On May 17, 2004, I became aware of a site called neverwinpoker.com.

It was a fan site for Dustin "neverwin" Woolf, a spewy semidonk from 2003 who suddenly was crushing the Pokerstars games in 2004.

neverwin was on the way to winning $1,000,000 at the $100/$200 limit holdem game that year -- an astounding feat, especially given the tough competition. Much of this was heads up, where his smart aggressive style took players by surprise.

Dustin befriended another young guy he had met at Harrah's Chicago, a former Indiana University student named Bryan Micon, who was unknown in the poker community, and had previously been trying to make a name for himself running various gimmicky websites.

Micon had the idea to create a fan site for Dustin, given the amazing Pokerstars run which was starting to attract a lot of attention.

But was there really a market for an entire site and forum based around a Johnny-come-lately online poker pro? The answer was no. neverwinpoker.com was definitely headed for obscurity, and was likely to fall by the wayside quickly, as many other fleeting poker forums at the time did.

However, being a rival of neverwin's on Pokerstars, I decided to show up and make the following troll post:

Subject: Save neverwin's Mercedes!
Date: May 17, 2004, 5:01am



neverwin has purchased an expensive new Mercedes with some of the poker winnings that he luckily stumbled into on Pokerstars this spring.

However, instead of smartly making an all-cash purchase, he financed half of the car at the usurious interest rate of 9%!!!

Given the likelihood that neverwin will either tilt off the rest of his winnings (or challenge players heads up who are too tough for him at high limit games), I don't have a good feeling about the future of his vehicle.

Please join me in convincing neverwin to pay off his car outright, so he'll at least have a nice car to pretend he's rich in, after the inevitable bust-out.

Thank you for your time and support.

Dan Druff
https://web.archive.org/web/20040907...=viewtopic&t=1



This post was based upon neverwin bragging in the Pokerstars chat that he had just bought a Mercedes with some of his winnings, but had financed half of it at 9% -- then a fairly bad interest rate for auto financing.

I started taunting him that he should have bought the whole thing in cash, because it was going to be repossessed soon after I busted him. (He ended up proving me wrong on that one!)

Very shortly thereafter, I became aware of the new forum, and made the above post -- 20 years ago today.


The post was a big hit. First off, people were enjoying seeing a Dan Druff / neverwin rivalry start to play out there. Second, it reshaped the tone of the forum. This and other posts of mine transformed neverwinpoker from a Dustin Woolf fan site to a free speech haven -- kind of the anti-2+2, which was heavily censored at the time. And it took off from there.

Had I never made this post, it's highly likely neverwinpoker would have died before it really got going. There wouldn't have been a Donkdown or Poker Fraud Alert. Most of you would have never known each other. My entire trajectory in the poker community would have been vastly different -- perhaps better in some ways, and definitely worse in others.

It's funny how an inconsequential troll post 20 years ago could have had such an impact on my own future.