High-Stakes Sports Collection

A story about how Bob Voulgaris handled collecting gambling debts, particularly with a famous poker player.

"I had a famous poker player, Eric Lindgren, who was a really good dude but definitely a degenerate and he owed me money. The way to get paid is to be the most annoying person in that person's life. If he won a tournament, I would get on a plane and just be there when they paid him.

At the time, he owned a piece of Full Tilt Poker, so they had all this imaginary money that they thought would make them rich. I didn't really worry about getting paid because he thought eventually they'd get paid by Full Tilt Poker. But then Full Tilt Poker got shut down.

People would go out of their way to guarantee me payment, not because they were afraid of me - I've never done anything to get money other than be annoying. But if you knew I was always going to win, and if you didn't pay me you knew you weren't going to get my bets anymore, you might go out of pocket to make sure your relationship with me was good. Smart people would realize 'Why would I stiff Bob? Bob is going to win, we're going to win it back next year, I'll go out of pocket, we'll figure out a solution.' That's generally what happened with me."