Thursday, May 17, 2007

The Poker Bots Apparently Weren't Selling Fast Enough...

[Editor's note: Apparently the PokerBot Pro garbage and the product mentioned here come from separate sources --- re: comment received. Apparently. My response to the complaint rendered by the product's author is the old saw: "You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas...."]

A good writerly friend forwarded me one of the latest turds to plop into his e-mail box, and it's a doozy. What say you to this?

Hello _____,

A group of Poker Pros and Top Online Marketers just released The United Poker Group...

Click Here To See!

Now I don't wanna let the cat out of the bag but These guys are literally probably putting their career at risk by revealing their Poker Playing and Marketing secrets.

It’s never been easier to profit off online poker and the poker industry! The UPG package comes complete with everything you need to sharpen your poker playing skills and build a profitable poker business!

Get complete access to the online poker training center that offers you the tools you need to cash in off of the poker industry. Become both a top-notch professional poker player and an industry marketing entrepreneur!

Get the real deal right now and find out what all the hype is all about!

Check it out

All the best,
Your partner in Poker!


Naturally, I deactivated the links before sharing with you all this heaping pile of steaming poo. While I'm not sure it's possible to construct a phrase worse than 'These guys are literally probably putting their career at risk' --- whatever the hell 'literally probably' is supposed to mean --- that's almost nothing, because the letter quite clearly goes back to the Ken Chan/David Glazen/John Maynor persona that's scammed hundreds of people through the sale of 'Pokerbot Pro' in recent years.

Not that there's much attempt to hide that fact. After all, the spam e-mail broadcasting this glorious new product came with the following 'From' header:

From: Doyle Brunson {kenchanpoker@gmail.com}

I'm sure Doyle appreciated the misrepresentative use of his name. It's also par for the course for your garden-variety scammer; to a thief, all the world's a target. In case you're wondering, the Chan/Glazen/Maynor persona has long operated out of the Toronto area, and we'll return to some of those records later in this piece.

The link-through in the e-mail is also a redirect that goes through the old pokerbotpro.domain, as follows:

http://www.pokerbotpro.org/list/lt/t_go.php?i=26&e=MzY4NTU=&l=http://golani.ieproducts.hop.clickbank.net

For now, however, I'd love to share some of the hilarious and outrageous claims made by Glazer on the new UnitedPokerGroup.com site.

I'd love to, but why bother? The short definition of United Poker Group is this: It's the cheesy online poker vision of all those wretched late-night informercials telling you how you can become a millionaire by starting, for example, your own eBay site. The package you're supposed to buy from these scammers includes but is not limited to packages from five experts/poker pros: Johnny Rothman, Marc Dominic, Matthew Sable, George Deveroe and Jeffery Kenderson, each of whom seems to exist nowhere except on pages linking back to this very same operation.

Ayup. Gotcha. As an erstwhile poker blogger myself, I admit to a bit of a fondness for the 'Power Poker Blogging' section purportedly authored by Deveroe. Here's a screen grab showing the highlights:



That all looks stylish, doesn't it? Strip away the garbage, and I suspect that the real nuts-'n'-bolts of the operation is to create a bunch of affiliate accounts, then plop links to the sites all around RSS feeds swiped from blogs with real content. I don't know it for sure, and damned if I'll pay a penny to find out, but they've got to be stealing something for resale and that makes the most sense.

The other parts of the package are similarly hilarious. What's it all worth? In reality, not a plug nickel, but rehashed informercial math produces rather different numbers. Here's what they say it's worth:



A fair estimate to learning everything there is to know about winning at online poker... really? I love nonsense claims and assertations. But seriously, the whole point of this post is that if you're even thinking about spending Dollar One with these people, then you are an idiot. Worse, these are dishonorable businessmen. This thing supposedly carries a "100% Iron Clad 56 Day Money Back Guarantee" --- ROFL at that, too --- but in reality your $127 purchase price is gone as soon as you're stupid enough to send those dollars away.

Please don't. Pay attention to what the Better Business Bureau has to say about 'David Glazen's related firm, Glazen Online Services: "Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to failure to respond to two or more complaints."

Of course, "two or more" actually means 36 complaints, 34 of which remain outstanding because Glazen Online Services no longer responds to BBB mediation efforts. Sounds like a reputable business to me.

This is an outfit that needs to be nuked, no two ways about it. Failing that, save your money, okay?

3 comments:

Content Author said...

Hello sir,

I can assure you that this products is not associated with Ken Chan or David Glazen. Mr. Ken Chan or whoever you are talking about must have pushed my product as an affiliate with Clickbank. This is the guys we use as our payment processor. I can also assure you that all content is 100% unique as the guys have spent the last 6 months putting this product out.

I don’t know why you feel the need to bash my product.
And you do get a money back guarantee with clickbank. Its part of their policy.

Anyways if you would please not bash my product and write a fair review.

Thanks,

Johnny Rothman

Haley said...

Actually, Johnny, so many of the claims in this product are such outright b.s. I feel compelled to make a follow-up post.

Odd, though, that you didn't even touch on how your 'poker power blogging' program works, given that what I stated was pretty much a blind accusation. Could it be that my hunch was dead on the money?

Anonymous said...

Actually, I just bought this package and so far it sucks. I have emailed rothman at least twice with no answer. It takes forever for the book to download, I don't know how to get the videos or the other stuff. Does anybody have the link to clikbank to get a refund?