Almost feel sorry for the guy

More bitterness.

Badly programmed button /blind posting logic is a good reason to fix it, not to ban someone permanently, based on complaints of his direct competitors.

I am surprised Pokerstars said it was so hard to get the button randomised, as an IT technician I would have thought a competent programmer could knock something like that out in about half an hour.

I'm guessing they are using such an archaic system that has been patched/updated so many times its no longer easy to do anything any more, especially change something essential from the original code.

Exactly, its either a lazy-ass or a bs excuse.
If u deal blackjack with one deck and some guys start counting cards succesfully dont just ban them for beating u at ur own game. Try to add some more decks first imo.

I do think there's a lack of a sense of urgency on this. If the money was coming out their pockets instead of unsuspecting players, I have to think it would be fixed very quickly.

Absolutely. Stars can pretend that game fairness and integrity are priority #1, but the fact is they are a business and thus priority #1 is the health and profitability of that business. Everything they do ultimately comes back to that. Tpir's crusade here very likely pushed Stars to act, because the bad publicity could potentially hurt them. If Tpir had done all this quietly via email with Stars, we very likely would have seen a different resolution to this matter.

When we consider punishment for abusing button system, I think the strictest adequate form would be a temporal ban, till their buttoning logic is fixed and reprogrammed.

Its strict but at least directly related to the issue.

Permanent ban really looks out of place here, especially given world class caliber of the player.

It is the action that should determine the punishment. The quality of player is irrelevant.

And Jama's results now obviously have to be looked at differently since he was using this buttoning/table-starting strategy. He is not as good of a player as his results suggest. He's just good at exploiting angles.

You just created account cause you are afraid to say this dirty bs from your own mouth.

Not really interested in what you have to say.

they have banned many players for grimming. there's nothing unusual or extreme about his punishment.

you normally don't see "world class players" getting banned for grimming because they aren't idiotic enough to do it.

The value is in what is said, not in who says it.

Exactly. The only area in which Jama qualifies as "world class" is in being an idiot.

He clearly is a fraud when it comes to poker ability, as his results were skewed by his buttoning.

whats the different between grimming and buttoning?

And still nothing happened on the Stud tables..........

I don't quite understand.. was jama buttoning you?

Or was he sitting in on the button, then playing say a 4 orbit round then sitting out his BB...?

Honestly, playing 10% less BB's than buttons is something that should elicit a warning... but you are acting like his angle here is plain despicable...

I have tried to be reasonable throughout my career re HU play and ring tables, but I think banning him is unfair and draconian. Make no mistake, this is a minor angle, that isn't even expressly prohibited by the T&C. Wrong sure, temp ban him or dock him $ for the angle, but worth a permaban absolutely not...

Fwiw, I dont know or really have a significant play history w/ piranha or jama I just feel that banning jama's account for something allowed under the rules of pokerstars software is unfair. Fwiw, you can play a free orbit at a casino then sit out 3 or 4 BB's later and no one bitches...

Now I realize I don't even know the answer to my question...If he were consistently buttoning you of course, I'd eat my words. Doesn't sound like the case.

The fact that it's not in the T&C is why Stars gave Jama several warnings that his behavior was unacceptable. Had they done this without warning, I'd think it was terribly unfair. But he knew what he was doing (and I do not fault him one bit for doing it, after all the software did not prohibit it and Jama is there to make money, not friends) and was told to knock it off. He didn't, and as a result the hammer came down. I feel no sympathy for him whatsoever. My heart pumps piss.

What Jama was doing isn't a minor angle. The advantage he gained from this exploitation is very significant.

Jama was breaking the rules. Just because the software didn't enforce the rules doesn't mean he was playing within pokerstars T&Cs. We can debate the issues with having to manually enforce/police certain rules, but the fact is Jama was breaking PS T&Cs and was strictly warned about it prior to his ban.

JFC, if Stars' software is so badly broken that this is an easy exploit, making the exploit "against the rules" is just a band-aid. They should fix the damn software. The exploit is a big-league security flaw, and should be treated as such.

what you seem to fail to understand is that he, according to the informers in this thread, made a system out of it. it wasn't accidental and it wasn't just a few times.

try repeating this over and over at a casino and see what happens to you.

