Pretty sick. Nice work.

Funny how a lot of people just don't see what they did here and think this is just staying out of each others "way".

Ike hit the nail on the head somewhere.

Nice work Noah!

Sick detective work. Hopefully stuff like this will prevent others from doing the same.

Full disclosure, I don't play these games and I have no vested interest in them. I was a member at stoxpoker for 2 years or so. Never met Nick. Never talked to him. Probably sent him a pm or 2 saying nice vid.

Fuller disclosure, most of my play (if you can call it that) is on Stars and I do care about game security.

First things first. Whether or not the community believes Nick cheated or that Nick and the other guy did in fact cheat, I sort of doubt he thought he was.

First, given that they were investigated by both site security teams and found to be not cheating. Stars seemed to be in contact with both players, so it's not like they weren't aware of the investigation. They didn't change their behavior much after the investigation. This sort of sounds like "I really don't think this is cheating and Stars says so too."

Second, I think it was in Bryce's gfy vid he related that Nick claimed to have made less at the table when littlezen/kinetica was also at the table. If this is true, which I'm sure Stars and FTP security will verify in their new investigation, then the edge they were creating didn't seem to be a very good one. You'd sort of have to do some fancy math to decide if they created residual edge against the others at the table. But, after the first investigation, you'd think they'd just sell each other a piece of action to get off the radar. But, they don't appear to have done that.

Why is this important? If your gonna cast aspersions on a guys character, you might as well cast the right ones. Bad cheater, stupid angle shooter, stinking short stack, etc, etc.

Also, rushing to judgement and asking for all the money in their accounts when maybe no actual edge was created seems hasty. Call me crazy.

Second, is the irony lost that some of the data that Noah used to do this work came from anonymous sources that were illegally data mining? This is clearly in violation of the T&C's of the sites, is thought to be an unfair advantage by the sites themselves and is likely a source of a durable advantage. You know, cheating.

If you are pissed about this, it seems to me that you should be asking cts, hastings and townsend to give isuldur his $2m back. They used illegally mined data to develop and share strategies, they pooled their money to reduce risk and they took his money.

Seriously, this really bothers me as a player on Stars. If you are gonna bring Nick down for this behavior (I don't have a strong opinion on this, not my games), don't put the pitch forks away until you take down the data miners as well. Those guys operate with an information advantage in a game of information in a way that the sites do consider cheating. This isn't a grey area. It's clearly in the T's&C's. Cheating. Just 'cuz the cool deep stack kids do it and "everyone else" does as well doesn't make it less so.

I should start out by pointing out that I am not involved in this in any way and don’t even play cash games (I wandered over here from HSMTT) but just wanted to throw in my 2 cents worth and roundup for visitors like me.

Imo there are 4 substantial pieces of evidence here which establish collusion of some sort beyond a reasonable doubt:

(1) The impressive statistical work done by NoahSD, whose dispassionate approach gives it high credibility.
(2) The allegations of collusion made some time ago by HS cash regs, particularly as there seem to have been separate allegations relating to play on PS and FT where the players involved used different sns. This suggests that a number of knowledgeable players felt that colluding was happening before any of this blew up.
(3) The fact that the 2 players would sit together very frequently as shown by the high percentage of their hands at the same table. See also creedofhubris’ post #848 in this thread which suggests that they were often sitting at the same times …
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...-tl-dr-757267/
(4) The failure of either of the 2 players involved to give a credible account of their actions in the face of all these serious accusations. Stoxtrader has basically admitted multi-accounting and given a woolly answer to the real questions. Littlezen/Rob P. has said nothing to clear his name.

Based on all this I think it is clear that there was some collusion going on. I’m not in the camp that says any collusion = guilt and it makes no difference how/what/why. If they just soft played each other then, meh, that happens live and online all the time. Shouldn’t do it but its not necessarily done with bad intentions and probably doesn’t create big harm (should have known better, 1 year ban, bit of humility imo). If it went beyond that with the aim of using it deceptively to win more money from others then that is pretty serious, especially given that the players are HS pros and would definitely be aware of how bad that was (lifetime ban, compensate players, total disgrace etc). If that is the case then I think it matters much less what methods they actually used. I don’t play cash but its easy for me to think of many ways in which 2 players can profitably collude, some of which haven’t been mentioned so far. It only takes a small additional edge (eg 1bb/100) to be worth a huge amount of $$$ because of the number of hands involved. Also, if they are willing to use such obvious cheating techniques then we have to assume they would be just as willing to share hole cards (a huge edge).

