Just for the avoidance of doubt; you're stating the official position of pokerstrategy.com is to endorse a cheater then accept no responsibility whatsoever of wrongdoing other than to remove association with them after the fact - which if anything benefits pokerstrategy.com to quietly get rid of that association.

Just to be clear that's the weight you put behind your endorsements so people can be aware in the future.

Nope.

What the statement is doing is it is confirming that company already commented to the full extent it can publicly comment.

It provides no reference to any other matters so please refrain from judgements and evaluations.

It's a bit rich to announce you refuse to publicly discuss it and in the same breath politely request that I, or anyone else, refrain from passing judgement. Whether you agree or disagree doesn't matter, if you aren't going to give a dialogue on this then the discussion about you will be had without you.

Yeah. So I'm not going to do that.

In my eyes it is actually close to impossible that you didn't know that Spin4Play was banned. As he was a head-coach for over a year, video's would've been expected along w/ other responsibilities. Care to refute this?

Because if you did know, poker-strategy actively participated in scamming it's own community.

This I can answer. We did not know until this PR storm started.

From what I know spin4play got banned recently when this matter got reported by some people - you can read the background in this thread.

If you were spin4play, would your first reaction to the ban be to hurry up and go tell PokerStrategy that you now got banned by PokerStars because of the unfair play during challenge? I guess not.

Once we found out we have been actively investigating the situation at our best. You can see 2 SpinLegends statements and all my PokerStrategy statements earlier in this thread that show this pretty well.

I hope this helps.
I can honestly say PokerStrategy.com did the right thing at any moment during this issue. 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.

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?

The bet was between Alvaro and bettors. Not between PokerStrategy and bettors. Not between SpinLegends and bettors.

Lets assuma I had an poker website with SpinLegends advert in it, and I had some kind of affiliate deal with them. Then one of their coaches makes a public bet and scams people. Should I be paying the losses? No.

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.

But there are tons of different shades in gray. Here there are two things that make the shade pretty dark:

1) As said, Spins idea is to enter the game without knowing your opponents. In other words it tells recreationals and fishes that "here no one can pick you out". To use a software to do that is definitely cheating. Like using a hud in games where no huds are allowed.

2) There was a bet involved. If he had just opened a challenge without any bets, it wouldn't be THAT serious. But now people made bets against him without knowing that he is going to use seating script (and allegations are made that he had people losing on purpose to him).

In short: Alvaro cheated. But he might not be as bad person as people might think.

i don't think there's much grey area here.

he was standing to win 100k of other peoples money v losing 30k of his own.

part of the reasoning behind him offering 3-1 [and later 3.5-1] odds was, to quote him

being able to avoid regs here isnt akin to having an extra stat in a HUD or a chart with a 3bt shove range v regs. its stealing EV from people betting against him, and there is zero chance he wouldnt know that

This should have been the first thing that PokerStrategy posted IMO.

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.

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.

I so knew we'd reach a point where "he didn't know he was running a scam".

I am curious did he give half to the poor, which definitely makes him a stand-up guy? I mean the scammers usual line is "but I needed the money more" and I assume the people that had enough money to bet against him didn't need them much?

Btw the initial pokerstrategy PR on 2p2 was complete and utter joke, if I take a random guy from the streets, chances he does better are quite high.

I think he cheated. And he should give back the bets. And so on. I am just trying to bring another side to the story, that is often forgotten in internet. I might be stupid, naive, stubborn or all of them.

Cheating always has a grey area. Some things go to total black (like seeing the holecards, hacking accounts etc.) and some are in the grey (seating scripts, real time advisors, new generation huds etc.)

One thing that I have seen in internet is that people are very eager to judge and make assumptions in haste. And they often widen those to whole person. This hasn't happened here, but as it might at some point I wanted to give the other approach.

But to make it very clear: I am not defending Alvaro, or saying that he didn't cheat.

