Hi,
DooshCom here..
Great - So what delights do I have to deal with today? A ridiculous 2+2 thread that’s somehow managed to get posted all over the pokerworld, and it’s probably followed by comments of people who will just believe whatever you tell me that sounds interested. I mean, conspiracy theories are always fun.... Who would actually want to logically think things through and make a rational decision, when it’s so much more fun to just jump on the bandwagon and go along with the great conspiracy..
Okay firstly, the affiliate/coaching/ipoker/poker strategy/trying to squeeze every last buck comments are all stupid beyond belief. We can discuss all that in another thread if you really insist, this post is unfortunately going to be long enough since I’ve gone into great detail about every single piece of ‘evidence’ that you’ve given. I won't waste any more time addressing it in this one since I'm sure you'd prefer I spend my time addressing the main topic here - "The great DooshCom & Benkaremail conspiracy/scam".
I apologize for the length of this thread in advance. Believe me, I wish I didn't have to spend all this time writing it, but since I do I've given it a lot of thought and tried to go through everything in as much detail as I can. I also apologize for not been fluent with certain public tools. IE: Displaying hands using weaktight.com. I am not used to having to share hands etc in a pubic way.
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Responses to your thread in order:
The Benkar conversation: Only one thing to say; What an amazingly guilt ridden conversation. I must be guilty as charged, probably no reason to even read on as that was damning enough evidence on its own. Wtf? How is that conversation evidence of anything?
The 9 3 offsuit hand: For whatever reason I had at the time, I obviously hoped/expected him to fold. Maybe I'd just lost the last hand on another table? Maybe I wanted to show that I'm colluding and clearly wanted to make this as obvious as possible by giving you access to view my hands for no particular reason? Let’s face it, colluders would just fold the SB here and be done with this hand. This hand having been played in this way is not even worth mentioning, forget using as proof. I felt like shoving 9 3. Didn’t some guy do that also with 9 3 offsuit in the WSOP main event one year and got called by AA. Maybe they colluded too. Write a thread about them.. Or maybe for whatever his reasons at the time, that was the play he decided to make. No cheating involved.. Just humans being humans.
Response to the following points that you mention to be reasons why you think that I am colluding:
"QUOTE"
Why do we think they are cheating?
1.They always sit down at the same table, leaving an empty seat for a victim between them. During 07/24/2011 to 9/6/2011 dooshcom basically never missed a single session with benkaremail or liverfc123 or benhamcheese. Out of 50 their sessions we know about, he was always there except for a few very short ones.
2.Whereas dooshcom considered benkaremail a weak player, he would be taking a seat right next to him. This is what all good players (dooshcom included) are doing in normal circumstances.
3.Dooshcom didn't play PushorFold tables on a regular basis before. Moreover, during August and July of 2011 he missed a lot of good action benkaremail, liverfc123 and benhamcheese was not involved in. But he is always there when they are.
4.They are all from the same country, UK.
5.All of them play very good and understand the game as deeply as we do. Although they deviate from the good play in some spots. These situations only make sense in case of the collusion. More detailed explaination of how and why they deviate from the optimal play is rather complicated and can be found below.
6.They start 6-max tables by playing heads up. Their heads up play is absurdly bad. This is obviously performed to lure viewers to join and maybe to chipdump.
7.We are experts in the game. Our observations and discusions led to a mutual agreement on the collusion taking place. Whether any one of us was in doubt, you would never receive this email.
"QUOTE END"
1. I am usually the one sitting at the tables waiting for games/opening new tables. I don't get to choose whether the other guy sits. I've been grinding a lot this month or two, 12 hours days/6 days a week. Why would I miss sessions on tables that never fill? I bet 888 could run some stats on you + many others vs several fisher player names and find similar reports, even more so in the games that very few people play because of the high stakes/game type.
