Quote:
Originally Posted by Losing all
Never in a million years could I have imagined this would blow up like this, even when it was blowing up within the industry yesterday. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if this is covered (poorly) by every 6pm cable and network national show.
Even when I went to bed a few hours ago I thought this would blow over soon enough, now I'm not so sure, leaning to this really ****ing everything up beyond repair.
I actually feel a little ashamed because I was (as you pointed out) repeating debunked conspiracy theories.
But it sort of proves the point here that these sites just seem to be inviting scrutiny. I think the problem is in a few obvious areas:
1) the marketing is way too ubiquitous and screams "fast money scam" -- they could have marketed it differently to avoid suspicion and appear more reputable, rather than screaming "click a few players, win tens of thousands, JUST THAT EASY!"
2) the sites rules and policies seem way too deferential to high volume sharks. It's way worse than online poker in terms of a huge, fast money funnel from amateurs to shark players. When a recreational player enters a $2 10 person 50/50 and see 5 dudes who enter 103953593 tournaments a day, the notion the deck is super stacked against you is not hard to come to. Sites seem anywhere from happily willing if not outright complicit to allow this to continue
3) common sense transparency and professionalism seems to be lacking with the operators. Like anything, that you discover Ethan Haskell is privy to ownership information and crushing it on FD, or Mike from FD is crushing it on DK -- most normal professionals in reputable industries and businesses would strive hard to not let their employees get caught looking like scamsters. That DFS management was blind to this, or didn't care, or endorsed it seems like a pretty obvious failing. Even if only in retrospect. As I said, I don't think what these guys did is cheating but to the public, the perception that it is is obvious, and most professional companies with normal standards wouldn't have ever allowed their high-level employees handling sensitive data to play anywhere else.
Someone will come along and say PokerStars employees can play on PartyPoker but it's not nearly the same thing.
Anyway, given that these guys can't get the absolute basics right, you're left to conclude that the marketing + policies + recent events suggests it's just a big cluster of insiders, operators, and high-volume sharks merging into some blurry incestuous mess and public isn't going to grant these people the benefit of the doubt.