P.S. Cheating can be compared to doping. The definition of it is constantly changing, as there are new softwares and the list of banned softwares is constantly changing. Just as in doping. Some methods and substances that are now forbidden have been allowed in the past. And besides the strict list of banned stuff we all have our own moral and ethics that affects the way we think about that list. That's where the gray area comes from.

So if even one man in the world thinks something is fine, then it's fine. Gotcha, makes sense. There are a lot of innocent people in prisons then, all falling in the gray area.

Maybe he simply opened more tables off to the side when he got in a 2 rec game, to lessen the edge he got from scamming. This makes it OK, right?

There is no grey area here. SpinWiz, the comparable yet much less powerful software, is explicitly banned on PokerStars.

22 March

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...l#post53614169


Last time i played vs spin4play was 02.12.2017 (Ive been frozen 04.12.17-10.01.2018) So i bet he is frozen/banned for already half a year.

Looks like he is/was important person in Spin Legends 26.02.2018

He asks for odds to be stacked against him and specifically mentions the toughness of he player pool as a reason for asking for those odds.

Him then using illegal software to avoid regs is not ambiguous in anyway. It's outright theft of bettors ev

I think the main question when it comes to Pokerstrategy is what is the current situation with the ownership of SpinLegends. Does spin4play, as founder, still have a stake in the company, does he do coachings/participate in the operation of the stable, does PS have ownership, because if they don't it seems absurd for them to still try to jeabait us to 'Become Legends'.
The only logical explanation for me is that spin4play is no longer active and involved, he's just hiding in his hole like a mouse, spending the money he managed to scam off and eventually build through advertising his scam, and taking a laugh at everyone.
But it's interesting what's going on with this SpinLegends stable, who runs it, who owns it, can somebody of it's players confirm that spin4play is no longer active?

EDIT:
I found this in pokerstrategy, written by a player in the stable yesterday:

So not only he is still active, but they have the nerve to try and charge players a huge fee for leaving, which is obviously what i would have done instantly too, if i was in this stable. Disgusting stuff, and also still staying on the pokerstrategy main page.

It would be normal if the other shareholders if there are any/Pokerstrategy/whoever bought off spin4play shares and sent him to the ****ing bin, but if he's still having the nerve to just do business as usual as if nothing happened, to threaten players with big fines under such an absurd situation... blows my mind how would anyone play a single game more for spin4play, plainly ridiculous

Hi, interesting discussion, I wonder where is a proof that spin4play was banned for seating scripts though? Everyone is talking about it, but so far w've only seen an e-mail from stars saying he was banned for "violating terms and conditions" and that they "cannot go into details". There is also a screenshot to some "script" posted by OP who to my knowledge is a smartspin staff member ???

Hello I am spin4play.

I express my inocency about the accusations of the legitimity of the challenge.

I will not participate anymore in discussions about the topic and I have no guarantees of convince all bettors. My personal security is more important than any ammout. All bettors will receive the full ammount of their bet (as won). Someone representing me will explain you the proccess after identity verification. Please start communication on this mail address created for it: bettorscontact@gmail.com

I have helped hundreds of students to have a successfull career in poker, no one have coached and interacted with poker students more hours than me in the last years. I am very proud of our hard work and achievements. My help to any of the students I have worked with has been legit. Thanks to those of you sending your support.

Ummm.... is this a troll?
If not, good ****.

wanna make a bet on the legitimacy?

Alvaro confirmed that spin4play . is his account and that he made that post.

So let me get this straight -- You're totally, 100% innocent and yet you're going to pay back all of the money you allege to have fairly won + pay the losses for a bet you didn't lose?

why would innocent guy pay back such amount after he did such a tough challenge both mentally and physically. I'm not buying this.

To think that this guy didn't share his software/script with other top regs associated with him, is naive IMO. This story could be much bigger than we think.

"""""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"""""

Either you dont know jack+++ about spins , or you are his friend . I find your post insulting to anyone with +10 IQ