i haven't played since about the beginning of august. i got back 149. before that, i played every day and know a lot of the regulars.

i played mostly 3/6 & 5/10 some 8/16 & 10/20.

i spoke to some of the regulars whom i use to play w/everyday & they all got refunds from 120-500$.

i wonder if the person who was caught cheating & their account closed still "searchable"? i.e. would it say "this player isnt sitting at any tables blabla" or if it would say "sorry their isnt an account by that name registered or w/e"

ok so i just spoke to another regular who plays MOSTLY HU & levels 5/10 & up & he got back 300+. he said he also plays on occasion short handed stud but not often.

so i don't get it how a HU player would get that much unless the cheater wasn't colluding but using a software or something?

im not sure.

Has anyone noticed that since PS restricted Chinese players to one per table, that their prevailing style in Stud has gone from LAG to TAG?

Am I just imagining this and even if I am not, does it have any significance?

interesting, the other day i played some 2/4 stud8 on FTP and there were 3 players from china - they all had names like rhk34js7pz, gotta look out for that..

Here's the response I received from FTP Security to my inquiry:

================================================== ================
Hello XXXXX,

Thank you for your mail.

Compensation for any situation is made with careful consideration, and is based on the number of hands played against the offending player and relative wins and losses, taken as a share percentage of the amount of funds forfeited by the offending account(s).

For security reasons it is not possible for us to divulge the specifics of the offence, the total amount confiscated or the names of the individual(s) involved or who they played against. We understand that the lack of detail we provide in certain situations can be frustrating, however there are serious underlying reasons we do not reveal the full details of our investigations.

If there's anything else, please don't hesitate to ask.

Good luck at the tables.

Regards,

Brian
Security
Full Tilt Poker
================================================== ================

Based on the first paragraph, I conclude that those who received refunds must have played a lot of hands against the cheater(s) and must have lost more to them than they won. It sounds like if you won more than you lost against the cheater(s), regardless of how many hands you played against them, that you would not receive any refund. Furthermore, assuming that what has been reported in this thread and the one in the Zoo forum is just a small percentage of the refunds, it sounds like the amount confiscated from the cheater(s) was several thousands of dollars.

As for me, although the reply didn't directly address this, it appears as though I will not be receiving anything either because I didn't play enough hands against the cheater(s) to warrant "a share percentage of the amount of funds forfeited by the offending account(s)" or I wasn't a net loser to the cheater(s).

Its still unfair, even for a winner vs "it", because he maybe wouldve won more vs a human.

I was wondering if anyone else feels that way.

If what the FTP Security rep said is actually true about using "relative wins and losses" against the cheater(s) as a criteria to determine whether or not one should receive a refund and/or how much of a refund one should receive, it seems blatantly unfair.

I suggest others also send inquiries to FTP about this cheating scandal and refunds and see if you receive the same or similar replies. I'm also going to contact FTPDoug in the Zoo forum and see if he will address this.

I speak to many peopole bout this recently, i tell everyone i can undertand half of fulltilts reaction, and the half i dont understand because they dont tell, is desperating. Not for moneyz or tilt-desperating, but in general looking forward too poker-future.

And one more thing that is really stupid about the e-mails you and OP received is this:

If FTP is unwilling to give us some idea as to what to look for based on what they caught these cheaters doing, how are we supposed to know what to look for so we can report it to FTP?!?!?!?

I've got about 100k hands from 1/2 to 15/30 and am willing help narrow down the names of possible offenders.

These guys or (guy) had to play a lot and stud hi being a small player pool I would think we could find'em.

If we could get it narrowed down I'd be winning to cover 50 names or so myself, as far as sending $1 to the accounts and seeing witch, if any bounce back.

BTW, I left stars years ago b/c of the aforementioned problem in this thread. If they've only taken some sort of action now, that's pretty lol bad. I think I left just before or maybe a little after they took away the disconnect protection/abuse, but I seem to remember only reading about them doing that so it makes me think I left much before. Either way, it's been ****ing years with those guys, and many reports etc.

The amount of players that I have >5k hands with is a pretty small fwiw. If these guys (guy) were regs I'm thinking it should be reeeeally easy to figure out who it was.

I'd need help. I don't use software of any kind and never have, I only have these because I requested the HH's from ftp so a backer could load them into pts. So I'm a software n00b but again would be willing to help where I can.

EDIT: Also, I haven't played stud in about a month. I only had one session in that last month, but the 100k was for most of this year. Majority of hands were 2/4, 3/6, and 5/10 iirc I got a little over 100 refund. I also got a little over 20 a couple weeks ago

Unless you have a time range when this occurred, it will be very difficult to narrow down who the culprits may be.

My guess is seeoll since he isn't around anymore

I lol'd

i also received a rather substantial refund...was a little over 800 and i was curious as to what is was from....hadnt checked my email.....i primarily play hu.... limits 10 20 15 30 20 40 and 30 60.... this had to be mostly from the past few weeks as i just started playing again a bit in august....

fulltilt screen name fd--again.... if have any ? regarding who this may be....i would b happy to help as i am interested myself
it is interesting that i got a pretty big refund considering i mostly play hu...

what are they going to do? they confiscate his account balance, so if you didn't lose to him, why are they going to pay you with? should they give you sklansky bucks?

Is that your screen name? I've played vs. that name a decent amount and received no refund, fwiw.

This should be easy: Do you have PT? who did you lose 800 bucks to?

No its not easy. You dont get back the exactly amount taht you lost, alrdy mentioned somewhere ITT. Would be too easy. I the reason for this is, that many bots that were detected last month already cashed out most of the winnings and FTP only keeps what the still have in there account. The question is: Who did you loose >800$ to? In my database that woulb be approximately 1/3 of the players of like 5-7k.

So since a number of the bigger refund recipients are HU players, we're definitely talking about bots, right? Was this all stud high?

What do you guys propose we do after we find the bastard(s)? I was thinking lynch mob, but I'm open to other ideas.

This is my first post as I got $384 back this week. I play heads up almost exclusively, however, I will at times play a short game. I have records of who I played for the last 8 months so if anyone has a suspect I would be glad to check my records.

As I have stated I am almost exclusively a heads up stud player and received a refund around $380. Since February of 2010 there are a total of 11 screen names that have won over this amount from me in a heads up match. I have searched all of their screen names on FTP and they all still appear to be active thus it seems like this may have either happened a while back or FTP is keeping the names searchable so that we don't figure it out. Any ideas??

Given the recent posts, looks like FTP found a Stud-Hi HU bot ring and busted it.

I would love to know who the cheaters were!!! I have a few suspects!!!! I will take my 11 possible suspects and start crossing off the players I still see on the site. I suspect that it may have happened a while back though....thus my question to everyone - do we have any relatively new players out there that received a refund? If so when did you join full tilt as this can help us narrow the window down.

i see these guys at uNLHE....