The question which hasn’t really been answered is: was it just friendly softplaying etc or more serious malicious collusion? I think (3) above point to the latter because softplaying just occurs when players happen to be seated together, cheating collusion requires the players to sit at the same tables. Also, there is just something a bit odd about 2 top flight HS regs just softplaying on a friendly basis - its not like they are a couple of old nit buddies playing in the $1-2 Friday night game at the local casino. (4) above (lack of denial/clarification from the players) also points to bad motives but no real proof has been presented yet.

There are 3 ways this might be clarified: (i) the sites can check out the hole cards which should make things reasonably obvious; (ii) more work by people like NoahSD, especially if specific hand histories can be put together; and (iii) I sense that one or two people who have posted on this subject know a bit more than they have said and they might reveal more.

The interesting thing about this thread for me is that it raises the question what if? What if players out there choose to cheat? How much is happening already? Lets face it, it wouldn’t be difficult to sit in the same room (the IP address can easily be masked), share hole cards, use collusion-based plays (which none of us should describe here) etc. Actually, it doesn’t even need 2 players, just 2 (or more) accounts. If it were done by an intelligent experienced player the edge would be pretty significant and there would be ways to disguise what he was doing through variation. The 2 biggest sites out there don’t seem to have the systems to pick this up. Short of the very rare scandal blowing up like this, how will the players be protected from this long term?

Noah, beer on me at some time. Q's:

1) Do you have any evidence that they were playing on a single, shared roll? That's a pretty big aggravating fact. i.e. it's obviously wrong either way, but soft-playing each other vs. actually sharing the wins of the 2 accounts are different types of 'wrongs', with the latter being far more serious, imo (standard disclaimer: i'm not arguing the former is OK by any means)

2) Have you been in contact with Stars / FTP, and if so, do you think they're taking this seriously? 2+2'er Josem (also a stars rep now, i believe) spearheaded a lot of the Absolute investigation and I'm sure will have a unique appreciation for the statistics and such.

3) Did you know during ur investigation that the 2 people behind this knew each other? Boywonder claims to have known this all along.

Hi Noah,

As a stars player, I do appreciate the effort.

One of the issues that I've had trouble with is the whole speculation that unusual play leads to edge. You've shown unusual play. There seem to be all sorts of theories about edge. Some are very rational, I'm sure.

Does your data show actual edge? Are your sample sizes large enough to show that they actual enjoyed any advantage when they were at the same table employing these strategies? Actually showing edge seems much more powerful than speculating on it. I don't see that in your work.

Not to criticize anything else that you say, but surely if someone's cheating it's irrelevant an edge is created or not. The act of cheating is merely seeking to create an edge through unfair means, it's not always successful. Just because you're a bad cheater doesn't mean you shouldn't face penalties for it.

Josem is Michael J on Stars who responded to Bwhales email. So it seems like MJ is aware.

The original e-mail from the stars investigation indicated that they knew each other. Stars game security seems to have communicated with both of them. At least that's the gist I recall from the e-mail.

Yeah, here's the relevant quote:

I hear what you are saying. I'm not suggesting that if there is crime there should be no punishment if it wasn't good crime.

I think I'm suggesting that the punishment fit the crime.

I'm trying to say that "1. didn't think cheating 'cuz stars and ftp said so" + "2. no edge" + "3. but actually cheated when looked at it in a different way" < "4. used data mining (plus talent and luck of course) to beat a guy out of a whole lot of money"

I don't know if #1 is true by any stretch. Don't know anything about #2.

#4 yielded a 2 month suspension or some such thing and isuldur didn't see any of his nickels returned.

Does that make sense?

We seem to be equating these guys with potripper and that seems like a stretch to me.

thanks for posting that. my recollection was that stars claimed to have communicated, but I was clearly in error.

I'm also really mad that one guys alleged cheating is being being judged by another anonymous guys cheating and nobody seems very bothered by the second cheater.

Saying everyone data mines and it's ok doesn't cut it in my book. Just like the everyone multi-accounted back in the day didn't cut it with Noah or Nick. The sites are unambiguous about this.

Awesome work Noah. Personally I feel stars will shy away from this like it's a rattlesnake, but I have full confidence in Josem.

Not that what I think matters much, but I just wanted to say good job to Noah.

Any guesses on how long it will take stars or FTP to comment in this thread?
Days, Weeks, Months?

