Online Poker Player Threatens Massacre After $30,000 Losses

Factors not conducive for a happy poker playing experience include playing beyond your monetary means, competing against skilled players out of your league and having a tendency to go on tilt when things don’t end up going your way.
However, these self-evident poker truths were obviously lost on one UK online poker player who ended up losing almost £19,000  ($30,000) at an unnamed online site before going berserk.
Michael Gallagher, 35, from Redcar, East Cleveland lost the money between June 2010 and May 2011 before he finally flipped and on May 25th sent a email to the company’s head office on the Isle of Man threatening bloody carnage.
In his email, Gallagher apparently said he would pay a visit to the office with a sawn-off shotgun and shoot as many people as he could, unless the company payed him £30,000 ($50,000) to clear his losses.
The next day, however, Michael Gallagher, then sent a follow-up email to the company, but this time explaining that he had been drunk at the time of writing the email and saying that he was sorry for his behaviour.
Nevertheless, the poker company was still not convinced and after they called in the police Gallagher was arrested and charged with blackmail. Before his trial was about to begin, Gallagher then followed the advice of his lawyer, Rachel Dyson, and pleaded guilty to “the offense of electronic communication conveying a threat,” but must now wait until next month before he learns his fate.
Despite his lawyers plea for an early sentence to spare her client further anxiety, Judge George Moorhouse at Teesside Crown Court said he wanted more time before considering what sentence to impose and commented:
“I think a report is required because of the very nature of the threat.”
Meanwhile, currently out on bail Michael Gallagher will be sweating his fate while contemplating some of the main ‘Do’s and Don’t’s of Gambling,’ In other words, don’t gamble with money you can’t afford to lose, don’t drink and gamble and don’t gamble when you are angry or in an intense emotional state.