Well said schneids, also grover why don't you have a blog? I'm sure lots of people here would be interested in reading it, it seems like you know a lot about the case as well.

Schneids you seem to be interpreting the method of calculating the refunds differently than I do. What Haley said was:
Therefore in hand 1 you were not only given credit for the single bet that you doubt you got credit for, you were actually given credit for all the bets you lost on that hand. This is an example of the methodolgy causing you to be refunded too much, not too little.

In the second hand it is impossible to say how much anybody got cheated out of, because the result of the cheating was a hand with possibly more action than would have taken place without the cheating, and a pot being awarded to a non-cheater. So in that case a user benefitted from cheating. The methodology may deduct the whole win from bronzeus's net refund, and either does nothing to your refund or gives you credit for all you lost. So you may be getting more of a refund from this hand than you likely deserve and bonzeus is probably getting less, but we cannot be sure, because we don't know how the hand would have played out if Graycat had not been involved.

Your examples do not show that the refunds are understated. They show that in some cases players were refunded too much, and they show that it is practically impossible to determine the precise amounts that should be awarded.

I was having trouble with this for a while, but if we assume that the cheating accounts were net losers while they were not cheating, then the amount refunded is understated in two ways:

1. Those net losses made while not cheating have been subtracted from the gains made while cheating.
2. The amount calculated for gain while cheating should have been calculated against what the accounts would have been expected to lose, rather than against 0.

A method that might have resulted in a fairer (and larger) refund amount would have been:

1. Determine which hands played by the cheating accounts were played while actually cheating.
2. From the results of the hands played by the cheating accounts while not cheating, calculate for each cheating account the net loss rate while not cheating.
3. Calculate the expected net loss for all hands played by the cheating account.
4. The refund amount should be the difference between the actual net winnings and the expected net losses.

The problems with this analysis include:

1. We do not necessarily know that our fundamental assumption (that the accounts are net losers while not cheating) is true.
2. There seems to be no way to determine for certain during which hands the cheating accounts were cheating. The best method available to classify hands as cheating or non-cheating would seem to be hand-by-hand analysis of play.

If we analyse each hand played by a cheating account, with the objective of classifying the hand as occurring during cheating or while cheating was not ocurring then we will find:

• Hands where there most likely was cheating,
• Hands that could have been cheating but could have been unusually good, bad or lucky play
• Hands that would be played the same way whether cheating or not
• Hands which were in fact hands where hole cards were being viewed and the cheater made a better play than he would have if he hadn't seen the hole cards, but that look to the analysis like normal play, because the cheater is more of a donk than the analyst realizes.

Of course analysing hands in sequential context will help resolve some ambiguities. An ambiguous hand played right after three hands of obvious cheating and right before 3 more hands of obvious cheating can be classified as a cheating hand with a high degree of confidence. But given that we have at least anecdotal indications that cheating began in mid-session at least once, it may not be totally fair to classify as a cheating hand every hand played during a session in which there was at least one hand of obvious cheating. Also, we may miss short sessions of actual cheating.

In summary, I think it is unlkely that hand analysis can provide an accurate classification of hands as taking place during cheating or not during cheating. Given this, we cannot calculate the proper refund amount. While we can be reasonably confident that the refunds are less than they should be, we have no way of knowing the magnitude of the shortfall. It might be possible that such an analysis could establish that the shorfall was at least a certain amount. However, if the cheating accounts were actually winning accounts when not cheating, then it is even possible that the refunds are too large.

You're all looking at it wrong. Once caught cheating, all money ever won by a cheater since the first confirmed instance of his cheating should be refunded. In a case like this ALL of the winnings after that are tainted. There should not be any deduction for some mythical estimate of legit winnings. The cheaters forfeited the right to any winnings on that site, period.

Yes he is in Canada. I have seen him in person within the last couple months and yes he throws rediculous parties. Now let me ask with full seriousness because, what would you do if you knew where ST was?

No serious as in Ive made 5 ****ing posts about it and am clearly not joking.

This seems so simple and correct that it makes you wonder why they attempted some sort of "calculation" at all. Any company truly attempting to repair a soiled reputation would simply release all the hand histories and refund everything which the cheating accounts won. It still would not be perfect, but it would be HONEST. There is little rationale that the release of ancient HH information would cause any issues; they only need to show hole card info for the cheaters. The inability to retrieve HH info should be a huge red flag to anyone following this. Afterall, they apparently had no issues getting them for Uri to do his investigation.

Well first of all, what you suggest is what seems to have been done, except they even went back to the period before the cheating was proven to have started, if I understand Haley's words correctly.

Secondly, you shouldn't make the mistake of equating the cheaters with the accounts. Accounts were used to cheat. In some cases it may not have been the account owners who used the account to cheat, and the account owners may have played legitimately on the accounts after the accounts were used for cheating.