2. "Weak" players can be categorised a lot. At push/fold it makes a lot of sense to sit before a guy who you think that you have more fold equity against. Other regs were also doing the same thing at various points vs this same player, so I'm unsure why you'd think this unusual of me. Secondly, he tended to quit tables a lot and start fresh ones when the guy with position on him became deep. I intend to become deep, and since he ships a lot of buttons for upto 25bb's, it makes more sense to not have him leave the table when deep, and have him ship 25bb's+ on me with stuff like A 2, when I am the big blind. Furthermore, as already mentioned above, I was frequently the one who had opened the table. I choose a seat when opening the table and the table filled around me. There are 5 other seats at the table, what makes you think that benkaremail must choose a seat next to me? Odds dictate that he won't. Maybe he didn't want to because he wanted player x to sit after him because he thought that he could shove light on this player. Maybe he had a “favourite seat” as most of us do without even noticing it, and naturally just sit in pretty much the same spot everytime on a new table. Also, whatever silly comments you want to make about me as a player, and however bad you want to think I am, if you played the guy deepstacked (anything over 30BB's you'd instantly realise this is not me. Ask some of the fullstack nl 6max players who he donk bet into and made other ridiculous plays against with stupid hands (when hu vs them, not me). Everyone thought that full stack nl he was insanely fishy.
3. So what? I had also played around 10 live/online MTT's lifetime until about two years ago. Then all of a sudden I went to the WSOP and did around 30 live tournaments in a month + many many more since, including the big Sunday tournaments every week for around a year until FT/Stars died. The % increase was probably around 30,000%. Do you think I bribed the floor man at the WSOP to always sit me on the same table as my buddy? Maybe FT/Stars took a bribe off me to always sit me on the same table as my buddy, and to leave a space between us in these MTT's so that we could collude better.. The whole "Black Friday" thing is just their way of covering all this up.
Usually people do this [increase their activity in a various game type] without it being for colluding reasons. This is fairly normal and quite a common occurrence. My reason for the increase in activity was firstly I wanted to play more after having some great success in Vegas, and secondly, the games were running while I was sat by the computer for these long hours. It's not always easy finding high stakes games. And thirdly, I thought benkaremail was fishy. I don't think this too much anymore (at push/fold at least) but having done so much push/fold recently I started to feel more ‘in-tune’ and familiar to that game type than any other, and so I have begun to favour it at the moment. You should also know that it's not unusual to find relatively few games at high stakes running, so when one is running every high stakes pro joins and follows the fish around. That's the way it works, why you think this is different for me when it is exactly what you do, I don't know.
4. So what? Makes no difference, and if anything it would make more sense to collude with someone from a different country as it is maybe 3% less suspicious. How is this evidence?!??
5. Surprise surprise, not everyone is a fish, some people understand the game “deeply”. This is a game divided into two - you either push.. or fold (generally). It's not rocket science to understand the game. And just to confirm I don't understand it deeply, I still don't. I didn't know that I needed exactly Q 8 + to call/shove with. And now that I do, I disagree. I think these ranges are not concrete at all, and can vary a lot depending entirely on your opponent. From hand histories my play looks like the opposite of colluding could only have taken place, but like you said, we’ll discuss this in greater detail later in the post.
6. You don't need to play bad HU to lure in bumhunters. Bumhunters instantly think any new name is a fish, and after 1 session they will have already made a decision of whether this new player is a fish or not. They don't need "luring". Others will join in less than 60 seconds anyway, and half of the site will be on the waiting list. If I wanted to lure players, because somehow I thought that they needed luring, I'd have made better use of the 3 different usernames of my buddy rather than play hu badly!!!
7. I'm glad that you're all self-admitted experts and colluder detectives. For the 2nd part however I would like to suggest that you get a PHD in it as proof. Just because you think something that does not make it true, and certainly doesn't count as evidence. Hilter and five others probably all mutually agreed with each other that it would be a good idea to start a war, and we all know what happened there.
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First chart:
Worthlessly low sample of hands and proves nothing. You can't seriously use such a small sample of hands as proof. Things like this are hard enough to prove with 20k+ hands. You're providing a ridiculously small fraction of that.
Second chart: Read above.
