Rizen:
What type of legal action is underway?

How long is it expected to take?

What is the expected timeline before we see something public like a court filing?
Is Lock willing to answer factual questions (which should not interfere with any legal process) such as hand histories or the identity of the account that lost the 25/50 PLO session?

What aspects of this situation is Lock willing to discuss?

Is somebody from Lock willing to answer basic questions either here or some other venue such as an interview?

For some reason I'm kinda not buying the "legal action" thing at least in the terms we are thinking of. I think it may be more in line with Lock severing ties with him and making sure both parties are aware and understand the legal ramifications (he no longer can play on their site and he no longer is part of the lock team as well as no longer receives any perks that he once did)

I highly doubt they are trying to take him to court for anything. IDK

1) I will check the status. I can't speak to the particulars until it is filed, but I'll see if I can get a time frame or status on that though. Once it is I assume it will be public I assume so it should be accessible, although I'll admit I'm not 100% familiar with what jurisdiction it will be in and how much information is public there.

2) I have absolutely no idea, I can ask but my best guess is that the amount of time it will take has A LOT of variables involved and I won't get any sort of estimate. I know there is a balance between getting things done quickly as well as making sure due diligence is done.

3) I'll ask on this along with the first. My best guess is that I won't get an exact answer as generally it's a bad idea to let your opposition know your plan ahead of time. I might get some sort of general idea though.

4) I'm willing to address everything that I can, and willing to pass along any questions and/or concerns to the appropriate people and try and get answers. I will directly address anything that is posed to me in this thread, although I cannot promise that I will be able to or allowed to answer it all. If that sounds convoluted basically if you directly ask any question I will either answer it, tell you I'm not allowed, or ask someone else for the answer or if I'm allowed to answer it.

Assuming that the factual questions that followed were being asked, I really doubt the hand histories will be provided. I can ask, but I say that because a few weeks ago I was dealing with a user that had a hard drive crash and wanted Merge to send all of their hand histories to them to restore their database. i was told users may have the ability to request that sort of information from the client in the future, but that Merge wouldn't provide that sort of hand history data now. If they won't give me a user's own hand histories to restore their database, I doubt they'll agree to release someone else's PLO HHs to the public. I did let them know that it is VERY important to serious players to be able to get access to their hand histories (for record keeping purposes, tax purposes, many others), and that we needed to make this available to users if we wanted to attract and keep more of the professional/serious community.

On the player identity, I can't speak to the specifics of Jose's contract or any pending litigation, but I think it's safe to assume that adhering to network/site rules is a part of any pro contract for any site, and that any sort of potential collusion or multiple people playing on an account is in violation of network/site rules on all sites that I'm aware of, so I doubt that I'll be able to release the identity as it may related directly to a dispute over whether an existing contract may have been violated, assuming that the contract would be coming into question as a part of any litigation.

5) I'm not sure right now. Like I said above if you have specific questions you can direct them toward me, and I will answer them as completely as I can/am allowed.

6) I'll answer what I can here. I stopped tracking the NVG thread as much because it's a real pain to have to log out, log in under my Rizen account, and read/post. I seriously doubt anyone else would be available for any interview at this moment in time, and I doubt I would be allowed to do any formal interview beyond answering questions here at this time.

I realize this may or may not be worth much to anyone, but anyone who knows about me or my history should know that if I ever found out that Lock itself was knowingly involved or complicit in any sort of cover up I would cease to be associated with the site.

That doesn't by any means mean that with the benefit of hindsight that different decisions might have been made, and I'm fairly certain that no one from Lock would say any different if they were to answer honestly. It does mean that I'm comfortable at this time with the decisions Lock itself made based on the knowledge had at the time and the choices at their disposal.

Before anyone tries to parse my words too carefully, I can really only speak to the Lock specific part of things as that is where I have the most knowledge/transparency. I have very little insight once it leaves Lock and goes to the network, which is why I was very specific in saying Lock itself, not because I have some sort of knowledge that would imply something outside of Lock took place, I just honestly don't have that level of visibility.

