So which level of cheating is OK?

MAing as slightly losing reg would be worse, sure. My point is, there are people who just want to play from the US and do so via VPN, which is arguably not even immoral at all. Then there are people like stinger who VPN and also choose to MA on a certain account, and the reasons they choose that account are very slimy. And anyone willing to do that would almost certainly be willing to MA on the account of a losing reg if they had a viable opportunity to do so, so I don't think I'm being overly harsh on stinger.

I'm not a HS reg but I'm pretty sure you're underestimating the advantage he had by being on that account, even if all the other regs are highly skeptical. I heard someone say over the sample he played, MAing tripled his winrate. At the very least, his initial play on that account vs regs who had history with that account is flat out cheating. And even if it only increased his winrate by 0.01bb/100 it's still flat out cheating.

Edit: btw, I also heard BERRI SWEET say he made a failed attempt at a massive bluff vs noelhayes that he would never do if he knew it was stinger. Pretty sure he's a winning HS reg and pretty sure he's making a valid argument because he provided hand history and explained his reasoning. Don't know post # but I'm sure it's in that other stinger cheating thread.

You're assuming a very nefarious motive on Hastings part (which he might well have had) without any real evidence. A more plausible explanation for him renting a "known" account: How the hell is he going to get 500k+ to play nosebleeds on a random unknown account? The ****ing balloon heads at Poker Stars have Isildur on a 5k/day deposit limit. Your options are pretty limited if you want to rent an account to play in the highest stakes games.

As far as how bad different levels of cheating are, the more people that do it, the less bad it is. In boxing, you have guys that consistently hold on to clinches for 2-3 seconds after the referee tells them to break, then you have guys who remove the padding from their gloves and replace it with lead shot. IMO both using shared hand histories and playing on someone else's account are much closer to the former than the latter. Cheating? Absolutely. Cause for a public lynching? Nah.

Hadn't considered that, so yeah it's definitely plausible that he didn't have the motive I was saying he almost certainly had, so I apologize. I didn't want to misrepresent what he did to make it seem worse, esp since I don't really need to because it's still flat out cheating given instances like that with BERRI SWEET. So he might or might not have had that motive, but either way still really bad. Keep in mind berri was requested compensation and was denied.

Pretty good metric, although you should also factor in the % that would be willing to make reasonable compensation payments if caught.

It's also partly flawed because equity is gained by getting worse regs to play you that otherwise wouldn't, so you'd gain more equity unfairly the better you are. If stinger considers himself a top reg, he should know he's screwing a lot of people.

Also the more famous a player is, the more they hurt the poker community by getting caught because it tarnishes poker's image and less fish play. Kind of like how it's bad to do drugs, but even worse if you are famous because it sets a bad example for your younger fans. Stinger did express concern about this, but could have just been damage control and doesn't really make doing it in the first place less bad.

My impression of the poker world is that a decent chunk of pros would have the integrity not do what stinger did (if given the opportunity), and a majority would be willing to make reasonable compensation payments if caught, so much so that based on your metric it would be on the more serious end of things.

You should also consider the time it took to make the compensation payments and the amount of pressure you were under in order to make them. If he paid back 50% of what he cheated immidiately even if he wasn't asked, that would be a lot better than if he did so now under pressure. I doubt many other top HS regs would have made as pathetic an attempt at compensation as stinger has.

Hastings was EireAbu too?

I only ask that if you post details you post all the details from both sides. Wouldn't end well for you or Viktor though so we all know that it's as likely to happen as Trump tax returns

no

what is he talking about then?

"I would really like to post details" is the fakest thing I've ever heard if you're serious about posting all the details. It would destroy your reputation and you know it. If you're really serious I would love to air it all out though.

there's a lot he conveniently omitted/added to his post. I'm not sure if I want to destroy his and Viktor's reps yet.

NVG knows you want to so just get on with it already.

