I know this might be an unpopular topic but I think it's important that it get discussed. I was a member of the major staking site. This site basically forced me to open a Full Tilt Poker account to remain a member. They also banned me for not wanting to do it and questioning it. However minor they have tainted my poker account because my screen name shows up in search engines for being banned. This causes me to have to explain the situation to people and PTP refuses to delete the record of my account from their site.

This same site allows and promotes practices that are part of their culture like "army" stakes that can and probably do result in soft play and outright collusion. An army stake is when a staker decides to put a bunch of members into the same tournament. The problem I see with this is that having awareness of the other players running stakes would make you play different against them. Even in other tournaments the fact that poker screen names are so openly displayed must result in at least some soft play. On a site such as 2plus2 that problem would never really happen. You might know the players but your interests are not really mutual. Staking sites in a lot of cases blur the line to almost having a team.

Another thing I think is wrong is that the site uses a Poker account to run their business. The payneverbeg account is listed all over the site as a form of payment. Plus I know for a fact that more than one person must have access to the account because the entire website was sold. The old payment account was to my knowledge identical.

Even though it won't make me popular I think it's important to discuss what the actual line is and if these staking sites are promoting "teams". Or if you think that Stars should allow everyone to be able to use the very convenient transfer service to run a business. I would be happy if I could because it's very convenient.

LOL

No. Just no.

I'm serious about these issues. I don't think it's funny at all. I'm absolutely dead serious. I think if a website fights so hard to enforce its own rules and to humiliate the offenders that it should be treated identical to how it treats those members when they violate someone Else's rules. This is especially true for the members who violate any rule relating to money. Those members are almost always labeled for life. Maybe it's time to pass out the Hypocrite gear in this case. Or the Doesn't Practice What You Preach gear.

i know next to nothing about these types of sites but i am always interested to hear about legitimate concerns about fairness and cheating in online poker so im listening...

gtfo with the LOL JUST NO'S

I play for a staking site and can say that this a total bs

Fair enough you might have the odd one here or there cheating but i've never seen or heared anything about it when you play for a site your not playing for a team your playing to earn $$$

You must have said something else to get banned, I asked a mod if there was any way around posting/creating an account on stars and all he said was:

I was mainly there to stake, so I didn't really care and just left.

Just fwiw, I never really played much on my stars account so I just sort of forgot about it and don't feel like searching/e-mailing stars.


ptp has some pretty ******ed rules, but the rest of your post about colluding is lol

Don't understand even a sentence of what you said.

No idea what op said, but I will say Neverbeg/PTP is very lol.

this seems like its well thought out and and concisely written, with many excellent and challenging points.

But on closer inspection, it would appear that OP is just dribbling words onto a page.


(Yes i play on there/no i dont collude cos i want all the monies pls)

If you have any evidence of this happening, you should report it to the site concerned instead of making wild general accusations that help no one.

Ok well if my concerns about colluding are LOL then why is it sited as one of the major potential drawbacks to staking sites by people who run them. Here is a link to an article that mentions it.

http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/poker-...opularity-819/

Here's a second article titled

Is Backing Another Player Ethical?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker...eve&id=2269129

Ok let me help.

1. PTP and other sites violate Sections 5.2 and 5.3 of Stars TOS. They violate section 5.2 by allowing multiple users of a poker account. They violate section 5.3 by using their poker account for a purpose that it wasn't intended for, in this case running a business. They also violate 5.3 because they receive transfers in a manner that is against the law in Stars licensing jurisdiction.

2. Some of the types of stakes that they have allowed for years like "Army" stakes can/have and probably do result in soft play by people getting the stakes. The reason is simple if I am part of a group running a stake for the same person I might not get another stake if I eliminate one of the stakes horses. By eliminating one of his other horses I decrease his total chances of locking up a larger share of the prize money by the group sharing different spots to max out cash received.

I can't report it to the site concerned. They banned me. As far as "wild general accusations that help no one". I think my accusations were pretty specific. I specifically mentioned Army stakes and I mentioned violations of Stars TOS sections 5.2 and 5.3.

he means the poker site ldo

tl;dr. Colluding is the last thing people do on stakes.

Listen I just want fairness. If the end result is that PTP has to change the methods of payments they accept it's probably better for their business in the long term anyway. It would for sure make it more sellable. They could switch to a subscription method possibly.

About a year ago, I was 4 handed at a final table with three players from PTP on stakes and after I refused a deal was 1,000,000% softplayed into 3rd place. After review, Stars said it wasn't that far out of the ordinary in a situation where 1 player solely did not want to chop, but agreed that the corresponding sweat thread on the site was a little troubling, the players involved were warned.

fyp

prove it

wtf does this have to do with collusion?

don't they still have the same incentive to move up no matter who they eliminate?

tough ****

ignoring the fact that this entire statement is fundamentally wrong, as far as the bold goes:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54...inutes-578399/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54...-lotto-447221/

what does this have to do with anything? you think stars isn't somehow aware of this?

you're bitter you were banned and are just grasping at straws. there is no validity to your statements at all

1.) lol wut? How is backing someone having multiple users on one account? It sounds like your issue here would be with backing in general, but because you are pissed at PTP for w/e reason you have "legitimate" concerns. Nothing you posted in OP indicates soft play or collusion as you are alleging.

2.) If frogs had wings they MIGHT not bump their asses when they land. If you weren't making a lot of serious allegations without any kind of concrete evidence other than wild hypotheticals people MIGHT take you seriously. MIGHT they? MIGHTY!

OP, enlighten us please on how these "army" stakes work and what is expected of you.

Lets say you and I are two randoms that get staked into a tourney via this site. We've no prior history together and don't know each other other than the fact we both got a stake from the same source.
* Is there any incentive for you if I win? What I'm saying is, if you cash do you get any bonus above and beyond your stake split for the other "horses" cashing as well?
* Is there any specified penalty for playing hard against another horse? In other words, if you put me all in and bust me out, will there be any consequence to you?
* Somebody mentioned a "sweat thread". Is this on the staker's site? Have you seen any collusion (sharing hole cards, underhanded deals) on any of these threads?

Pay no mind to the short "Lol no" answers. They pop up anytime any even suggests that there's less-than-honest practices in online poker ("Don't talk about that!" "It's bad for poker!" "It'll scare the fish!" lol). Notice they just shoot you down without bothering to answer your concerns.