Gus you better check with one of the owners

Sorry if I misquoted you pal.


I have read your earlier posts and agree with what you have said.

I don't think "facts" means what you think it means.

Re your first *assertion*, the nosebleed players are under a microscope at all times, which likely includes both automated software and FTP security personnel, both of which are well-known to have hair-trigger responses to even the slightest hint of impropriety. And given that Ivey and Gus are closely associated with FTP, do you really believe they'd just turn all that stuff off if they thought something was going on? Not to mention all the railbirds, dataminers, etc. or the chance that somebody in the alleged "cheating ring" might slip up or have an attack of conscience or get hammered and admit something. Saying "almost no chance of getting caught" is LOL ridiculous.

Re your second *assertion*, it's all about risk/reward. When the downside is banishment/BR forfeiture/loss of endorsements/etc., and you are getting fat off the fish anyway, there better be one hell of an upside... which means you better be pushing the envelope... which means your chance of detection goes way up.

Gus should only play the "corporation" heads up. Seriously how could you prove these guys aren't IM'ing each other they're cards.

Only Ivey's good enough to overcome that lol

K.

Sorry I was a dick. I spaz out sometimes.

I wonder if there's gonna be a behind-the-scenes payoff to Gus.

TBH the exccesive and extremely obvious bumhunting of Gus by certain players who instantly sit out as soon as he goes was always going to be a ticking timebomb.

What happens next will be very interesting.

Did z come in shortstacked?

kurosh,
yes i do think someone would give that up because of honor and ethics. two examples of such people being phil and z. what exactly are you hahahahhahah-ing about?

do you really not think that there are plenty of people that would forgo big $$$s because they have sound ethics and morals?

You're incredibly naive if you think there is a risk of getting caught if it's done correctly. I'll let others elaborate.

getpwned nods his head in agreement.

Maybe some people will. Most won't.

Again, "because they wouldn't do it" isn't a logical argument.

If you were a bookie, would you let anyone in the world tell you their bets after the games were over? What if they were honest? Lol....what a joke.

People who trust others not to use all available knowledge to get an edge are destined to go broke. Guaranteed people are Im'ing, emailing, calling people on the phone, etc......collusion is rampant.

Do you think poker players are more honorable than the FBI? How many times have you seen the FBI manufacture evidence? Answer: Many, and it is documented.

How many poker players have ever been thrown in prison for cheating? Cheating people at poker might be the best way ever to steal......what is the downside?

Russ Hamilton just lit a cigar and downed a cold one at the country club. Here's to you, suckers.

this. Whatever else can be said about it, this would be unacceptable imo. Even if you didn't intend to collude, poker is fundamentally about placing your money into play against others' money, and if you are on both sides of the bet, something is badly wrong, even if you claim you are playing your hardest.

It's often struck me that poker players as a group will accept some questionable, if not downright unethical behaviour. Some things that are very widely accepted are more murky than we'd normally concede. Sweating, for instance. When you are helping someone with their game, you might discuss their play before and after they make it. That's against most sites' ToCs, but few here would say you shouldn't do it. But even if we accept that's wrong, even fewer would accept that discussing another player's style is wrong. That's grey though. If I am watching you play an STT and some guy raises, if I say, that guy's raised a ton, I'm giving you aid that takes us very close to two players to the hand.

There are lots of other things. These forums are full of reports of welchers and cheats, and each has their supporters. You can buy databases of hands, and these are openly advertised on this site, which would be amazing if it was even close to true that 2p2 had a moral core. Grinders go to some lengths to provide themselves with artificial advantages over the fish. Some things the sites permit, but they, like Mason, are more interested in the appearance of being moral than the actuality. Stars doesn't care that you cheat; it only cares that the fish don't think you cheat.

A lot of stuff is impossible to police, even if it was thought desirable to. There just isn't any way to prevent guys from sharing their hole cards over the telephone, or taking over from each other in tourneys, or playing on each other's accounts. We have to accept those things.

On top of this, winning is very important to poker players, and given the rewards at the top, particularly those that are made away from the table, and the fame that winners, but not losers, attract, the temptation to ensure that you win and win big by any means must exist. It's possible, of course, that all highstakes regs are ethical enough not to collude at all, but I think it's more likely that if you consider collusion and similar cheating to be a spectrum: from outright sharing your hole cards in a game you are both playing, through sharing your accounts, to sitting next to someone while they're playing and discussing how to play a particular opponent, then yes, I think that some at least are on that spectrum. Where on it, I don't know.

It's no use claiming that high-profile regs are all beacons of ethical behaviour. They clearly aren't. Several are known to multiaccount or share accounts. Some have welched. Some have been accused of teaming up on opponents, although I'm not sure of the truth of that. They probably aren't any more or any less ethical than any other group of poker players.