I realize that this means little to most without sharing the specifics so that they can come to their own conclusions about their comfort levels before making a decision where to put their hard earned money, and I'm sure I'll get at least a few flames for not being 100% direct/transparent. I'm being as complete and forthcoming as I can at this time.

-Rizen

FWIW, I don't doubt this for a second, nor do I think most people who've followed online poker for a while do.

While I think Lock looks really bad here, I think you've handled this as well as it can be handled.

Can you or the site confirm or deny if an actual audit took place on the "girahh" account after the Bluff poker challenge? If so, what was the extent of the audit.? If not, why did the site claim that an audit was done?

Can you explain the general audit procedures for the site?

Can you describe how pros are usually selected, and what process (if any) you use to verify a sponsored pros results and or claims? Can you specifically describe how Jose came to be a pro on the site?

I understand if you can't answer any of the specifics, but a general idea of Lock's policies for hiring pros and auditing accounts for suspicious activity might be helpful.

1) Yes, there was an audit. I cannot speak to the extent of the audit other than the say that at the time of that statement (it went out May 4th, challenge ended May 1st at midnight) it had not been fully completed yet, but enough was known to know that he needed to be DQ'd and a rightful winner needed to be both verified and awarded. The statement came out ~72-96 hrs after the challenge was over. The eventual winning account, Michael Drummond, was the only one with a fully completed audit from the challenge at the time of the statement to verify that he did indeed win the challenge without breaking any rules.

2) I cannot other than to say that the site does not handle the audits itself, because many of the security items involved in an audit can take place on multiple sites (theoretically, in a 9 max game there could be players from 9 different sites) audits are handled on the network layer, as they are the only ones with access to all of the necessary information. So no site on the network has 'general audit procedures'. I realize this is symantics though, and I'm not allowed to explain the general audit process for the network at this time.

3) I cannot give any specific strategy around how we select our pros, as I'm pretty sure most sites wouldn't give away their marketing strategies. Where possible, we verify results and claims. Online through sites like PTR, OPR, sharkscope, etc and live through the hendon mob, bluff, card player, etc. There are obviously sites that aren't tracked and cash game results can be particularly tough to verify live or online, but due diligence is done. I cannot speak specifically to how Jose became a pro on the site.

-Rizen

...

If the audit wasn't complete why did Lock put out a statement which looked like closure on the matter? Why not say Jose is DQ'd (so no 2 can win the challenge) and Lock will decide on action against him once audit is complete?

Indeed, really big mistake on Lock Poker's part to state unequivocally that Girah won enough to win the challenge via legitimate play when the audit wasn't even finished yet. That was a deliberate error as well, and a pretty obvious one - why would Lock Poker put out that then knew he was honest when they did not, in fact, know that he was?

This entire scandal revolves around people essentially vouching for this kid without the facts to back it up. Lock Poker said he won honestly without knowing if that was true or not.

From the statement:

To this day this is factually true. This is why I think intent was so important. In hindsight the wording was REALLY poor for sure, but it was never said he 'legitimately won' the challenge, in fact if he 'legitimately won' then why would he be DQ'd in the first place?

Yes, in hindsight the statement should have obviously just read 'Breaking the rules is strictly disallowed and Jose has been disqualified' and everything else just left alone.

The statement says nothing about 'winning enough to win the challenge via legitimate play' though, just that there was enough money won from his IP to have won the challenge. I realize that's semantics, but there is a big different between an over-zealous PR group trying to put a positive spin on things and an elaborate cover up.

-Rizen

I didn't say there was a cover-up (not in this post anyway).

But I take your point, since the wins occurred on the Girah account and that IP address, the assumption was that Jose played them. That doesn't explain how an obvious chip dump was missed, but perhaps that was part of the audit that wasn't finished yet?