Thirdly, I was suggesting looking for "mythical" legit losses, not "mythical" legit winnings. If found, these losses would cause the refunds to rise even higher.

Learn to read, and think more before you post.

This is irrelevant. It cannot be proven. Once an account was compromised, end of story. Any court would use that as a standard of evidence since there is no way to prove otherwise.

Again, the only thing you can look at is what can be proven. iesnare could easily provide information on when accounts were first taken over by cheating players. After that, possible winnings/losings/circumstances are irrelevant. You can't look at what might have happened if player A did this because cheating Player B did that. All you can do is surmise that any monies taken by cheating accounts are "tainted" and should be fully returned.

Our problem is that we have never been provided this information and are forced to take Chief Joe and his cohorts word.

I'm quoting out of sequence...
Don't you provide the lever here, in your own post, of how Cereus could determine when cheating was and wasn't occurring in a given account? Wouldn't iesnare show them when an account with a legitimate owner was being played by that owner and when it was being played by somebody else?

Also, possible losses are relevant, given the way refunds are calculated. If you can show losses were generated by the real user, not by the perpetrator during cheating, then those losses should not be deducted from the amount to be refunded.
... except perhaps iesnare data about the logons

And no, you cannot assume that a court would accept that once an account was used once for illegal purposes that every subsequent use was also for illegal puposes. They would likely only accept that if there was evidence tying the illegal user to the account on an ongoing basis and no evidence tying anybody else to the account. In the case of an account belonging to somebody other than the perpetrator, they would have to tie the perpetrator to ongoing use and have a lack of evidence of the other people having ongoing contact with the account before they could even consider treating the account as being used for illegal purposes on an ongoing basis.

The absence of evidence one way or another after there is evidence of multiple people having contacts is not sufficient evidence that the last person known to be in contact is responsible for all subsequent actions.

We certainly aren't forced to accept their word, and I doubt you do. I certainly don't.

Maybe I'm reading too much into your post, but you sound like you're hinting at some kind of retaliatory action, or possibly even violence. If so, my advice is don't be an idiot. Do nothing.

It sucks that there's no legal authority to turn him into, but, well, that's life.

I disagree. Suppose a player; say his name is Phil Tom has an account that doesn't cheat as far as we know. Later, his son Scott comes over for Thanksgiving and jams a couple of cheating sessions in on Phil's account. Sorry, but Phil is forever tainted. When you lie down with dogs...

We are not talking about civil rights here, the onus is squarely on the company to provide proof if an account was somehow used for both nefarious and honest use and if forced to do so, they could just spin up whatever iesnare info they wanted. OTOH, contacting the honest players whose accounts were hijacked could easily set the baseline on when to begin calculating cheating without assistance from the company.

As to players losing legitimate hands to cheaters, who knows, maybe previous cheating sessions or hands tilted the player, maybe soul reading causes the play to change. There are way too many factors which cannot be correctly quantified. The key is the room allowed the cheating and a finite number won by the cheaters is known. Get this number and argue over how to weight the average contribution but NONE of the money won by cheating accounts should be considered legitimate.

Oh well, if we are just talking about how public opinion will react, then yes, I agree with you. But you suggestred that this is how a court would react. I can assure you, with confidence based on experience, that you are wrong about that.

Perhaps I have not made this part sufficiently clear. I am not talking about non-cheaters legitimately losing hands to the cheaters. I am talking about the accounts used for cheating losing hands to honest players, especially when cheating wasn't actually happening. If this is erroneously netted with the cheaters' results, the cheaters or the site will have to pay out less than they should.

Well, that number may be smaller than it should be, because losses by non-cheaters using the cheating accounts have been netted against the amount won by the cheaters. Perhaps an example would help you understand.

On May 22, the cheaters use account IGtNoPwd to win $30. The next day, the legitmate owner of that account comes on and loses $20. On May 24 Paul Leggett comes along and says that IGtNoPwd was a cheating account since May 22 and its net winnings since then will be distributed among those who lost to the cheaters. The net winnings of $30 - $20 = $10 get refunded. What should have been refunded is $30. But because you insist on considering all activity after the beginning of cheating to be considered activity of the cheaters, and because the amount refunded is the net profits of cheating accounts, only a fraction of what is owed is actually refunded.

You need to understand that I agree with this paragraph.

There was no punishment and never will be. They claim they made a deal to cover up the culprits in exchange for an explanation of how the cheating was done. In reality this was only a fancy way of saying "we are covering up for one of the founders."
So there is literally nothing that can be done. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Go AP!

I take your point. I have to ask how much of an issue this really is? My understanding is the cheating accounts were largely made up of hijacked dormant accounts where the original player no longer used the account. Can you point me to something where the company stated or advocated a cheating account was liable for less because a non-cheater actually lost using a cheating account?

But, yes even if what you say did actually occur where cheaters and non-cheaters continued to share the account, I believe the final number is the only provable fact.