Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Okay, I think you understood it a little better than I did.
But I thought that the story seemed to imply that Haralabob only owned a small part of WS, therefore making Erick's debt possibly worth more than his part in the company?
That's what I don't get.
Maybe he owned a big piece of WS and was playing it down.
What seems hard to believe is that a small operation that took max bets of $1000 would be so valuable that HV would assume millions of debt and that it would still be a profitable decision for him personally. Even if he owned a huge piece.
My guess is he put the chance of a Lindgren default at like 10% given how well FT was doing, and with that probability, it was a profitable scenario. As a poker player he also probably valued the friendship of an owner of one of the world's largest sites.
That had a lot of intrinsic value in that time period. He underestimated how sick and immoral Lindgren was in matters of paying back debts and got burned for it. I just don't think it likely that he snagged like $10 million in profit for a small recreational player book where eating $2+ million wasn't a deal breaker. That just seems unlikely. So I agree with you Druff that the story is more complex than HV's version. I'm sure he liked Erick, and thought him likely good for the money, but I don't think he went to all this trouble setting it up for entirely altruistic reasons. I think he knows relationships with important people have significant value, Hv is a very smart guy, but he didn't foresee how low his character was, and how in time Lindgren wouldn't be an important person worth knowing.
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