I don't really know what evidence like this would look like. I also think that the way they played in the games is way more important than anything else.

I mean.. players obviously shouldn't share rolls and play in the same game together. But the reason for that is because it gives them massive incentive to collude in various ways. Here, the players already colluded, so I don't really care if they shared rolls or not.

Obviously I've let Stars + FTP know everything I know.

Stars has said their investigating. FTP has a policy that they won't reveal whether or not they're investigating and that after an investigation they won't reveal the results. I'm hoping FTP changes this policy, but for now I know absolutely nothing.

Josem = PokerStarsMichaelJ and seems to be the main guy investigating all this.

This was posted a couple of times early on, and the Stars support e-mail even mentioned that they seemed to know each other. Other than that I didn't really know anything about this.

I know a little more now, but nothing too interesting.

All,
WRT how this gave them an edge. I think I made this fairly clear here. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...6&postcount=50 .

I can't figure out what edge they got empirically because there's too much stuff that would corrupt the data. They were probably way more likely to play with each other at certain times, they may have been more likely to play with each other at better or worse tables depending on how they table selected, and I'm told now that lots of regs were avoiding sitting at the table when both of them were playing. So all that stuff would make that data completely meaningless.

I can try to calculate the kind of edge this stuff gives you directly in a simplified case, and I'm trying to get that done now. Probably will be a while, though.

Regardless, softplaying is cheating. There's no debate there.

Here's an article by DN about this: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/6188320.html

Here's the wiki article on poker cheating listing softplaying as a common method of cheating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_poker

This is OT and only needs one answer but:

WRT playing your friend differently, in this case the softplaying obviously creates an unfair advantage.

What about in cases where you actively seek to get into big pots and outplay your friend at the table? I have a friend who when I play with I actively try to make audacious bluffs against, massively overbet etc mainly for bragging rights and needling.

I think now this could potentially affect the other players, especially if they are 'caught in the middle' so to speak. Am I doing anything particularly wrong or is it bad etiquette to do so? To go further, this play between us often ends up with both having bought several times so inevitably we will both have bigger stacks than the table limit as a result. Is this an unintentional form of cheating?

All the hands I collected are in a separate database and not used to populate my HUD. I'll delete it when I'm done. The data PTR gave me was anonymized.

Plus, I barely play in the relevant games.

It took me a couple hours to read this (because I actually wanted to understand it) and by the time I got to the replies I could only make it through a few of them.

Outstanding, Noah! Congratulations on having the smarts to pull this off and the integrity and morals of the game in mind, to give you the will to do it. This is what it's all about, and this game never makes it without these kind of people in it. Big thanks to everyone else involved, good job everyone. (including PTR, witch has given me a different view of them).

Hi all,

We understand and appreciate that this issue is of high interest to the community at large, and therefore wanted to let everyone know that we are indeed aware of this thread and its contents.

We are taking the information outlined herein and will attempt to duplicate and verify the OP’s analysis over the complete database of hands played on FTP. Once we have done this, we should be in a position to comment further.

Sean

We'll see, but I'll be doing my part to bring it to FTP. I hope we all do. This is a huge point and if this one is missed, might as well forget everything.

EDIT:gogogo Sean/FTP, do what's right.

I don't mind that. If I wake up with aces I will get more money because of that. On the other hand if your friend raise with AQ and you fold your AQ because of softplaying then I will not get the money I should get if I wake up with aces in BB. That is unfair, you and your friend will get more money with aces in a long run because 2 people might have big hands playing hard against each other but when I have aces I will get the money only from one of you. If you are headsup on the flop then I don't mind if you slowplay your friend but slowplaying preflop is cheating. At these stakes edges are small and softplaying influence the game.

btw Nick's winrate when at the table with Rob is super irrelevant. The more relevant number is their combined winrates when apart and when together. Wasn't it shown that Nick was softplaying Rob harder than Rob was softplaying him? Thus most of Nick's plays were probably -ev for him but super +ev for Rob?

But if it's shown that they both lost more money (aka their collusion failed) I mean it's still kinda unethical that they did it but if no one is out money because of it I think you can safely say it's not quite as bad than if they profited from it. It's still illegal but not quite as bad as a real bank robbery when 2 idiots try to hold up a bank with water guns or fail massively in some other way. They'd still probably go to jail though.

Also Noah obviously softplaying is cheating but you posted an article from DN who talks about a tourney with 6 left paying 5 spots I don't think any of these hands were from tourneys...