I'm not on his FB and have heard zero about this, but I had a feeling I knew who Joey was talking about! ha ha.
Without clicking on the YouTube for more information, and only going by what was said in this thread, which was basically cheap sets of 100 turned into crazy money amounts, upwards of 50k.
My opinion is this: John pays 1000, and they call it even. When things escalate to super high amounts, its never real. Both players at that point know its all BS. What did the other guy have in his pocket? 500 maybe?
I'd wager a good amount of us lifetime junkies have had this happen to us. I had it happen when I was 19 or so. The main gambling game at our room was 2,5,10,15, and we normally played it at $5 per weigh. One guy who was always in the game and I knew had some money in general, wanted to play heads up with me for 20 per weigh. I got him down a bit, and we raised the bet every few games. I ended up ahead $8,000. Afterwards he says to me: "You know you are not getting all that, right?" I say: "Of course I know. How about we settle for 1000?" (which he had beat me for and I paid him about a month prior). He agreed. I never saw a dime, and I never saw him again.
Years later his younger brother started playing pool, and told me the older brother never showed his face again and never played pool again because he was embarrassed about the whole thing.