed in with an extremely detailed horror story of his experience with Ho in Macau at a training course. He was also approached about a Pot Limit Omaha project and asked for funds to get it started; the project started and ended under what he felt were false pretenses.
Several people within the coaching industry have come forward, like the aforementioned Schmidt, to voice their distaste for what appears to be a mounting case against a person who has duped many out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The threads on StoxPoker and TwoPlusTwo have countless posts recounting stories both positive and negative about Jason Ho.
Brian “BW07507” Wilber is a small-stakes poker coach specializing in full ring and six-max play. He weighed in on the situation: “This whole incident really shows why it is so important for a student to do their homework on a coach. Students need to make sure they know someone is actually beating the games they are offering to coach you in. You can do this by asking the coach to provide data such as a graph to prove he is truly beating the games and reference that against a site like PokerTableRatings. You can also ask the coach to refer you to some of his other students to get their opinions.”
StoxPoker has since banned Ho from its forums and announced that he is no longer within its stable of coaches. Collin Moshman, a popular instructor at StoxPoker and published author, posted, “I don’t think Stox bears a financial obligation to people who were scammed. Maybe they bear some moral obligation … but at some point people have to be accountable for their own actions.”
Jason Ho’s official website is no longer up and running, with a “500 Internal Server Error” encountered when visiting the site.
Note that this article summarizes allegations made against Ho and in no way confirms or denies said allegations.