Conclusion:
Besides the fact that these charts have too few hands to be worth any credit whatsoever (I don’t even really need to continue, the hand sample size alone is stupid enough to prove the analysis worthless), what you're basically saying is that Team Benkar/DooshCom in this hand sample call 100% (twice as often) more vs random players than each other. Do you not think this could be variance? I mean if Benkar was down 200-300k and should have been up according to your Holdem Manager EV graph.. I'm unsure exactly how to work this out as a percentage, but plucking some realistic figures from the air, let’s say Benkar should have been up 50k but instead was down 250k..You do the maths.
According to you (thrcnbeonly1) in an msn conversation last month you told me that needaaaa was 600k above ev for the recent push/fold games. Assuming all that happened at 500/1k that's 120 buyins. Yes, 120 buyins of +ev variance. That’s a pretty sick amount. Try working that into some % and tell me if it's more or less than the 100% variance that you accused me of cheating for. I'm not even sure how you'd work a % out for this, but whatever number you come up with would make my 100% look minuscule. Maybe 888 rigged the cards for him so I should post a 2+2 thread about it. Or maybe even saying that is just stupid and shouldn’t even be something that a reg should even mention as a legitimate conversation. Let me ask around and see if I can find five other self-proclaimed professionals to agree with me first before I make my decision on if to post a 2+2 thread accusing Needaaaa of cheating because of this.
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Your graph: It's pretty technical, and a little confusing. I wish you'd actually shown this information in some other way, as I'm not sure exactly what is going on here, or what/how something is being proven.
The red dot at the top is me vs liverfc123 right? I barely even recall the username. How many hands were used to establish this data? 200? Less?
The lower left hand red dot doesn't look too different from the rest, and were it a black dot, would go unnoticed.
The middle red dot looks a little further afield to the rest. I hope that many hands were used to plot this dot and that you think this red dot is absurdly far far away enough from the rest to count as solid proof. Also, who does the crazy black dot in the distant far bottom right corner represent, and did you report this person for colluding too? There are also some other black dots further afield than most (a similar distance away in fact to what my red dot is) on the bottom right. Which 'team' do these dots represent and would it look more suspicious if I redrew the graph and made those dots red and mine black?
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Your Hand histories in the order that you've listed them:
1. Open shove doesn't seem particularly unreasonable to me with the 7 5, 3 handed (not necessarily optimal play, but “impossible” would certainly not be the word I would use here, especially after witnessing other regs shoving worse hands. 4 6 offsuit as an example in your case. 2 5 as an example in a recent 3 handed game with Klregaro). The shove by me however is ******ed (and a misclick).
Using this hand as collusion proof is stupid. Here is why. Let’s assume collusion took place here. So basically our plan was to put in 15k into the pot in an attempt to win 1k with two lousy hands, presumably aimed at 'squeezing' you out of the pot. Why put 15k into the pot to make 1k? Why not just ship the benkaremail hand and risk 5k to make 1k? Makes more sense, looks less suspicious, involves risking less and is far more +ev. Also the cards themselves have to make you think that there is no collusion here when you think about it a little deeper. Why ship 2 hands in which we have our own outs? How on earth is either hand supposed to make a straight here? I think that regardless of if you call in the BB or not, this hand is about -15k in equity when colluding in terms of card value/money invested + suspicious look. Maybe more.
2. Open shove may not be the best move, but it's not exactly awful. Overall the completed hand is awful though, you’re right.. The reason is just the opposite to what you're trying to prove. Why call 8 10 here when I have my own straight outs?!? And why shove here for the same reason? If this hand was colluded it makes no sense at all to push or overcall with these hands. The majority of the time we’re simply going to lose two buyins here. Your hand is obviously much stronger in the first place and more importantly (in terms of collusion) I have my buddies outs! What exactly am I hoping to happen here, 7 9 J flop when knowing that the 7 and 9 have already lost outs. The call makes lot more sense when benkaremails hole cards are unknown. You may still not approve of the call, but I make them sometimes, and against 2 unknown hands I'm basically putting in 4k (1b is accounted for in the BB) to make 11k profit. 3/1 odds basically. Putting some average scenario hands into a poker calculator real quick..