I guess what I am comfortable saying for now is that ownage4u is too tilted chasing bad money by staking Viktor to be bothered by details like my SN or whether or not Viktor actually did MA vs my friends/other HS players in the past, as well as whether the consortium behaved ethically in paying their debts to others. For the record I think o4u is much more at fault than Viktor in all this. My read on Viktor is he's a good kid deep down who got in a bad spot and made bad decisions to try to claw out of the hole.

lot of strong, uninformed opinions in here. never change, nvg!

haha. ok go ahead and post everything you like that will destroy my reputation, im more than happy for you to do that. there is literally nothing you know about me and it will be amazing to see you speculate where i might have done wrong.

it is true that i would have got part of the money you "intended" to play isildur as compensation, but to be fair that doesn't change anything about how ridiculously you started from offering a compensation to not paying.

i just remembered another funny part from our convos: you rationalised your multiaccounting by saying i cant even imagine how hard it is when you are not allowed to play onlinepoker in your home country anymore and are forced to either move away or stop playing. so yeah, it was completely fine to play 1.5/3k 8g, 2k 4k deuce and i believe 250 500 plo(?) on some irish account

how crazy you gotta be to think you get any sympathy for that?

^^^

Not so handsome cheater Retires until next 6 figure multi account scamming opportunity comes up in online poker.In any other line of work this multi million dollar fraudster would be in lock up getting turned out.

I don't want to involve Viktor in this as I think he is a good kid at heart who lost his way and got in bad spots.

The way you have behaved in my limited experience with me is unethical and quite possibly illegal. You've never given me anything resembling a fair shot to explain myself. You're using a few things I said when my sky was falling and I was manic as proof of character. You also had no problem playing me HU at 400/800 badugi when you thought you had an edge. The fact that someone who's had the level of success you have can possibly claim that you thought I was some Irish whale is 100% laughable and untrue. You also mangled the SN in your OP, which is slander/libel in the USA. But I digress...

In the interest of privacy, I won't post any settlements I made here without my permission. But they happened. I wasn't making that up. In your case, I realized that your intentions were malicious and to chase your staking losses by taking advantage of me when I was ripe for the picking. It's telling that you handled the negotiations even though you weren't the one playing (well you did play me in badugi, but you were happy to have that action). You asked for 50k (!!!), a number that could arguably been on the high side of fair, but I felt guilty and wanted to "make things right". Then, once I heard of your history of behavior in other situations and your incentives for acting on Viktor's behalf, I realized I was making a mistake.

Good luck clearing makeup with Viktor and turning your life around. Therapy and a change in industry has been a real awakening for me. Dan Smith's charity drive (www.dansmithholla.com) is a great way to start your rehab; I made a donation to Liberation Prison Yoga the other day myself.

Can someone please change the title to "Brian Hastings is retiring from poker but not from poker forums"

Ty

Also, ownage, how bad of a person can you be to play a multiaccounter in a game where you have an edge?!

So... why exactly did you pay ownage 50k stinger?

Either shut up or tell the whole story, jezus. You're coming across as insufferable.

can someone give cliffs what happened between stinger ownage4u and isildur?
ty

I think ownage asked for 50k, because Stinger88 was trying to "make things right"and that's the number ownage came up with to call it even. Then after Stinger talked to ownage he learned about his "past behaviors" and said, you know what!??!? No money for you! This is according to Brian.

I am not here to enter any discussions. I will not make any statements of anyone's general character(I only have a fraction of the information needed to make a good judgement call anyway). And if I could have made this post at a slightly less tense moment in the thread, that would likely have been preferable. But I saw small pieces of desinformation regarding my dealings with Brian being spread here recently, and I think that I am morally obliged to correct those.

During the NoelHayes-incident, Brian posted somewhere publically that people who felt wronged could contact him. I had never spoken to him prior, but took him up on his offer and shared my views of the situation that had arisen. He responded by showing understanding, explaining his motives and opened up for me to get compensation based on the estimate of what a third party judge believed I was owed in lost equity. I more or less got to pick the judge myself. After a bunch of discussions and time spent with the chosen judge, he(the judge) made a turn and decided that he did not want to make the desired judgement call. Brian still put in the effort to find another judge(I did not know many people in poker at the time), giving me several options to pick between. After our second judge had ruled for me to get an amount that I was very happy with, Brian had the money sent to me. Throughout the process, he did a good job in terms of maintaining communication and showing a desire to make things as right as he could.

(And I want to stress again that I am in no way expressing my view of anyone's persona, but rather sharing a recollection of past events and describing how my personal dealings with Brian looked as objectively as I could.)

OHHHHHHHH ****

Dat personal reference coming in HOT, son!