Britney is one of Hustler Casino Live’s favorite regulars. She’s played almost 1,000 hours since her debut on the show in 2023, she’s one of its most consistent faces, and she always gives heaps of action in a poker arena that desperately needs it. She’s gone all-in blind countless times and seems jovial at the table regardless of the result.
So the poker community was a bit stunned when occasional HCL player C Ye posted an 11-minute YouTube video last Sunday saying Britney owed her $18,000. Britney would be last on my list for someone not paying a bill of that size.
That was just the start. What followed was an insight into how murky and confusing high stakes poker really is.
Britney had been backing C Ye for three months and had made $140,000 doing it. So whatever the reason the money never arrived, it plainly wasn’t that she couldn’t afford it. She’s backed plenty of young players breaking into the scene, and there’s nothing unusual in that. Staking is everywhere in poker and it runs entirely on trust. The moment that goes, somebody is getting freerolled.
C Ye’s account is that she lost $60,000 in a game, that Britney’s 30% share of the loss came to $18,000, and that it never arrived. She says the reason was personal. She’d called Britney a fish at the table in front of everyone, and had separately passed on information about Britney’s private life that wasn’t hers to share. She apologized for both in the video. She also argued she couldn’t have misreported anything to Britney, because their games were either streamed or played with Britney sitting right there.
Britney’s written response starts somewhere else entirely. A private game at the Venetian on June 7, with no cameras in the room.
Plenty of action, plenty of wine, and by her account around $80,000 in chips unaccounted for when the game broke up. Everyone had lost except C Ye, who reported winning $190,000. Days later, Britney says, a sober player who’d spent the night matching the biggest stack told her the real number looked closer to $280,000.
Later that month she had someone ask Venetian security to review the tapes. She says the floor confirmed C Ye had well over $200,000 in chips, but that staff then spent half an hour warning her about the repercussions of digging any further, so she dropped it. No footage was ever released. Britney says she didn’t want to wreck C Ye’s reputation if they turned out to be wrong.
The Venetian game, of course, wasn’t streamed.
This is all another headache for HCL’s Ryan Feldman, because C Ye also revealed she was selling around 80% of her action across ten separate backers. HCL’s own player contract reportedly bans buying a piece of somebody sitting at the same table, which C Ye says she didn’t know about until long after the deal began.
Then it gets weird. On June 12, with the friendship already falling apart, C Ye sent Britney a handwritten apology letter and flowers. She thanked her, called her a sister, and asked her to increase her stake from 30% to 45%.
I’ve seen debts that size and bigger in my time in poker. I’ve never once seen anyone send flowers to the person who allegedly owes.
Britney says she offered to pay the $18,000 twice. C Ye turned it down both times, and on July 1 told her to spend it on a handbag instead. On July 12, C Ye asked for it back.
Two well-known pros did try to sort it out. C Ye says Dan “Jungleman” Cates and Charlie Carrel both stepped in to mediate, with Cates texting Britney on her behalf. Carrel is reported to have posted a video about the dispute and then deleted it.
The circles at the top of this game are small and weird. Fail to navigate them and you’ll find yourself on the outside very quickly, wishing you’d played it differently.