If 1 guy has A 2 and the other 99, I'm not getting odds, but it's not awful by a long shot. If 1 player has an overpair then I'm way behind. But if 1 player has A 2 for example and another pocket 5's, I'm actually a favourite to win. This game was 3 handed, overpairs are not particularly common compared to the amount of shoving going on. It's usually something like K 7 vs A 2, in which case the call is fine, though simply not optimal. When colluding however and knowing that you have lost 2 of your straight draw outs, the call simply does not follow the logic of what you are saying.
3. I obviously play awful HU push/fold. I didn't know that the minimum hand to push here is Q 8, and obviously neither does benhamcheese. Was that a typo and you mean the minimum hand to CALL with (not push)? In which case I did not know this either. Surely this is player dependent in both cases. If player is pushing frequently calling ranger can be lowered? If you think player is folding too much surely you should be pushing light?
I saw you push 4 6 and 5 2 offsuits vs Pleecher in a session not too long ago. Given your previously self-proclaimed expertise, please explain this shove given that even DooshCom knows that the minimum hand is Q8. And don’t say it was less BB’s deep, because I’m pretty sure that the difference in BB’s is not equal to the difference in hand value in this example. You can not be both an expert qualified enough to make these conclusions on me and make "impossible without colluding" shoves like 4 6.
4. It's not impossible to push anything, and calling with Q 3 seems fine to me if you know a guy is shoving hands like 2 3 and 10 4. It’s not the best hand by far, and you’re 50/50 pretty much overall. It’s a gamblers call, and a mete game statement of “I call light, maybe you should ship less often”, not a colluders call. Also, what exactly would be the purpose to pushing/calling here and revealing hands/looking suspicious. Why wouldn't colluders just fold the SB, and no one is any the wiser. This does not make sense or follow correctly with your accusation.
5. Despite what you seem to think, I cannot speak for Benkar here, however I sometimes push junk hands. In fact, like I already said I briefly railed your game vs Pleetcher 1 time. I saw you push 5 2 offsuit and 4 6 offsuit. How is 23 any different exactly? You think Pleetcher might call with 43 and you have him dominated? No, it happened because it happened. You decided at that second to push for whatever reason (the most likely being that you had lost the 2 previous allin's), and that's the end of it. There was no great conspiracy, yet somehow while being an expert in your game, as you previously claim, you managed to make a shove equally as bad as someone who is obviously colluding to be able to make a shove that bad. Go figure. You can't be both an expert, and play like crap. Either choose one or accept that sometimes players do random stuff like this for whatever their reason happens to be at the time.
6. We're just going over the same sort of things here. I would love it if I happened to have something like 4 6 here and then you claim it to be colluding.
7. Read above.
8. Unsure what is going on here, but from a collusion point of view, why not just ship the benkar hand or the dooshcom hand - Why raise fold and put 2k dead money into the pot? May as well just ship the benkar hand and risk 5k instead of 7k. Or better still fold both and wait for the next hand?
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Some of my own hand histories that make no sense for colluding.
I don’t use HEM or any similar software, so have had to dig up hands through the 888 software. If there are doubts on the accuracy of these hands or such I'm sure that 888 can confirm them, or I can screen shot my 888 history page and email them to anyone who wants to see this. I see very little benefit of listing suits of cards here, so I have omitted this information to make it easier reading. Suits can be given if requested.
Specific hands that I've pulled up from my 888 history:
1. klregaro shoves $8.5k on the button with KQ, I call in the SB for 5k with 77 ben calls $8.5k with A6.
What is the purpose of overcalling with A 6? Most of the time Klregaro has either one or two overcards to my 77. So generally I want him not to hit a pair. I don’t need to hit. Calling with the ace also would only increase my/our winning percentage marginally when in the knowledge that the team has the hand 77, and would not be worth calling 8.5k to gain this small %.
2.Klregaro shoves button A3, benkar shoves with A9, I call 55.
