We're not arguing the same point, I don't agree people should be able to grind from the US from any account. Even though I don't agree with it I wouldn't say anything if they were grinding on their own account but I would if they were on a different account.

I was arguing against the people saying you didn't have to sacrifice anything to continue playing online poker.

well 1 stars was good at cracking down on basic VPNs right after black friday, I didn't realize til I got here just how easy it had become, or I may have been swayed to try it. But I dunno, I moved right after black friday for 3 months, decided it wasn't worth it (wife hadn't finished getting US citizenship yet and we had JUST bought a house, and we loved where we lived) so I decided I would stay in the states, start some companies and that was that. Then 2 years went by, one of the companies ended up closing and I saw everyone I had been grinding with same stakes before I left making $750k-1M / year in the post-BF economy, wife had just got her citizenship and I decided it was time to sell the house and move.

(fwiw it was not an easy decision, HUGE stress on my wife / our marriage, she REALLY didn't want to move was just a whole big ordeal)

So yea, VPN'ing would have been a lot easier, would have made everything 100x better in my life and it would have been the much nicer route to take, but I didn't, I took 2 years off when I was in the states, I take months off now every time I go home to visit, and I don't see why I am supposed to fine with sacrificing like all of this $ to the people who didn't move, especially knowing that I won't stay abroad forever we made a calculated choice and are trying to save up as much as possible now.

If stars decides they don't care about the individual VPNr than i'm sure everybody and their brother is going to move back to the US but I doubt they can take that stance with how much they have on the line & deals they have in place in hope to re-enter the US market eventually

All I was saying was that you don't have to play online poker and that's a choice so you are choosing to sacrifice for poker not something that you have to do

chuck what about people playing 2 day events when they know they cant play on day 2 if they get there - and then let somebody else play on their account? is that ok???

primordial, the carrot analogy makes more sense if hero is a rival carrot vendor who's moved abroad to set up a legal carrot business, and resents the fact that some people are still selling carrots on the black market back home and not only getting away with it but are able to sell at a higher profit margin. I guess other legit carrot salesmen around the world could also be pissed, but not to the same extent.

But even then, in a community of carrot enthusiasts there will be plenty of people who sympathise with those who bend the rules just so they can continue to be a part of the carrot industry. It's the cynical, greedy bastards who go out of their way to set up illegal carrot stalls on every street corner and recruit an army of vegetable grinders to patrol the streets in search of every rich carrot addict who are the problem.

Ok so I struggled to apply the carrot analogy to mass endgame ghosting. but you get the idea.

Those greedy !@_*(ing Carrot Kingpins... scourge of our community!

From what you've said so far I understand the move has been really hard on you and your wife and is not exactly something you would chose to do if the circumstances were different.
Am I correct in assuming then, that you left because you didn't want to take the risk of VPN'ing from the US, but wanted to play online? And not because you support the letter of the law that forbade you from doing it legally?

lol what a cs u sound like. unless u r from us and have had to deal shut theeeeeeeeeee faaaaaaaaaaaacccck up.

I mean sure, you can say that's the same reason I'm not a drug dealer or a hitman too, despite both being lucrative. Doesn't make it a rational argument for the people on the other side where "they took the risk so it's fine that they do it". I moved because in order to play on stars/FTP again I had to move out of the country, so I did it. Could I have done it illegally, yea I guess so but I didn't I did it the right way and I don't think the illegals deserve the same EV that I have, and like i've said 50x even more EV since every time they go home or whatever they have to take 0 time off, so they get a few extra months of grind per year, get to stay in their country, AND get all the extra ease of SNE benefits that come w/being able to play 12 months a year rather than 8-9.

Eh, I don't want to weigh in too heavily bc I've not been put in the situation myself. However, i do tend to be in the court of those who are saying that people playing on VPN from the USA on their own names are much less of an issue than the organized rings etc, or those MA'ing or playing on other SN's.

I say it's much less of an issue and I do think the distinction needs to be made because seemingly it's such a huge net the we are casting here. Yeah it's breaking TOS, and Bryan is probably right in his analogy of money being taken from the community. But at the end of the day I think we all have to consider resources that stars has and take it one step at a time.

It's kind of like having a bunchhhhh of people smoking weed on a regular basis (where it's illegal) and ratting out every single person, grouping them with the heroin dealers, and expecting **** to happen. This is an extreme analogy but I do think its appropriate given that I think a distinction needs to be made. There are some things that need to be prioritised.

If you throw too much at limited resources it will likely become a far less efficient process at catching the real hardcore criminals. I do understand it's both "breaking the law", but I think those people saying "LETS GET EM ALL" are being pretty unrealistic in the grand scheme of things...

idk man, if you say that you're not a drug dealer or a hitman because the law tells you not to (and not due to some moral compass)... well I hope you can see as to why your posts, filled with bitterness and and rootless envy are only working against you.