Kurosh, you're an idiot. Do you understand what "logical argument" even means? There is no way to produce a "logical argument" that defends anybody's moral character. The only way to provide any indication to the morality or immorality of any particular person is to provide evidence (for or against) in the form of observed behavior, and/or publicly conveyed intentions (since private intentions are not available to us). There is no way to "logically argue" somebody's morality, all you can do is scrounge up some evidence and create a profile of the person in question, and then infer what sort of morals the profile suggests. Claiming that high stakes players must be assumed morally bankrupt until there can be provided a "logical argument" to prove their morality is not only absurd, but downright stupid.

Furthermore, claiming that a proposition that holds true for 50% of the population or 80%, or even 90% of the population holds any weight in suggesting that Phil and Z are cheaters shows that you have no ****ing idea about logic or statistics yourself. You are trying to place them in the category of "all intelligent human beings," and you claim the people in this pool possess the property of being immoral when they feel they cannot be punished. I don't know if your claim is usually true, it may well be, but Phil and Z are both exceptional people within this massive undifferentiated pool of people. You're much better suited treating them as a more specific category that shares much more characteristics with them than the pool of "all intelligent human beings" - namely, the pool of "all professional poker players." So, if you want to make an argument discrediting them due to some blanket property that you think they inherit due to the categorization you get to apply to them, it is much more statistically meaningful to talk about what you think all professional poker players are like, rather than what all intelligent people are like. And since we all are acquainted enough with professional poker players, we can imagine them much more easily and don't have to abstract to some philosophically mired concept like "the average person," and so for your argument to hold weight, you have to convince us that the average professional poker player will cheat when given the opportunity. Given, as you said, that when done correctly cheating is very easy to do undetected... well... either people are cheating everywhere all across every poker site, or more likely, you're very wrong and your argument is a piece of ****.

I hope that made sense, I didn't write that too well but I think I got my point across.

It does look like a dodgy game. These guys are very good friends. Not clear when they are playing with all their own money. Will not play against each other. Talk on AIM during games. If Gus sits out, they sit out.

No way would I sit in that type of game.

Take Z and Jman out of it as a specific reference. It is unfair to single any individual or group out unless you have good evidence to support your claims.

However, I think it is extremely naive and border line stupid to believe all high stakes games should be assumed on the level until proven guilty. When this level of money is changing hands corruption has existed in every other aspect of human society. To think some how online poker is the sole island of ethical excellence in the history of human society is absurdly naive.

Yeah, but dude, that category needs more substance than "people DOG IS HEAD rates". I don't think you guys get that. You don't think Z and Phil ever do anything unethical (and really, dude, do you not get that what one person considers ethical the next might not?) but that doesn't actually catapult them into a bracket of "superethical humans", and your view is no more objective or "logical" than kurosh's.


And bro, professional poker players are human too. Unless you know something we don't. The evidence that at least some of that pool of people will cheat given the opportunity is so abundant, it's incredible that you make the argument you do.

Not to mention the deep naivety of expressing that thought in a forum that often discusses examples of unethical behaviour in poker.

I think i the arguement that IP is making is that it unfair to draw inferences about the character of 2-3 unique indiviuals who exist in highly unusual circumstances based on broad observations of human behavior as it relates ethical corruption when dealing with vast amounts of money. While it is VERY possible that collusion/cheating could be occuring in these games it is just wrong-headed to assume it's likely or probable.

the rules are what makes games fun

cheaters should die imo

Sweet Jesus, what are you talking about. I said absolutely nothing about how ethical Z or Phil are. I said that Kurosh was making a very bad overgeneralization that breaks down very easily, and that really any attempt at using an argument by generalization is going to fail due to the example I provided at the end (i.e., if all intelligent poker players can cheat and get away with it, and intelligent poker players are inherently immoral when punishment is unlikely, then there would be collusion everywhere on every site, at low-midstakes and everywhere higher).

And yes, obviously professional poker players are human. They are a subset of the category "human," which gives them distinct characteristics that are not the same as those that are incidental to the average human (but nevertheless have all of the properties that are essential to the average human). One of these incidental properties is, I claim, an inherent lack of morality when punishment is impossible or unlikely. This may be characteristic of the wider category of all humans, but for the subset of all professional poker players, the vast majority of them do not possess this characteristic.

THEREFORE, if you want to provide an argument THAT WORKS, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way - by providing direct evidence, either through actions they've taken or intentions they've conveyed. The argument from generalization fails. That was the substance of my post.

That hand does not make me think that collusion is going on. I don't think it is unreasonable to shove QQ88 with all the dead money that is in the pot already and hope to pick it up or hopefully flip against one guy.

Secondly, if it was "cheating" i think that i pretty poor exicution of it in PLO. What if Gus had good run down. Jman has a slight edge over GuS, but Z is the dead money in the pot for them. Gus would be getting +EV against the combination of Z+Jman....

How can you say a guy like Jman has "ethics"? The guy is constently thinking about money, even when he is with friends he cant enjoy them because "games might be running" and he is "loosing money while talking to them"

I dont know about Z and Durrr, but Jman, cmon, all is life is focused about getting richer. With that said, cant you easily imagine him swapping with his friends?

Anyway, im not saying thats bad, ethics and moral over other people are just overrated, ethics and moral over yourself are another thing and from what i read from PG blog i can say he has none.

i love you.