Why exactly am I overcalling with 55? Benkar already has A 9 which is better than 5 5 vs a random hand. Unless Klregaro has exactly 22, 33, 44 or AK,AQ,AJ,A10, one of those 7 exact hands, then my A 9 is a much better call, and 55 a -ev donation. Our aim would not be to hit the 5, it would simply be for our opponent to not pair his cards, in which case barring the exact 7 hands listed above, 55 is essentially the same as A high. Not just that but A 9 fairs much better against ALL other parts of his range as should he pair with the board, or have a medium pocket pair benkar has 6 outs to hit still, and 3 outs rather than 2 outs when opponent has pocket pairs of 99+ or hits a board card of 10+. Coludding makes no sense here as I am basically donating 5k for no reason when having the knowledge of my team mates hole cards/splitting winnings.
3.Benkar opens to 2k on button with 99, I fold 92, klregaro shoves 17k with KK.Benkar calls.
Wtf? So just to be clear my team mate sees me fold the 9, then decides to call 17k anyway with his 99? What’s the point in coludding to gain an advantage and then not using the information gained? Or put more correctly, coludding to gain an advantage and then using the gained information to make a –ev call given the additional information? (I bet that there are other examples that 888 will find of me/him calling with even lower pairs when the other has folded a set out).
4. I fold button 96, klregaro shoves 25offsuit for $5k ben calls Ad 10s.
This hand does obviously not help prove anything regarding colluding/ not colluding. However it is something to note that other regs are shoving with hands like 25 which is not really much difference to 93offsuit and 23offsuit, which apparently I am told is impossible unless coludding.
5. klregaro shoves $10.5k on the button with A6, Benkar calls 5k with 44, I call $10.5k with AQ.
Same scenario as hand 2, but even stronger evidence of no collusion. In this hand the only reason to call with 44 and AQ when having a team mate would be if you think that the button shove has 22,33 or AK. All other hands make more sense to fold the 44 (since it is essentially the same as having A high) and just play the AQ. Calling with 44 when knowing your team mate has AQ is basically throwing away 5k. This is just plain absurd and insane –ev when knowing your partners hole cards.
6. Benkar shoves $10k with 55, I call with AKs, klregaro calls with kQ. Exact same scenario as above. The 55 hand is worthless. Who else would like some $5k donations? Because clearly team DooshCom/Benkar is having to collude in order to make them.
7. I fold 83 on the button, klregaro shoves the 7.5k on the SB with 10 9. Benkar calls with K 8. K 8 is a pretty marginal type of hand, and more of a gamblers call who expects to sometimes be ahead by 5%, and sometimes not. Now with the knowledge that the 8 has been removed already.. Why not just fold and play the next hand..
8. I shove button $6.5k QJ, Klregaro calls 6.5k with KK, benkar ships 27k with AQ, Klregaro calls.
Knowing already that the Q has been lost as an out Benkar still decides he’d like to shove 27k into the pot. Not just this but as Klregaro didn’t shove the hand to push Benkar out, this makes Klregaro look even stronger in my opinion, as he'd probably shove something like 7's so that A 9 for instance doesn't ship over the top of him. Doesn’t it make more sense to play maybe none of these hands? Or 1 of them, not both. And for a 27k shove when knowing that your opponent is very strong AND you’ve lost an out…Fold seems better here for colluders, no? 60k pot. I didn't want it anyway, prefer to cheat and play -ev/lose.
9. Benkar shoves 5k with 87, I fold 72 klregaro calls A9.
So again our team decides that 87 is a good hand to shove after knowledge that a 7 has already been lost.
10. Couldn’t seem to locate these next two hands (probably because I’ve been messing around with this email for 2-3 hours now and am getting tired) but it’s there, and if requested, I WILL find it for whoever wants it, or 888 can simply confirm the hands. They are there and I recall them, otherwise listing them would be very silly.
Forget the action, but there is a 3 way all in. Me and Benkar both have the exact same hand, AK.. and are up against Q9. Why on earth are we both in the pot when knowing each other’s whole cards?!? This is even worse than other similar examples, makes zero sense when coludding and 100% sense when not coludding. Anyone else want any 5k donations? Putting in 10BB's with the same hand to try and make 5bb's when our opponent most likely has either two live cards or a pocket pair.
