My main beefs with the situation are this: I was the first American to relocate after blk friday...it was in no way, shape, or form written in stone in regards to the punishment handed out to my infraction...I would not have teamviewered from usa if I had known of the seriousness, so i think its kind of ridiculous that I was punished so severely for something that was so unclear...I truly feel a warning and a cautionary tale to the public about what would happen would have been better...I offered to take my story public while dealing with stars to try to dissuade others from circumventing rules...Understand this is my living, and having my acct frozen, unfrozen, and refrozen 3 separate times with the excuse of "it was on accident" is entirely ridiculous...I will put together all the emails from pokerstars over the last 5 months and I feel pretty confident that the poker public will be outraged on the lack of professionalism demonstrated by pokerstars in this instance

Poker players are being treated like slaves. If the community doesn't unite, expect more of this until online poker becomes so sanctioned you might as well play scratch lotto tickets...

I don't get it, if Stars had no idea that you were teamviewing from the US, how did they find out??

^^^^

I outlined numerous times in this thread how ridiculously unprofessional PokerStars had been handling that case. It is absolutely absurd the run-arounds that have been going on.

check what IP the client thinks it's on

check what IP the server receives the connection from

profit

based on a true story

A lot of the compliance efforts with these anti free market rules just create more shadowy maneuvering. I would say the chance this guy continues to play on Pokerstars is near 100%. Solving for x in the OP makes his balance zero. I assume that's not what was meant. If it was me and any meaningful balance was confiscated I would take them to court just to make their lives difficult, even if I had a high chance of losing.

I understand what Pokerstars is doing but I don't sympathize with them even slightly. If they confiscated my money I would do my best to be the hard place between them and the DOJ's rock.

Isn't there an almost unmentionably obvious (so to speak) solution to that problem?

Are you saying that it is nigh on impossible to mention how obvious the solution is?

the title made me think of the lord of the rings

NM. I was trying to make a facetious reference to the NVG thread where "explaining how to do it equals ban". I actually read this thread after I posted that and I think the solution to that particular posters detection method has already been covered here.

Guy rakes several hundred grand, I think they will be a lot faster answering his emails. For the average player I think PokerStars is the better site.

hi ricestud and everyone posted on this thread....

Just to inform everybody posting here...this is absolutely rubbish that players from US are not playing on pokerstars. I know atleast 15 players who play from US soil since last 3-4 months. these are only players i know, their are much more in number... ppl may be laughing at me ... but this is truth.......

Now those who think that pokerstars can catch anybody..simply by spying on a computer via pokerstars software...it is not true.... come on its 2012.. in a world where bigger crimes like Fake currency...changing faces via plastic surgeries happen and criminals just walk away......a small crime like playing poker from US soil cannot happen?

"when there's will there's way"
i know what common mistakes ppl playing from US soil do....here it is.....

1) Bragging among their friends " that they do play from US soil".
2) posting on open forums like 2+2 about methods about how to play from US
3) Speaking truth...lol..(if u r playing sucessfully from US soil..just STFU..which is kind of difficult for players playing online..mostly lonely...lol)

in my views mistakes that ricestud did was...
1) keeping too much FPP pending..(shud have bought anything like tickets for MTT or cash anything)
2) keeping excess cash in account (shud have cashed out everthing by deliberately loosing to a non US player friend and then taking from him rather then trying to cash out urself)
3) sending email directly to PS from US
and many more steps..can be done to avoid being caught....

further

about BF and DOJ and ppl who are behind it....i can only laugh...

and to PS..i wish i could show them my naked ass...lol

i am a friend and admirer of ricestud... sorry for ur financial loss buddy..

have fun
cheers

^

lololol.

^^

Is hard to believe that a SNE did this childish mistake

tough beat

gg

well- stupid of him to make the "mistake" of not being more careful on this situation, he never shoulda admitted it, i mean its clearly impossible to be caught playing on teamviewer, because teamviewer is an allowed program to use while on stars and its impossible stars knows whose "clicking" the buttons and remote access is a great tool.

1 of the worst things is ricestud will now haveta play anonymously on stars now, cuz lets face it no1 who won what he did will take a simple"no u are BANNED for life" and move on, they will simply find another person to play under, i dont blame him and i dont even think its out of line

The Pokerstars application has the ability to detect other applications running on your computer. Even if you used remote acccess software to use a computer in say Mexico from the US, Pokerstars will detect it. Playing from the US is practically asking for a ban.

WRONG. Pokerstars detects the application, not necessarily some sort of disconnection which equals them seeing a different IP. If you use teamviewer you will be caught.

should have run teamviewer over VPN.

but even then, a relocated SNE with prolonged use of teamviewer during standard grinds would raise flags even then.

The management and owners of Stars are under federal indictment, and are facing billions of dollars in fines. They reached an agreement with DOJ which prohibits all real money play from the U.S.

Their asses are on the line.

He was not caught (initially) by technical methods.

Some Mexican players were not happy with the "professional gringos" who "live just a couple of weeks in Mexico have been chosen to qualify for the tournament in front" Mexico TLB Qualifier. ricestud was among those specifically named, and a complaint was filed with Stars in August 2011

Damn Americans stealing their fish imo.

1. ricestud's use of vpn to circumvent anti-U.S. policy was immoral

2. pokerstars' 5 month delay in resolving the matter was immoral


anyone questioning 2 would be wrong. i think 1. is very debatable though. it may violate TOS to use a vpn, but it isn't inherently unethical by any means.

people being rude to ricestud are ignorant and the punishment in this case doesn't fit the crime.

I like to think that the agreement was made not only because of said asses.

PS agreed to extremely stiff terms in order to be able to repay all the US players as fast as possible. Surely that is more important than a few cases like this.

They should still have resolved the matter faster and communicated better.
Possibly the very long time this took just shows that they really tried to reach another result.