Did WSOP champ inflate his resumé?

[clevfan]

Aug. 16, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NORM: Did WSOP champ inflate his resumé;?


Bluffing helped Jamie Gold win $12 million and the World Series of Poker.

But there are growing questions about how much of his resumé is bluff and bravado.

Not that any of it will change the outcome of the poker tournament, which ended early Friday at the Rio.

Internet gossip sites are abuzz with reports claiming that Gold, 36, has wildly exaggerated his professional credentials as a Hollywood agent and producer.

As of Tuesday, his Web site stated he is "known for discovering, nurturing and launching the careers" of dozens of Hollywood notables, including James Gandolfini of "The Sopranos," Jimmy Fallon, formerly of "Saturday Night Live," Lucy Liu of "Charlie's Angels" and Felicity Huffman of "Desperate Housewives."

A source told defamer.com that the only "real celebrity" Gold has ever personally signed and represented was Ron Jeremy, the porn star.

Another Web site, hollywoodinterrupted .com, indicated that Gold may have to give up 50 percent of his winnings to bodog, the online gaming company that paid his $10,000 entry fee. In addition, Johnny Chan, who coached Gold, is reportedly due to get 10 percent, or $1.2 million.

Chan, reached by telephone on Tuesday, said Gold repped him for about two years, until recently.

If Gold makes good on his promise to tip the WSOP dealers $1 million, his cut will be down to $3.8 million before taxes.

Sources say Gold, who raised eyebrows when he told organizers that he hired two bodyguards after "being threatened," still has not picked up his money.

[James Trout]

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Gold may have to give up 50 percent of his winnings to bodog</end quote></div>

Do I really need another reason to hate Calvin Ayre!? [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-disgusted.gif[/img]

[The Major]

to correct the record here.

""There is no way he would have to give us anything as part of his deal,
but I did hear he promised to split his winnings with a couple of
friends that couldn't get in to the tourney at the last minute."

Rob G

[Minnow]

As my friend Ron Jeremy would say... ooooooo!! This might get messy!

[Louis Cypher]

LIAR'S POKER: ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT (WSOP CHAMP) GOLD - August 13, 2006

HOLLYWOOD, INTERRUPTED EXCLUSIVE


Freshly crowned $12 million poker king Jamie Gold is reportedly deeply indebted to background players...


America's new poker poster boy Jamie Gold had railbirds and players alike scratching their heads and scoffing when he told ESPN that he didn't want the fame of being the latest WSOP champ. The black-clad endorsement-bedecked former Hollywood talent agent smacked disingenuous when he actually announced that he was willing dump his massive chip lead and settle for second place to avoid all the attention associated with the big win at the "big dance."

"I like making other people famous," Gold told the sports news outlet. "I've always been behind other people."

Hollywood, Interrupted has learned that, going into the WSOP tournament, there were people behind Gold, and now they are waiting in the wings, hat in hand champing for the champ to pony up.

According to sources in the WPT (World Poker Tour) and the professional player community in Vegas, the back-story goes like this:

When the splashy, online gambling web site Bodog.com agreed to sponsor Gold into the World Series, they pressed him to arrange for one of his famous friends to join their ball-cap wearing gang of camera hogs.

Gold, who boasts about having repped everyone from Sopranos star James Gandolfini to actress Lisa Liu, reportedly came up dry in the celebrity wrangling department, and turned to a friend inside the WPT (World Poker Tour).

The friend, a young British chap named Crispin Leyser, who, with his wife Jules, tours with the WPT as a boot camp poker instructor, collared smarmy "Scream" star Matthew Lillard to fill the celebrity seat at the last minute, and - recognizing that his pal was failing to get his own 10k tournament buy-in together - the grateful Gold then offered Leyser half his winnings should he cash in the tournament.

And cash he did.

But the irony here is, should Gold make good on his reported 50 percent payout promise (not including the 10 percent fee he reportedly owes his much ballyhooed mentor, poker giant Johnny Chan), he's only cashing out to the $6 million 2nd place prize amount he flippantly said he'd settle for in the first place!
A high-level source at the WPT tells Hollywood, Interrupted that Gold has not paid anyone yet, but he is rushing to set up a quickie corporation to protect what's left of his winnings. And while it remains to be seen if he makes good on his nil-advised oral contract with the poker coach, it appears that the former ten-percenter is guilty of making one helluva bad business decision.

Says one poker pro, "In the gambling community, your word is gold." And, should the man of the same name as his word welsh on his promise, says the pro, "His name is dirt."

[Louis Cypher]

FROM DEFAMER:

Jamie Gold: Not As Agenty As Previously Claimed?