I'm honestly not trying to make it sound as if I believe there was a cover-up; I'm waiting to see what else Lock has to say on the matter.

Because as far as the Bluff Poker Challenge was concerned, this was closure. That is what the statement was about, the challenge. There are player privacy issues, so except in this most recent extreme case, we don't issue statements about actions or potential actions taken against specific individual accounts. To the best of my knowledge this is pretty standard. I know I certainly wouldn't want a statement being issued that my play was being 'further looked into', potentially sparking speculation, then be cleared later.

Obviously in hindsight there are things we would change, but given the knowledge at that time saying we were 'deciding on future action' would have likely lead to speculation and is just unfair.

-Rizen

1) No, at least in the discussions I was involved in 2+2 was never mentioned. Up until the last month or so I was never aware of the original 2+2 claims.

2) N/A since to the best of my knowledge no one knew about the claims at the time of the DQ.

3) To the best of my knowledge this was just wording and not an attempt to imply anything.

4) We were aware of suspicious activity on multiple accounts throughout the challenge where players won large amounts of money from single other players. We asked the network to help us look into all of these, many were still being completed at the time of the statement, some had already been completed. I cannot speak specifically to Jose at this time since it deals with specifics that could impact the upcoming case.

5) I was certainly never aware the issue was subsequently raised on 2+2 again. Certainly it wasn't in this forum, and I do have google alerts set up to pick up posts with the phrase 'Lock Poker' in them, but I monitor about 4 different forums and never specifically saw that thread and no one brought it to my attention.

6) I addressed this elsewhere.

7) I cannot disclose this for player privacy reasons.

8) This is a really vague/open ended question. We did sack him as a pro when we knew about the most recent HU questions. Obviously at no point before that was he terminated, but I cannot speak to specifics of what (if any) action was taking against him short of termination prior to that. I could cite both the pending case and player privacy reasons for this.

-Rizen

I don't agree that the statement was just about the challenge, it was also about Jose. If it was just about the challenge it would have said girah DQ'd, prize goes to second place finisher. Instead it also talked about how Jose was an "exceptional player" and could learn from his mistakes etc.

I believe it also suggested closure when it referred to legitimate play apart from the one instance mentioned. Lock CEO said this:

Quote:

".... we have found that he broke some rules and that will not be tolerated by Lock," said Jennifer Larson CEO/Owner of Lock Poker. "We pride ourselves in standing for trust, legitimacy and loyalty. The truth is sometimes hard to stand by but it is the only way we can move forward. Although José won enough money from his own IP to have legitimately won the challenge, the unfortunate fact remains that breaking the rules is strictly disallowed. The fact remains Jose is an exceptional player and I firmly believe that mistakes only lead to greatness if learned from."

Saying he legitimately won the challenge would seem a bit premature if the audit wasn't complete.

Lock also allowed Jose to include this in the same release put out by them:

Quote:

"... but I truly had no intention of circumventing the rules in any way. Though it is no excuse, I want to be fully transparent at this point to let the poker world know what has happened and why. The computer in question was my backer, who logged into my account to check my balance and ended up playing some $25/$50 PLO while I was asleep and lost some money. Though on the merit of my own legitimate play I had enough winnings to win the Bluff Challenge, ...."

which also indicates that it was all legit apart from the backer incident.

The quotes would get messy, so hopefully this just appears under raidalot's post.

1) I will concede it was obviously also about Jose, my wording was poor. It was primarily about the challenge though.

2) I addressed this in another post, and I realize it's semantics, but it was never said that he 'legitimately won the challenge', that's taking a part of the quote somewhat out of context. It was stated that enough money was won from his on IP to have legitimately won the challenge. Again, it's semantics, but I could say 'I've won enough money in my lifetime to have legitimately won the challenge' and that's a factual statement, even though it is quite obvious that the terms of the contest require it to be won in a month. The terms of the contest required play to adhere to the rules and regulations of Lock and Merge, so the sentence itself shouldn't have been included and is kind of ridiculous. Full audit or no, chip dumping or no, the 'backer on his account' alone means nothing was 'legitimately won' regardless of if he would have won without violating that particular rule.

