Jose 'Girah' Macedo Analysed By Mental Health Counselor Jared Tendler
Why did Girah scam people? Why did he lie to them? What was he thinking? Here are answers to those questions from a mental health counselor's point of view.
The following article was written by Jared Tendler who has a master’s degree in counseling psychology, is a licensed mental health counselor, and works as a mental game coach for poker players. Jared already wrote an article in two parts for PokerStrategy.com.
Why do people cheat or steal? Money, fame, ego, entitlement, desperation? Ironically, some of the same traits that lead people to be highly successful in any walk of life are the same ones that can lead someone to cheat. Journalist Jon Ronson recently highlighted this in his book, The Psychopath Test, a survey that found 4% of CEO’s have strong psychopathic tendencies – compared with 1% for the general population. Four times more likely!
In their assent to the top, CEOs used traits that it could be argued Girah used when he scammed several high stakes players: Cunning charm, pathological lying, callousness towards others, manipulation, superiority complex, among other traits common of socio- or psychopaths. They’re generally very bright and use their intelligence to outwit people considered beneath them and 'deserved to be scammed' because of that fact.
The sport of cheating
Cheating is an inevitable part of sports, whether it is steroids, points shaving, taking dives, faking disabilities, bribing officials, or attacking figure skaters. Most sports cheaters wouldn’t actually be considered criminals for their on the field actions, but if you think about the money stolen though contracts, endorsement deals, and missed opportunities for their opponents, they should be considered that way.
Girah is a cheater of a different sort. He didn’t just cheat; he scammed, defrauded, or stole (depending on which verb you prefer) money from players he conspired against. He used his stature in the poker community and a manufactured persona as a down-to-earth "prodigy" to develop trusting relationships with his victims. It was this relationship, that he tried desperately to leverage (see the chat logs) as the scam started to break down, by astute people who trusted their guts enough to figure out whether it was true or not.
Looking closer at his only statement, along with the chat logs that were posted, is evidence of a person so arrogant, conceited, or full of himself, he believed his confession would satisfy a poker community already fed up with this kind of bullshit.
Dissecting the statements
When looking at it closely, remember this fact: Under emotional stress people revert back to a more instinctive, basic skill set – you see what they really are like. They aren’t thinking clearly because they can’t access higher brain functions that would allow them to make better informed decisions or statements.
These are the parts of his confession which stand out to me, as fitting this category the most:
1) He tried to play the youth card, saying he was young, did something stupid, and wondered outloud, "I hope it doesn’t define me; I hope that how I deal with this and move forward is the thing that does". Young and stupid defense doesn’t work for someone who has embraced the "prodigy" label, yet he thought it would fly? He thought people would believe that being naïve would excuse manipulating and stealing from his friends. The reason I think he made such a statement was desperation to save face, nothing more.
2) He made the cardinal sin of confession because it undermines all that follows: lying about what precipitated the confession. "It went on for a short while but I feel so bad, I had to say something. I confessed". He must have believed this were true because the people who outted him were part of the disclosure.
It makes no logical sense how someone could release a confession – that was prepared ahead of time - right after his victims made theirs, without realising he would be called out on that lie. Unless, deep down he really believes that it happened that way or he’s so tangled in a web of lying he didn’t know which way was real. Either way, this shows someone without remorse and on the short end of mental ability at the moment.
3) The last point I’ll make about his post is perhaps the most damning. Rather than having any compassion to the ordeal inflicted on his victims or their emotions, he tried to elicit sympathy from us. "I told my mum, confessed everything to her. I could see disappointment moving across her face as she told me she was not proud of me despite all my success in poker; she was not proud of her son". This sentence, and what follows, is the most descriptive and eloquent of the entire post, but I suspect that it’s an outright lie designed to try to make us feel sympathy for him.
Furthermore, "explanations don’t cut it in situations like this and often come across as excuses". If he was sincere – try. Try us. If the explanation is real and shows an understanding for the impact of his actions, we can begin to make sense of it. But, when it follows a lie and includes no mention of the plight of the people he harmed, it comes across as a last ditch effort to save face and make us feel bad for him.
While Girah can’t give an explaination for how this happened, I hope that better understanding some of the charateristics of a person like this can help you to better protect yourself from being a victim. I’m not saying this could have been prevented, but the actions taken by the players who were scammed prevent it from going deeper. Why would he do this for only 30k? Thanks to them, that’s hopefully as far as it went.
Further information about the Girah case:
