Many of you weren't around in the original neverwinpoker days, which lasted for approximately five years, from 2004-2009. That site was a forerunner to this one. While I didn't start it, I was instrumental in building it up.

For those of you who weren't on that forum, or those simply looking to live in the past, here are five dumb and/or weird things that happened on the forum during those years. I may post more later on, as well. Feel free to add your own!

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1) 2008: Brandi Hawbaker exposes David Sklansky's perverted e-mails, and he eventually threatens to "hire gorgeous male models" to seduce my girlfriend.

Brandi Hawbaker was a beautiful but troubled young woman who burst onto the poker scene in 2006. She had a tumultuous, on-and-off relationship with our own Brandon "Drexel" Gerson. However, she also caught the eye of one David Sklansky, who developed a friendship with her. While Brandi never had any kind of sexual relationship with David, he very much coveted her, and repeatedly propositioned her. Brandi became fed up with David's behavior in early 2008, when she asked him for a stake on Full Tilt, and he responded by demanding a picture of her wearing red panties with her pubic hair "peeking" out of the sides. Brandi actually obliged, but then David refused to send the stake, demanding additional terms. Furious, Brandi went to Micon, sent him the e-mail exchange they had, and gave him permission to post them.

This instantly became a huge story. Oddly, when David found out about this, he continued to e-mail Brandi about personal matters, even fully knowing she was sending each and every one of them to Micon. Was this some weird form of exhibitionism? Who knows?

David then realized that Brandi was likely to soon reveal that he was keeping a much younger, semi-retarded girl in his house, and having a sexual relationship with her. This girl was a legal adult, but was about 35 years his junior, and her diminished mental capacity (due to brother-and-sister parents) made him look like an exploitative predator. Knowing this was on the verge of coming out, David got ahead of the story by posting a long, rambling essay about the situation on 2+2, complete with really creepy-looking pictures of the girl posing with large dolls. David also admitted that he tried to arrange a threesome between him, the girl, and Brandi.



This backfired, and 2+2 exploded with sharp condemnation for the previously-well-regarded Sklansky. Furious at Micon for his hand in exposing the entire situation, David wrote threatening e-mails to both of us, even though I had little to do with the whole thing. In one of the e-mails, Sklansky said that he would "hire gorgeous actors and male models" to seduce our wives and girlfriends, as part of his plan of revenge against us.

Sadly he never carried through on the threat. We were, however, banned from 2+2 by Mason Malmuth over this situation, simply because David ended up looking really bad.

Tragically, Brandi killed herself in April 2008, just weeks after Sklansky e-mailed her that she'd be better off dead.





2) 2007: neverheeb appears in gay masturbation video as "Landon Mark"

neverheeb was a really weird young poster who appeared at the very beginning of neverwinpoker. Turned out he had some degree of mental illness, as well as a recurring drug problem. Despite this, we generally liked neverheeb, as he seemed to have a good heart and was kind of a "lovable loser" type. I always hoped that neverheeb would somehow, someday turn it around, though it still hasn't really happened to this day.

One of neverheeb's low points was his appearance in a gay masturbation video when he was desperate for drug money. Named "Landon Mark", neverheeb appeared solo on camera, completely naked, and jerked off. I couldn't bring myself to watch it, but others did.

How did we find out about Landon Mark? neverheeb actually told the story publicly, in a moment of odd full disclosure.

Still want to see it? Okay, gayboy, click here.



neverheeb did other really strange things, including "stealing hella grapes", where he drove around nearby cities and stole massive amounts of grapes off vines, hoping to sell them. He bragged about this on radio.




3) 2007: Guy asks for help to clean up beaten-up old picture of his father in service uniform, gets more than he bargained for.

A new user showed up on the site with a request. He had an old picture of his father from a long time ago, wearing a military uniform. I forget if his father was dead, or just old, but he wanted the picture cleaned up in photoshop to look pristine. He posted a heartwarming story about his father's service in the military, and how much this would mean to him.

Initially the guy was trolled for making such a request out of nowhere, but finally a user volunteered to help. The poster patiently waited a day or two for the photoshop cleanup job to continue, and the job was finally completed and posted...

... with photoshopped dicks all over the picture, including in his dad's mouth!

This sounds sad, and it kind of was, but it was also hilarious. The entire forum got a huge laugh about this, as the original poster tried to keep his cool, but just couldn't.

Finally, FckVwls (now Vwls on PFA) took pity on him, and actually cleaned up the picture as he had originally requested. She did a great job, and an old, dirty, wrinkled picture now looked like it was new.

Happy ending?

Not quite. Many years later, user "phantom" took credit for the whole thing, claiming that he was the one behind the account the whole time.






4) 2005: hels purposely runs his car head-on into a big truck, and somehow survives.

hels007 was a rather nondescript user from Ontario, Canada. However, one day he nonchalantly posted a story of an experience he had just been through, complete with pictures.

hels claimed that he decided while driving that life wasn't worth living, and wanted to end it all.

He saw an oncoming truck, and decided on a whim to simply slam his small vehicle head-on into the truck, figuring it would do the job.

Indeed, the car was instantly totaled, but somehow hels survived, albeit with a lot of injuries. hels posted some pictures of his vehicle.



* This isn't a picture of hels' accident, but it was adopted as one, since we didn't have a picture of the truck hitting the vehicle.

Amazingly, he was looking for sympathy, despite the fact that he endangered the life of an innocent truck driver with his selfish actions. What followed was a cringeworthy thread where all of the users tore into hels, and he just wasn't understanding why no one was feeling bad for him.

hels later told another odd story, this time about a cab driver who reached for his penis during the ride, and hels admitted that he didn't do much to stop it.

hels eventually left NWP for spinoff site boris78, in 2009.

The suicide story was never confirmed, but most believe it happened. A new term "hels yourself" was born, and was code for "Go kill yourself!"



5) 2007: User advertises on NWP, then gets his business idea stolen.

In a fairly egregious case of biting the hand that feeds you, an advertiser on the site got screwed over pretty badly.

HostileRaise, a user on NWP, came up with what seemed like a smart business idea. Shortly after Neteller went down in early 2007, HostileRaise founded a site called loadchips.com. The concept was simple. You would buy gift cards at the store, then sell them to loadchips.com, which would then transfer chips to you on sites such as Pokerstars, Full Tilt, and others. This was kind of a risky business model, as it was highly illegal, but did have the potential to be lucrative, given the dearth of deposit methods at the time.

HostileRaise wanted to advertise on NWP, so he bought an ad for the top of neverwinpoker.

Micon thought this was a great business idea, so he started a nearly-identical site called pokerdeposits.com, and then promoted it on NWP as direct competition to HostileRaise's loadchips.com.



HostileRaise was justifiably angry, and this kicked off a whole shitstorm of criticism directed at Micon, who denied he was doing anything wrong. I was not very active on NWP during this time (I forget why -- perhaps traveling), so I never ended up getting involved in the fray.

Micon eventually took down pokerdeposits.com, due to the fact that it never caught on and made very little money. He kept the domain for years, and eventually forwarded it to his Seals bitcoin poker site in 2012.