11. Thrcnbeonly1 shoves the button for 5-10bb's. Both BenKar and DooshCom call. Thrcnbeonly1 has KK, Benkar and me both have some medium/high pair. Lets assume 10's and jacks. If not it's probably 9's and 10's. Nothing below 9's I remember this. Why call with both? 10's and Jacks are essentially the exact same thing when taking on a random hand. We would not be looking to flop a set as we’re presuming that any one of these hands is already way ahead, we’d simply looking for thrcnbeonly1 to not hit a random overcard if he has one, or to catch a straight/flush etc. So again, why call with both? It makes 100x times sense to call with one, and fold the other. Risking X bb's to make X bb's. Risking 2X to make 1X with effectively the same hand just makes no sense. ONLY in a normal none-colluded game does this make perfect sense.
None Specific hands (but many can be dig up as proof):
If colluding, a big part of the edge has to be the ability to fold when knowing that my/our own outs are gone, and only call with 1 hand of the same value. So calling with AK twice is a definite no, as is calling with 1010/JJ and hands like K 8 when I know that 8 3 has been folded. Similar but smaller examples include some of the hands posted by thrcnbeonly1 such as shoving/overcalling with 8 10 when I know that the 9 & 7 outs are gone. Also calling with pocket pairs and a single high card would be bad. For instance if one colluder calls with 77, it makes no sense to also call with A 6 since I don't want to hit the 6 or the ace, I just want my opponent to not hit his overcard/cards. Calling with both would not be close to the right ev when having this knowledge.
Similarly I wouldn't be calling ever with a hand like A 9 if my buddy has already folded 9. Nor would I be calling low/medium pocket pairs (7's and below) if I had folded a set out, or shoving them when I could be called, as this would mean I'd be drawing virtually dead a lot of the time if behind and have less than 50% equity when it would usually be a coin flick. I bet when doing their analyses, 888 will come across many hands where either me or Benkar have been all in with pairs knowing that our set outs have already been burnt. Again, why coludde and then not use the information gained? None of this adds up…
I'm willing to bet good none-colluded money that Benkar and DooshCom have made so many -ev calls/shoves that make no logical sense when colluding, and make perfect sense when playing a normal game.
I don’t know how many times I need to say this before hopefully it sinks in, but there will be tones of examples like above, it goes without saying, and I’m willing to put my entire 888 bankroll on it that when going through hands 888 discover so many it would become silly to count them anymore. Each and every one of them proving a little more than collusion is not taking place because fold would simply be the only option here. Sure there will also be hands where we would have folded when we did not have to, and some outs have already gone. But then there will be the same situation like this also for other players. As colluders, why collude to gain an edge, then throw that edge away by not using the information gained. Or worse still, taking that information gained and doing the opposite to what EV dictates. Colluding to be able to play worse?
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Summery of Evidence so far:
*Worthless sized sample of hands used to make charts/graph.
*Some amazing hand histories: Used as proof, but that actually end up proving that colluding did not take place.
*People involved: Thrcnbeonly1 who 50/50 splits with kostya when on the same cash table (want me to dig up my msn logs?) NeedAAAA/Algor. Great friends/flatmates? (*cough*) And two Swedish players who both independently happened to notice something dodgy may be happening? I wonder if these two players already were good friends and play at the same tables together. Let’s run some stats and see what comes up. Maybe a sample of 1k hands will be adequate? Or better still let’s take less than 400 hands and draw up a chart as final conclusive evidence.
Now take everything I’ve had to spend the last couple of hours writing into consideration and add to that other factors like TILT, player profiling (the thing that purposely makes us play differently vs one player than another because of reads/player tenancies) and meta game. Add to that “Levelling”, the quantity of hands that you’ve data mined and the fact that we’re all human and do sometimes shove with 9 3 even when we know it’s far from optimal. Given everything, is my data really that out of proportion? Enough so to accuse me of this and so incredibly loudly too?
I don't want to follow this route particularly or get into an online slanging match, but I would love to see what thrcnbeonly1’s and Koysta's graphs look like, especially between several networks, or perhaps the flatmates Needaaaa and Algor's who are frequently on the same table together.. I wonder if I studied hard enough (or even briefly) anything suspicious would turn up over a 20k+ hand sample.