The wording of the sentence was terrible, but semantically it is the same as if the statement read 'If Jose hadn't violated the rules, he would have legitimately won the challenge'. well.... duh?

Notice how differently the sentence reads if it has been stated 'Although Jose legitimately won enough money from his own IP to have won the challenge'. The two are completely different sentences with different meanings and everyone is interpreting the former as the latter. Like I said, poor word choice, and I always hate to use semantics as an out, but in this case it really does change the meaning of the sentence. It's part of the reason intent is so important IMO. If it's over zealous PR trying to put a positive spin on a negative situation, that's a lot different than what is being implied. You obviously know my opinions on the intent.

3) That's a quote from Jose. Yes it's in our release and yes he was a sponsored pro of our site. Yes, we deserve a certain hit because as a sponsored pro we are essentially endorsing him as a person. I cannot elaborate on the Jose incident in particular but if I were to have quoted Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal (hopefully this doesn't date me) and issued a release that he 'did not have sexual relations with that woman' and then found out later that that is because he doesn't view a BJ as sex, it means that I made a poor choice in quoting Bill Clinton, not that I don't think a BJ counts as sex. I realize the anology isn't perfect, and personal opinions on BJs, sex, and cheating aside, hopefully it makes the point.

I certainly understand the view points and questions. I also certainly expect that we are to be held accountable for endorsing Jose. I get all that and if the situation were reversed I would certainly be asking similar questions and be questioning our ability as a judge of character. That is something we have to repair over time and with future actions, and I know for some people it might never be repaired.

What I don't agree with is the implied accusations that we were complicit in some sort of elaborate cover up or that without pressure from 2+2 Jose never would have been DQ'd from the challenge. Neither of those are true, although I realize without being able to release a lot of information at this time that's just my word and nothing more. I sincerely hope that these things end up coming to light as a part of the legal process, but I can't go into great detail about them right now.

To be clear, on the elaborate HU high stake scheme, 2+2ers were critical in uncovering that, as there is no way we woud have been able to put it together since so much of it took place via skype/teamviewer. Obviously some people can assume we only acted on that info because the 2+2ers would have come here and posted it anyways. Obviously this is just my word, but in other situations where non 2+2ers have come to us with information (although obviously not of this magnitude) we've always acted on it provided we could verify it was true.

so i don't want anyone to think I'm discounting 2+2ers parts in the high stakes HU issues, I am simply stating that in my experience with Lock over the last 2+ years, they've always attempted to do what they thought was right regardless of if there would be a spotlight on the issue or not. I won't argue that all of those decisions were correct with the full benefit of hindsight, but I will definitely argue that the process to come to those decisions was one that came from the right place.

-Rizen

FWIW, I don't think that the DQ was the result of pressure from 2p2. I'm withholding judgement on the coverup; this is nothing against you personally, and I have heard very good things about your reputation and ethics, but I certainly think its possible that someone was at least suspicious during the audit and decided not to investigate those suspicions. And now that I know the audit is not done at the skin level, I also think it's possible that more became known at some point but that either Lock was not made aware, or the few individuals at Lock who were made aware decided not to act on it (cover it up, as it were).

I'm not saying I know those things to be true. I'm saying that they cannot be excluded as possibilities at this time, and I look forward to future information being forthcoming.

Thanks for confirming that you didn't know but is it possible to get Lock's confirmation that nobody there was aware of allegations of cheating during the challenge until a month ago? The post I quoted in the OP was deleted after a time but other posts in the main girah thread at the time also referred to it.

