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I really like this kid, his poker static interview is full of great content and his instructional video was awesome.

But now it turns out he scammed people whilst sweating them into playing this 'fishy lag guy' who was actually him, playing them whilst seeing their holecards.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/portuguese-poker-prodigy-jose-girah-macedo-scammed-hsnl-players-30-000-hsnl-xpost-1079435/

I hate cardrunners guys for scamming Isildur and I would really like to see poker somehow evolve into a game where you can just sit down, play and not be afraid of people teaming up on you and getting data mined hands or a coach playing live and telling them what to do, but this is just whole another level of bad.

Not a great moment in his career...

Just gotta remember how young this guy is... if he straightens up... and is clean from here... like Bonomo seems to be... then he can be reclaimed...

This is truly sad, ugly and stupid. I can't believe what I read but this has been confirmed. The situation is hopefully well handled by the guys and Girah is taking is responsibility. Wow.

This is truly sad, ugly and stupid. I can't believe what I read but this has been confirmed. The situation is hopefully well handled by the guys and Girah is taking is responsibility. Wow.

no he isn't he's a total dickhead living in a twisted reality, he apologized only when it was 100% sure he will get outed

More and more people are coming forward that he scammed. I hope he goes to jail, he was one of my biggest inspirations lately


[01:25:17] josé maria macedo: stop thinking so much about your reps
[01:25:20] josé maria macedo: and think about mine
[01:25:22] josé maria macedo: for one second
[16:00:16] josé maria macedo: i assume you all know this
[16:00:24] josé maria macedo: but if it goes public, both mysponsors are dropping me
[16:02:45] XXXXX: yeah they're aware
[16:03:16] josé maria macedo: ah, really?
[16:03:20] josé maria macedo: damn
[16:05:28] josé maria macedo: theyreally know that both sponsors will drop me?
[16:05:35] josé maria macedo: and still want to?


The way he was doing it is almost comical:

Originally Posted by ilrg
I was gonna post this today... Jose scammed me for atleast 15k on ipoker.

On 28th of June I contacted Yoan Gaidov from hand4hand.net about coaching with Jose Maria Machedo, the so called portuguese poker prodigy. He gave me his Skype info and I added him. He said that he would talk with Jose and forward my information to him. He told me there was a waiting list of like 50 players.
On 29th of June he gave me Joses Skype info and I added him. From that day I would try to contact Jose about coaching. He would ignore me first but then after like 2 weeks we finally scheduled a session. I filled out his questionnaire and was good to go. He wouldnt show up to the first session and also missed the 2nd one we scheduled making up excuses. Then he apologized and said he would make it up by coaching me for free for 2 sessions.
On 07/17 we had finally our first session where we talked about some theory. The session was nothing special and I didn,t get the impression that he is as awesome as everyone seems to think he is. He basically send me the links to the hands he posted on 2p2 (also the hands he made his first video for pokerstrategy) and talked about them. He told me to prepare some conceptual hands and send me to him. I would do that but he never really analyzed them. He would then ignore me again for some days and when our next session was due he delayed it during to having so much stress because of his first video being released.
At this time I was playing almost only on pokerstars and partypoker. On 07/28 I would started playing on ipoker on my old account (maxkatz1) I haven't played there for a while. Jose knew my name there since he asked me on 07/17 about it and. All of a sudden Jose started to show an unreal amount of interest to sweating me. After bascially ignoring me for over 3 weeks and hardly doing anything that can be considered coaching he would suggest to sweat me up to 3-4 times a day starting on 07/31. I played up to 9 tables of 6 max on ipoker.