When newly crowned World Series of Poker champion and former agent Jamie Gold expressed trepidation about the fame that would inevitably accompany a win in poker's biggest tournament-- the kind of fame he compared to that which makes people think that James Gandolfini possesses Christ-like healing powers--perhaps he also feared that people within the entertainment industry might call bullshit on the resume he'd been providing to the press during his run to the championship. The Defamer Special Correspondent on Onetime Agents Who May Have Bluffed About Their Client Lists offers his perspective on some holes in Gold's backstory:

"I speak for the masses. Please stop Jamie Gold, and his millions of lies.
Jamie Gold never represented any of the people he keeps saying he has. Lies, lies, lies. He was an ASSISTANT, and then a very very junior agent at a small agency in the early 1990's who MIGHT have taken messages from some of these people, before forwarding them to their real agent. He is a classic Hollywood liar - other people's successes become his own, and his own failures become somebody else's. He has always had a pathological relationship with the truth...which makes him ideal for poker. Sigh. But have you noted his deranged ramblings about being the basis for the Ari Gold character in Entourage? What would your dancing Ari Emanuel mascot say!? It's really kind of sad, if you think about it; first taste of fame that he says he doesn't want, and he pops off a few corkers that defy credulity."


"It's really freaking a lot of us out who have known him over the years, to hear these wild, ridiculous claims in the press; it is also crude that the mainstream media has never checked any of this out, and keeps calling him an ex-talent agent, and citing this long list of stars he has supposedly been instrumental in creating. He's an ex-talent agent like Naomi Campbell is an ex-actress - forgettable, failed and dangerous. He hasn't even managed or been an agent in years and years. To be perfectly blunt, the only REAL celebrity Jamie Gold has ever personally signed and represented was Ron Jeremy. That's right. Ron The Hedgehog Jeremy. Not Jeffrey Wright. Not Lucy Liu, not Melora Walters, not Felicity Huffman, none of them. His agency was more like Talent Agency Waiting Room of the Damned. Think last stop on the downward spiral, and those were his clients. As for being James Gandolfini's rep (an actor he somehow managed to steal when he went solo for one disastrous year), that's a joke; that honor REALLY belonged to his ex-partner, who at that time wisely broke up with Jamie, probably right when he started repping porn stars. Which most of his former theatrical clients did, by the way; seems even they, in the ninth circle of agency rep hell, couldn't bear to be associated with Jamie Gold's Van Nuys Talent Hut."

And as long as we're on the topic, Hollywood, Interrupted reports that after Gold pays off his tournament backers, he might only be walking away with second-place money after all. Once you get past the millions of dollars he'll clear after taxes, this fame stuff really does kind of suck.

[stevo]

Oh my.

Somebody from Hollywood lied. I can't go on.......LOLOL.


Thanks for the articles guys. Too funny.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

Ron Jeremy...LOL

[DrunkenGoon]

Who gives a crap? Everybody trying to call his bluff after seeing the cards. The guy beat up on everybody in the tourney and people are trying to put him down. Who cares about his backing, personal dealings and so on?

Either way, the guy's likely gonna play on made for TV tournament events for the rest of his career if he so chooses.

[Michael Cash]

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: DrunkenGoon

Who gives a crap? Everybody trying to call his bluff after seeing the cards. The guy beat up on everybody in the tourney and people are trying to put him down. Who cares about his backing, personal dealings and so on?



Either way, the guy's likely gonna play on made for TV tournament events for the rest of his career if he so chooses.</end quote></div>

No shit. The last thing this guy needs to worry about is money. The appearance fees and endorsements will more then make up for any promises he made unless he promised to give away the whole thing. This guy is going to have nothing but cash being thrown at him this next year. Look at moneymakers goofy ass, he has probably quadrupled his wsop earnings.

MC

[blogguy]

Hate to disagree here...

Clearly, the publications listed above are entertainment publications who are exposing the countless lies a guy from the entertainment industry was telling about the entertainers he represented.

This isn't a case of "everybody trying to call his bluff" after he won. No poker publications are bashing his poker play. No sports publications are saying he lucked his way to the championship. Entertainment industry publications are exposing the lies he was telling about his place in that industry.

And, the track record for people who behave like this is not very good over their lifetimes. They often self-destruct...or anger people who speed along the process for them. The fact that this guy has told SO MANY easily traceable lies...and is trying as hard as he can to stay out of the limelight after winning suggests that the attention is going to backfire somehow...meaning people he didn't want to find him are going to find him.

This isn't a Moneymaker situation...where an "every man" accountant from rural America hit the jackpot in a sport that people hadn't been paying attention to. Being the fourth straight relative no-name to hit a jackpot isn't the same as being the first...and it's not like Moneymaker was exposed as not being an accountant, Raymer was exposed as not being a fossil collector, or Hachem was exposed as not being Australian.

If Gold burned bridges in the entertainment industry...and TV poker events are produced by the entertainment industry...it's not a sure thing he's going to be appearing. The fact that he was trying to downplay the hubbub about winning...and the fact that he's kind of gone into hiding since and not even collected his winnings suggests that the last thing he wants right now is a high profile.

Some of the college coaches who lied on their resume's have been able to come back and get jobs elsewhere. So, if Gold is only guilty of fudging his resume, he could pursue the path you guys outlined. If he's lied to the wrong people, it's less likely he's going to be the poster boy of poker for the next year.

I'm guessing we've all met people like this in our lifetimes. Coming into money didn't fix their problems. It often ignited new ones...

[alysheba88]

Agee 100% blogguy. Sad that the standards are so low that we are supposed to just ignore that kind of behavior. Guy could also end up with serious IRS problems if he is not careful.