Again, it is helpful to have your impression but would you please obtain Lock's confirmation that they only meant one violation when they said ...
"violations of BPC rules as well as the Merge Gaming network rules were discovered. The violations with Girah's account included computers at multiple locations logging in and playing on his account."

I guess we have to await the publication of the legal case for this. But, it would be difficult to understand if an audit of this suspicious activity by the site and the network failed to identify what was found by the player who posted the original suspicions did: a player who had no reason for suspicion, wasn't engaged in an audit and didn't have all the detailed info:

Quote:

Macedo has won the challenge earning over $104k during the month of April. I find this fascinating considering he was having a losing month according (to the article) with 2 days left. He had been largely playing no higher than 1k NL and as low as 400 NL. Then all of a sudden on the final day he goes on to play nosebleed stakes and wins enough money to be in first place.

For those that don’t know nosebleed stakes seldom if ever run on the Merge network. So what a coincidence that he was able to find a game at those stakes, on the final day, and not only win but win enough money to get into the lead.

Furthermore, the person against whom the bulk of the money was won was playing under the alias “SamChauhan”. If that is indeed Sam Chauhan of http://www.changingyou.com/, he is a mindset coach not a poker player. Never before have I heard of him playing online poker. Now he is playing against top opponents at nose bleed levels? What made him choose that particular day to all of a sudden start playing 20kNl? Another coincidence?

I believe Sam is from the US, so how did he manage to get so much money onto Merge in such a short period? A bank wire? After black friday? I had never seen him play there before and have not seen him since.

I happened to watch some of their match and it seemed that sam was playing very erratic and unconventional poker. Now I am not going to claim to even understand the thought process of high stakes players, but to me some of the hands that were played seemed very questionable.

Finally, my last coincidence involves a player named INEVERFOLDI. It is rumored that this player also lost quite a bit of money to Girah. I have never seen this player play heads up high stakes and he also happens to be from Portugal. INEVERFOLDI and Girah are the only two portuguese players I have ever seen play high stakes on Merge. Another coincidence?

Again, would you answer for Lock generally, not just your personal experience. I would find it remarkable if nobody at Lock was aware of public allegations against their pro in a controversial thread dedicated to him in the biggest poker forum that exists.

The question was not intended to be vague, but unless you tell us what Lock knew it is hard to make it precise. Essentially, Lock knew girah cheated. At the least they knew that he had let someone else play on his account during the challenge - why did the site retain a cheater as a pro? If the audit then found other violations (which we so far haven't been informed of but it should have at least identified the chipdumping) then why was he retained at that point?

Thanks for responding itt Rizen.

Although José won enough money from his own IP to have legitimately won the challenge, the unfortunate fact remains that breaking the rules is strictly disallowed.

To this day this is factually true. This is why I think intent was so important. In hindsight the wording was REALLY poor for sure, but it was never said he 'legitimately won' the challenge, in fact if he 'legitimately won' then why would he be DQ'd in the first place?

So is the funny part of the story that Girah would have won if he woulda played legit?

No. Although the money was won while playing on his own IP, it was won by chipdumping from another account (which the Lock audit should have picked up).

So in my previously quoted statement ,

"Although José won enough money from his own IP to have LEGITIMATELY WON THE CHALLENGE, the unfortunate fact remains that breaking the rules is strictly disallowed." - RIZEN
"To this day this is factually true. This is why I think intent was so important. In hindsight the wording was REALLY poor for sure, but it was never said he 'legitimately won' the challenge, in fact if he 'LEGITIMATELY WON' then why would he be DQ'd in the first place?" - RIZEN

RIZEN is in fact contradicting himself one sentence after another?
It seems to me he said he did legitimately win. Then quoted himself saying that he never said he legitimately won.

Context, these two things do not contradict each other.