Basically he wanted me to play ongame or ipoker during our sweatsessions. He told me his nick on ipoker is toshisan. Pretty strange if you look it up on ptr - plays low - midstakes hu.
He told me that his ongame account was frozen and that he thinks that games on ongame are great so I should play there and asked me about what my nick there is.
Ok so now the fun part begins. After starting the sweatsession a guy named sauron1989 would sit with me at every table he could at 10-20. He would make some garbage plays (coldcall crap pf v me - make some stupid bluff) then type that he is tilted in chat and ask me to move up in stakes).
Jose told me that he played him for over 3k hands and that he thinks that sauron is a huge fish. He told me he lost like 15k to him at 25-50 but will play him again since hes got really good reads on him. He also encouraged me to start 10-20 games with sauron. I lost about 15 k to sauron on the 3 days where Jose did sweat me.
He would spazz here and there but other than that he was playing in god mode - calling every single bluff of mine. Jose tried to encourage me to play sauron hu and also asked why I won't play him at 25-50.
After sking him several times he finally agreed that I can sweat him and he played about 45 minutes on merge on his girah account. Before and after the session he was asking me again and again if he can sweat me. He was never really interested in analyzing any hands. I got suspicious after getting crushed by sauron 3 days in a row and asked a friend of mine (mdma) about his opinion. He told me that he has read some interesting stuff on a swedish pokerforum a while ago. Basically Jose asked an ipoker reg to sweat him when he played a fish hu. During that session he lost 8 buins or so on on 10-20. Guess to whom he lost? Sauron 1989!
Toshisan has not a single hand played v Sauron1989 according to ptr. Jose asked me to play Sauron from my account since hes getting no action from him. He asked me if he can sit in 4 handed with Sauron1989, me and geeforce1. I said sure but he wouldn't. Then telling me that his ipoker account is blocked cause Hasseeb logged in.
So it all looks pretty strange. First he ignores me and doesn't wann do any coaching. As soon as he sees me playing on ipoker he can't get enough of sweating me. As soon as I sit at ipoker Sauron sits at very table of mine at 10-20 with position and plays in godmode. His ongame account is blocked. His ipoker account is blocked. His moneybookers deposit limit is reached so he cant make a new account and deposit.

Retired from poker as a teenager? That's REALLY prodigious.

Game over for him. Did he scam a ton of people?

Game over for him. Did he scam a ton of people?

The thread on 2+2 in the OP is 27 pages, but he appears to be offering full repayment + some extra compensation.

Second post in the thread is him admitting it, and saying that his Mom is disappointed in him.

I am wondering whether his way throughout the stakes was clear...If he cheated there as well, it is just sick. No idea why he decided to do this, while his accounts were full of money.

I am wondering whether his way throughout the stakes was clear...If he cheated there as well, it is just sick. No idea why he decided to do this, while his accounts were full of money.

He put up an instructional video around two weeks ago, that showed he was legit. Two very imaginative hands with a fair bit of detailed math behind them. He put a challenge at the beginning saying something like "Here are the forum posts for these hands. Please analyse them before watching the video".

Dogishead and Jungleman WERE going to share a place with him, so they were convinced also, apparently. Those plans have obv changed now.

From hero to zero.

Well the video was read from a script... Look at his video and at Giggy's videos for example.
I thought he was very well prepared and liked it, but there could be more behind it...

He also copy pasted a lot and had always the same answers in various wells and videos about him (taken from his first story post...that DogIshhead helped him to write), I watched/read them all. He also got numerous vouches from many people who just helped him to sweat others and scam more people. I would be not at all surprised if someone was collaborating with him.

The apology written in that thread is a complete joke if you follow up on other info in the thread, he's just sorry he got caught not that he was doing it. I can't believe I actually took this guy as a role model.

There are a few people on 2p2 that said they will do everything they can to get this in front of court and I hope they will. Really the confidence in online poker is so low, and now I found out I was being naive when I was openly letting anyone sweat live, ousting my sn and believing that when I deposit money it won't get locked (atm I can't pay for groceries because of a bug in WH depositing system) and that you can have a story as he had. Add all the data mining and people teaming up and online poker doesn't seem like the nice place it did a while ago

Omg, what the fuck is going on in this poker world? Have you heard about affair with "Saphael", the polish coach on PokerStrategy ? He turned out to be shady as well. Now Girah. Ivey's loans are also a little bit suspiscious. Ehh, the image of online poker has been damaged.

I haven't followed this guy at all and only just started paying attention. What is the evidence for his claim that he won $2 million?

It seems very odd that someone capable of winning millions would resort to scamming people in this way.