People are posting crap like this all of the time. "I lost 10 coinflicks in a row. Impossible, the site must be rigged". "I lost with AA/KK vs underpairs 6 times in a row, the other guys were cheating". The only difference here is you guys should firstly know better, and secondly have much more/better evidence before saying something like this. You only all got in contact at the beginning of September you said? And here we are maybe a week later and you’ve already managed to write complaints to 888, contact the CEO of PokerStrategy and 888 and post this lovely thread here. Don’t you think that perhaps you could have waited a little longer to gain some more evidence, or perhaps see if things even out a little – just like EV does…
But no, instead you’ve made all these complaints and made them very public. These theories happen every day. Some turn out to the true and this is very serious when it does. The majority however are just in people’s minds because things didn’t go their way for a while and they need to blame someone else. And now because I happened to have won a bracelet this year you’ve somehow managed to get previously respected sites to publish what is essentially worthless and defamatory gossip all over their website to gain attention to your theory. Usually these sites actually have some concrete evidence or a confession, but no, not this time. Maybe being good friends with CEO’s allows you to bypass stuff like that and not need any actual evidence. I hope that after 888 finish their investigation these same sites are going to make a big thing of publishing the fact that everything they had previously said was nothing more than a theory thought up by a group of 6 friends.
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A few comments to give thought to before I end this post:
1. I'm a little unsure why you think I'd collude on push or fold tables. I think that high stakes 100bb PLO games would be much better to collude at. The knowledge of 8 cards instead of 4 would be insane.
2. Why would I collude on 888, the site that sponsor me when it stands to do me the most harm?
3. Why would I collude on a site that has 75k monthly cashout limits? Why not choose a different network with higher cashout limits since there is a high risk of being caught, and this way I'd be sure to have my money instantly regardless of the outcome.
4. Why would my buddy "waste" all of his 888 network usernames in a single session then play hu “badly” to lure players into thinking he is fishy, rather than use the same username for a while then switch so that we can pretend that they're multiple fish? This would also lower suspicion of colluding, and even more so if we left a month or so between switching usernames.
5. Why would I collude right now at this point, after winning a WSOP bracelet and heightening my public profile? Surely it would have made more sense to do it during my last 8 years of poker when I was much more unknown, and with a much smaller bankroll, so more incentivized to cheat for the money. Doing it now instead seems daft.
6. Why bother to collude to “win” money, instead how about I just don’t pay back the guys who loaned me money at the WSOP this year + not pay out the % that I had sold. After winning a bracelet + other cashes + random loans, I could just fake some sort of cash theft from my safe, blame it on some hookers, pay no one and be 250k up from it. There are no statistics to "prove" otherwise, and my word would just have to be taken. Seems a lot easier, and more risk free. Most of the guys who bought a % I only know online anyway + the loans came from players I barely know, just familiar usernames.
7. Why would I use my own name to collude in and my username that has some publicity attached to it. Much easier to open play in a friends name, keep myself completely out of this and remove all risk of having my name attached.
8. You yourself say that I am a good player, and I am clearly a winning player. Why on earth do all this and risk so much when I am winning anyway?
The problem now is the thread is already done and has gained attention. You've gone past the point of no return and therefore you cannot possibly admit that you MIGHT have just been mistaken at some point or jumped to conclusions a little early, otherwise you would lose street credit in the poker world, look a little silly and feel embarrassed. Therefore I'm guessing that this means that we have to carry on with this farce for a while longer until neither party admits defeat and everyone else just gets bored of reading it. Eventually 888 will release a statement regarding their finding and then we can clear this up once and for all. Until then it would be nice if people didn’t just assume the worse based on what 6 people think. Anyone semi respected in the poker world can get together with a few friends and write an exact same post about any of you without a shred of evidence too, you know. Or better still, take some specifically chosen small quantity of data and display it in a way that makes it look like pretty uninteresting variance and caption it “Player X and Y are cheaters!”
For future, please consider your actions a little more carefully, and collect much more evidence that can actually be counted as evidence before doing something like this again.
Regards,
Darren Woods.
DooshCom.
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