'Although José won enough money from his own IP to have legitimately won the challenge'

is not the same as

'Jose legitimately won the challenge'

just as

'If I were blessed with telepathy, I could legitimately get any woman I wanted'

is not the same as

'I could legitimately get any woman I wanted'

I realize I started it, but I'm not trying to get into a word parsing contest here. All I was trying to illustrate, is that the issued sentence in the statement is factually true, and does NOT necessarily mean what everyone is implying it means. That's not to say that should clear up the entire matter or anything, but everyone seems to be latching onto that sentence and assuming it means something that it does not. IMO it was a bad choice to include that sentence in the first place, not just because of what happened now, but because if someone is being DQ'd from something it really doesn't matter if you could have won without the DQ. you got DQ'd so you didn't win, period.

It would be like if Usain Bolt, who recently was DQ'd from a 100M event for a false start, tried to say 'I would have won if it weren't for the false start!'. Well, maybe, but it's pretty irrelevant.

At any rate, i'm not trying to deflect from the main issues. I was specifically asked about it so I was trying to provide a clear and complete response.

Thanks

-Rizen

Rizen is defending Lock's statement by taking a very literal interpretation of their words (although when they talked about violations (plural) he says we shouldn't take a literal interpretation!).

Basically when girah won the challenge there are 2 cheating aspects we know about:
(1) Another player played on his account from a different computer; and
(2) Chips were dumped to girah's account from another account.

I think the distinction that Rizen is making (correct me if I'm wrong) is that if (1) was ignored the girah account still won enough, when played from his own IP address, to be the winner of the challenge.

Having said that, we now know that he didn't legitimately win that money as most of it was chipdumped to him, i.e. (2), and its also possible that others played on his account remotely using Teamviewer software which would still have shown up as his IP address.

imo the statement certainly gave everyone the impression that girah would have legitimately won if (1) was disregarded. It was especially so as they allowed Jose to include this:

Quote:

Though on the merit of my own legitimate play I had enough winnings to win the Bluff Challenge

RE: Raidalot, if this doesn't address your specific questions please let me know, but I believe everything falls into one of a few categories:

1) I am only authorized to give my opinions/impressions. Council has advised them to not speak further on the issue until the matter is resolved legally, as most attorneys do.

2) I am the person at Lock in charge of looking at the forums and bringing any pertinent information to the appropriate people. I know others than myself have set up alerts as well, but the people I report to are FAR too busy (esp post Apr 15) to be browsing forums frequently. It is possible someone else brought it to their attention, but if I didn't have knowledge of something going on in the forums I really doubt they did. You could argue I did a poor job then, but there are only so many hours in the day and I have a lot of responsibilities, so in addition to alerts, I rely heavily on others who usually point me to information outside of the sponsored forum they think I should know.

3) This probably raises more questions than it answers, but no one has ever said that nothing was found in the audit. All I've said was that not all audits were completed at the time of the initial statement, not what completed audits found and/or what actions may have been taken in response to those, for all players. Obviously I'm aware that what audits did/didn't find and what actions were/weren't taken in this specific instance are at the heart of what you are asking, but I also assume you know that this information is not something I'm going to be able to talk about while legal action is pending.

Thanks

-Rizen

I agree with raidalot here. I think the problem with the statement is the use of the word legitimately. The statement makes it sound like if the money he won while breaking the rules were disallowed he would still have won the challenge anyway with his legitimate winnings and that is not true. You have already conceded that the statment was poorly worded and did not get across the intended message. Lets leave it at that. I don't think you will convince anyone that it was factually true. For it to be true the word legitimately would need to be removed altogether. 'Although José won enough money from his own IP to have won the challenge'......there now it is factually true....however that money was won illegitimately so he was DQ'd....etc...etc. Placing the word legitimately anywhere in that sentence makes it factually untrue since in point of fact his winnings acquired without cheating did not amount to enough to have won. As you say it may not have been intended to mislead

Well obv it doesn't address my specific questions in the sense that they haven't been answered. The response is more about explaining why Lock won't answer them.