Quote:
Originally Posted by Cornie4ever
I of course regret we advertised something that is now proven to have been unfair but we did so in a good faith. Nobody knew about these issues up until recently. If you run a community or news portal in poker, you always try to evaluate public data about poker players and you give visibility to good guys and ambassadors who promote the game in a positive way. We have good filters in place. In this case however we couldnt have known. The challenge looked genuine and very transparent as posted before in this thread. It only now turns out to be different.
Thanks for understanding.
This should have been the first thing that PokerStrategy posted IMO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kyyberi
I don't get the logic behind those demands that PokerStrategy should pay bettors anything. Should 2+2 do the same, and all the other sites/companies connected with SpinLegends?
Perhaps I skimmed by that, but I don't recall anyone saying that PokerStrategy should pay the bettors because of their association with Spin4play. Now if Spin4play owns or has a partial ownership stake in PokerStrategy, then the situation would be different. If so, an owner of the company actively cheated to scam bettors and continued to perpetuate the scam in order to make himself (and the company) more money. Does Alvaro have a stake in the company? That would be an important thing to find out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kyyberi
Seating script is in the gray area of cheating. PokerStars list of allowed/banned softwares is constantly changing, so the line between cheating/non-cheating is changing. Stand alone preflop solver softwares are in the gray area too, and they are getting more and more popular. Complex hud softwares are cheating, but still people use them.
What I am trying to say here (please read the whole post before commenting) is that Alvaro might not have thought that he is cheating in terms of _cheating_. Just operated in the gray area, that is quite common in competitive poker. Same thing happens in high level sports with doping. There isn't just doping and non-doping, there is a huge gray area. And when you live in that area and world long enough, the shades of gray start to diminish. You start to do things to help your performance, that are in the grey area of doping, but you don't consider yourself as a cheater.
In short: Alvaro cheated. But he might not be as bad person as people might think.
Your argument appears to be "He cheated, but other people cheat too and his cheating might not be as bad as their cheating."
For starters, the "other people cheat too" isn't an excuse to defraud more innocent people. He cheated. He stole. Period.
If he somehow didn't think it was cheating or didn't think it was that bad (I assume this will be the excuse if/when he finally decides to defend himself), then he's incredibly ignorant and
still owes the bettors the money. If I thought the bank would be cool with me running up in the place and taking stacks of cash, that doesn't mean I won't be serving time in prison.
And you've got this whole tangent about him cheating/but not to the level of other cheats, but I'm struggling to think of what's definitively worse than:
1) Using illegal software to 2) skirt the rules specifically designed for this particular format, 3) collecting six figures worth of action with the plan of using an unfair advantage unbeknownst to the bettors and 4) defrauding not only them, but the fellow players in the games. I didn't even mention the possibility of him 5) allowing others within the group to use the software or 6) the allegations of chipdumping/creating extra accounts/buying extra accounts to ensure his victory.
It's not grey area cheating, it's not even close. If this is grey, what's actually cheating? Does he have to manipulate the RNG? Does he have to hack your computer and be able to see your screen? Come on, man.