On a personal level, I really try and respect button/blind rules at this point in my career. The fairness of these games has made many of us rich. So seeing him continue to do it after being warned is just idiotic. So on some level his perma makes sense to me.

But on another level, I think justice has really really not been served here. He exploited the smallest thing possible in poker (people sitting out before BB literally happens to me multiple times a day probably for my entire poker career). He should be punished, but a perma is way out of line and you guys need to understand the importance of a sliding scale in punishment.

Imo it's worse to severely overpunish someone than to not punish them at all. An appropriate punishment is the prefered option of course.

Also just something about the rivarly between piranha and jama in these threads doesn't sit right with me. These guys are clearly in a heated, direct, professional competition and I think that has clearly influenced this more than a general desire for online poker to be "fair"

my .02

The fact is that this is a business; it's ultimately about making money. People can talk about ethics and fairness all they want, but ultimately it is all about the bottom line. Jama knows this, and thus he exploited a loophole that allowed him to make more money. Tpir is one of Jama's direct competitors. Any money that Jama pulls out of the games via this loophole is money that Tpir can't earn. Understandably, Tpir has issue with this and wants it stopped. I find no fault with Tpir for wanting Jama stopped, just as I find no fault in Jama exploiting a weakness in the Stars software. Jama was a fool for pushing the envelope after he was repeatedly warned. Basically, Tpir outplayed Jama and now Jama is crying about it.

This is exactly what I mean. Something about this fight being between angry, direct competitors and being about a borderline standard angle most players have done at least once just doesn't sit right with me. It seems like what happened is that he pestered a semi-ignorant Stars security department enough that they did something extreme with jamas account. TONS of players do this...

Have you never sat out before your BB? Because if you have, I propose that this is a sliding scale issue, and

a) It should be fixed by Stars, the players are there trying to win by any means as it's a casino. Obviously incorporate fairness into the software.

b) People shouldn't be perma'd in spots like this, there needs to be a gray area until it's fixed server side.

But as I said on a personal note, I have tried to be as good about blinds as I feel is reasonable so if I have to be honest w/ myself his repeat behavior offends me. Not gonna waste much more time thinking about it or arguing just feel it is a mistake, this isn't true justice for something like this and the decision seems to be based on all the wrong things.

A couple things I want to make clear since I think a lot of people are misunderstanding:

I did not pester Stars security department or any other department at Stars. I sent one email regarding Jama to Poker Stars support and that was it.

I also started this thread and pasted the link into Baard's Skype and asked him to take a look at it. Baard replied that he'd take a look. Maybe two weeks after my initial Skype to Baard, I hadn't heard anything, so I Skyped him again and asked if someone was looking at it. He said yes and that was the entire extent of our conversation about Jama Dhama.

I never had any other conversations about Jama with anyone at Stars via email, Skype, or any other communication method.

I also want to be clear that I don't have any more power or pull than sny other mid/high stakes player at Poker Stars and in some cases less. I have Baard's Skype as several other high stakes player do because of the sit out problem last year, it's a quick way to report people assuming he's on. I don't have any special contacts besides that. When there is an issue at the tables I send an email either to support or highstakes depending on the problem like everyone else and wait for my response like everyone else.

The other thing I want to clarify and I feel like I'm repeating this over and over:

What Jama was doing wasn't small angle. He was profiting tens of thousands of dollars by abusing the system and that money was coming directly out the regular's pockets. There isn't a single player that comes or has come close in terms of exploiting this angle. It wasn't just my money, it was everyone's money. Maybe it effected me the most because I'm one of the highest volume players on Stars but I still likely accounted for less than 5% of Jama's stolen money.

Do people choose the seat with the button now whenever they start a table? Of course, nearly everyone does including myself. But the difference is that they aren't doing it with the intention of playing two orbits and then starting a new table as Jama was doing at every limit from 10/20 to 500/1000 for months if not years (I don't know when he started). It can not be overemphasized how big of an edge this is to play two orbits starting with the button and leave. It makes you a ~4 BB/100 winner right off the bat without doing anything else (read the first post of this thread).