Chino Reem Wins Epic - Will He Settle His Debts?

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On the fourth day of the $20,000 buy-in Epic Poker League organized by Federal Sports & Gaming, play got down to the final table. Hasan Habib started as chipleader. 
 
Seat 1: Hasan Habib - 1,655,000
Seat 2: Erik Seidel - 1,109,000
Seat 3: Chino Rheem - 1,432,000
Seat 4: Gavin Smith - 766,000
Seat 5: Jason Mercier - 1,495,000
Seat 6: Huck Seed - 396,000
 

 

Huck Seed was the first to leave the final table after going all-in with JJ and getting called by Mercier, holding AK. A King came on the flop and this meant the end of the competition for Seed. Next to leave was Gavin Smith, who also had to face Mercier when going all-in. Gavin was holding 99, which was not enough against Mercier's QQ, especially after another Queen appeared on the flop. 
 
Soon enough, Hasan Habib was forced to leave as well, when he went all-in on Chino Rheem's 70,000 raise. Hasan showed JJ, while Rheem had Aces and neutral cards came on the board. 
 
When 3.handed play started, Mercier fellback on chips, and heads-up developed when he shoved all-in from the small blind with 89o. Seidel, the big blind called with KJs and his hand lasted, which meant the end of the tourney and the third place for Jason. 
 
In the heads-up, standings turned around a few times, until Rheem went all-in on Seidel's raise and got called. 
 
Rheem: {#}A {#}K  
Seidel: {#}A {#}Q  
Board: {#}A {#}8 {#}4 {#}3 {#}T
 
Rheem won the tourney with the nut flush.
 
Chino Rheem
 
Chino Rheem has thus won a million dollars. This raises a few questions concerning Chino Rheem: will he pay back all the people he owes? Apparently, Las Vegas is packed with poker players wanting their money back from Chino. Currently, poker forums are swarming with players sharing stories about how Rheem asked for a loan and never paid it back. It seems that everybody in Vegas knows how Chino handles other people's money, and a lot of them are getting more and more impatient to get their loans back.
 
Rheem is said to owe Tom 'durrrr' Dwan, Will Molson and many-many other online and live pros. The tactics he uses to get money from people can not at all be called ethical. Although Rheem's live career earnings exceed $5 million, he seems to have huge trouble paying debts back.
 
The post below can serve as an example; it was shared PCA High Roller winner Will 'molswi47' Molson on twoplustwo.
 
Will Molson
 
'Hello all, 
Firstly, let me introduce myself since I rarely post on here. My name is Will Molson and my pokerstars alias is molswi47. It is unfortunate that I have to write my first long post on 2+2 with this warning to everyone. I feel bad that I delayed sharing this story for so long and missed an opportunity to warn others after recently seeing Ben Lamb's and others get screwed over by Chino. I am going to try and make this short and to the point. The incident occurred last year at ept london. 

My friend brought chino into our room to hang out and play some online. This was the first time I met him but obviously knew about him from all his tv appearances and from seeing him playing all the big tournaments. It was towards the end of the trip and there was only the turbo high roller left on the schedule. He claimed that he needed stars money so he can directly buy in to the event and would swap ftp money in return. He also says that his boy Michael Mizrachi needs the same hook up and tells me, after calling him, that I will be getting a xfer from the grinder on ftp for the both of them. 

This is after him shipping the players championship and final tabling the main, so I obviously thought that there would be nothing fishy about this transaction. I agree to this and ship 20k to him and 20k to grinder so that they can buy in in the morning. Xfer doesn't go through because it was the first time I would be xfering to their accounts and stars support was busy. Tournament is about to start so I have to go the stars desk and ask them if they can manually allow the xfer to go through. They get the money - everything is all good. I bust and later that day I see stars shipped 40k to both of them instead of 20k each. They made a new 20k xfer and after that was processed the other xfer was then able to then go through they tell me. 

I'm then make a big scene at the desk but they say they can't do anything. I get on my flight back to Canada later on that day and get home to see that Chino has come 3rd in the event for 150k. I text both of them to see if they got double the planned amount and both of them confirm this with me. So I think all is good lol - but nah. Grinder ships me back the 40k and says I never agreed to vouch or send for Chino. Chino then becomes very hard to get a hold of and is making all these excuses as to why he hasn't shipped on tilt yet. After weeks and weeks of trying to get my money I finally get a text from his saying I'm broke and I can't get you the money... lol wtf? Dude, you cashed in the event I got you into for 150k and you don't have the courtesy to ship back asap? 

Grinder texts me and says he can't do anything and that he's gotten Chino out of these holes in the past but is done with it now. Chino still "owes" me 40k almost a year later. I put that into parentheses because he flat out stole from me and it's at the point where I don't expect to see my money back. He flat out stole from me and had no intention of swapping ftp money with me. I waited awhile to out this mainly because I thought there would be a better chance seeing the money if I kept it low key for awhile and gave him time. Glad I got this off my chest - off to play day one of epic poker league now. I will defs be letting Chino know, if I see him (he qualified for event), that his already battered rep in the poker world just got a whole lot worse. **** been hitting the fan past few days in the poker world. Hopefully this isn't overshadowed by the other scandals and this story gets the proper exposure it should'- says Molson. 
 
After this post, comments started flowing in from other 'victims' of Chino and it soon turned out that many other are struggling with the same problems as Molson. One of these was 2010 November Nine Joseph 'subiime' Cheong. 
 
'First of all, he's a very charming, nice guy. Second of all if he ever won the lottery for $10mil, I guarantee he will pay everyone back (as long as you see him before he sees the pits). I also don't want anyone else getting scammed so I'll say this: he has also scammed me for $40k and I know others in the same spot. The poker world is full of borrowing and lending money, so when a well-known player comes to you with believable collateral, it's hard not to lend money. For me, the collateral he offered was that he had a piece of the Grinder at the WSOP Main Event last summer. The Grinder confirmed this for me. But clearly it was offered to multiple people and I never saw a dime back'- said Cheong. 
 
Another memorable event connected to the Chino-scandal was the one that happened at the Aria a few weeks ago, when a player started shouting with Rheem and it got videotaped by a spectator (you can hear the sentence: 'You owe whole f*cking Las Vegas, b*tch!')
 
 
Rheem has never really had a good reputation as a poker player; he has already spent time in prison for stealing and possession of drugs. He received bigger media attention at the 2008 WSOP ME when he made it to the final table.
 
Back then, WSOP organizers declared that they had not been familiar with Rheem's past, and it looked possible that he would not be allowed to play the final table (he had a warrant of arrest at the time). After all, he did take part in the final table competition and made the 7th place for $1,772,650. 
 
As any news surfaces, I will inform you what he did with his million this time! Do you guys think he will finally take a pull and pay back his debts?