I say rootless envy because you seem to envy people worse off than yourself. You say you had to sell your house? Some other people didn't have a house to sell. You say your wife got her papers and so you could leave? Some people have parole, or sick parents that aren't going to get better and need attending, or children in schools or a myriad of other unique situations that are far from enviable but prevent them from leaving the US. And you wanna make their lives worse? Why? So you're not angry about having made your own personal choice to move instead on VPN'ing?

Being mad at the people VPN'ing is like getting pissed off at the kids at the prom for getting drunk of the spiked punch instead of at the people who actually spiked the punch... since you love allegories and similes so much

the cases your pointing out are literally like 1/1000 of the people we're talking about. The majority of them are young kids w/plenty of $$$ who just didn't want to leave. All the freedom in the world but they would rather grind from home, plain and simple. Just lazy kids wanting to get the best of all worlds w/o sacrificing anything.


@Mjw yea matty obv the huge rings much more of a pressing issue, I'm not saying they are even in the same boat as far as degree of crime, but the community seems to say one is horrible and the other gets a total pass. In all honesty the huge rings/ghosters don't hurt me at all, I literally don't lose 1c from them, cause I don't play online MTTs pretty much ever, but I take your guys side/point seriously because I see how it hurts you and why it's bad for MTT players and how it costs you all $. However for me the 1-2 extra guys who end up popping up at the same stakes that I play for HU decreases my hourly rate between 20-33% and that's if we NEVER play each other. Having to battle through them or whatever else ends up costing me a ton more on top of it. I literally lose like 10-15% of my income on the year, which ends up being a lot of $, because of ONE extra person VPN'ing from the states at my limits. In the end both versions are against the TOS, and both are costing us individually tons of $, but i'm supposed to be totally cool with you guys being like yea the people who affect us are the devil and need to be stopped so we all make more $, but the people who affect you are just pot smokers who we don't care about.

And tbh I doubt many of you lose 10%-20% of your income every year due to this, because the # of people coming in doesn't really have as significant an impact because the pools of players are much larger than it does in HU SNG where the pools of regs are way smaller

I know about a handful of guys that VPN from the states and would LOVE to be able to live abroad with poker friends. I'm not saying that there's no upside to staying in the US and VPN'ing, but that's all you're focusing on. 2 of the guys I know dont even VPN stars b/c theyre too afraid of getting banned/losing funds.

How can you expect to be taken seriously when you generalize about the character of an unknown number of people, the vast majority of which you've never met or even know exist. Really they're just so lazy? All 5000 of them? (according to your 1:1000 ratio anyway) Cause I know at least 5 guys that would love to be able to go play on stars legit and chill by the beach in their off-time instead of being stuck in some sh*thole in the middle of nowhere

What are the reasons they can't go to Thailand? or Mexico? Or any other place where you can live on <1k / month? Like how can you be a poker pro and not be able to leave? There are plenty of guys living in poker houses in the US all VPN'ing, so it's not like they don't have that option either. But seriously, why not Thailand or Mexico?

Dude...This is MTT community. That is why the discussion is mtt related. And do you personally know anyone playing high stakes hu hypers from the U.S.? I really am unaware of this being remotely a problem at all. If they are on new sns and using their old databases against you and taking your action too, then everyone here already agrees with u about it being wrong.

Pokerstars was seriously slaughtering accounts left and right using vpns. I'm sure most of the people playing from the U.S. on their original accounts have moved and then moved back and use remote access. They are not taking much money directly from anyone at all, especially after you consider they would move abroad again anyway if they didn't decide to take this risk. Then there r the people with sick families/disabilities etc. which most of us can sympathize with anyway.

I don't think anyone here is telling the guys to go to the Pokerstars meeting and tell them to only go after the big rings and please ignore the U.S. vpners/remote accessers you catch. But if you guys go to the meeting and knowingly give Pokerstars screen names of guys playing from U.S. on their original account, that is VERY ****ed up imo.

I personally would never want to risk getting my pokerstars account banned and never being able to qualify for a stars live event again. Not to mention your entire account balance confiscated.

The reasons aren't all financial man.

One guy is on probation for a weed charge. He has to go see a PO every week for the next 2 years. Another guy has a sick parent that he has to tend to b/c there's no one else. Another guy just enrolled his kids in a school that they were on the waitlist for like 2 years for. And who knows what situations other people are in? I sure don't and I'm not going to start passing judgement.

And it's not like there are all these other alternatives in this sh*tty economy, especially for a person with a 5+ year gap on their resume. Poker is my best option and I have an economics degree lol.

Also I'm not sure how many people you think there are VPN'ing on their own names from the US on PStars, but I promise you it's less than a couple of hundred. I can even prove it. If there were more than 200 VPN'ers playing on their own names on a semi-regular schedule, every $50 and $100 freezeout on stars would have a 50k minimum prizepool.

Your English is relatively great and thanks for sharing.

You guys are forgetting one simple reason why VPN'ing or TV'ing from America is wrong--it's a betrayal to Stars.

Stars did right by the community after Black Friday (and before), now they're trying to be as proper as possible in newly regulated markets, which will also benefit the community. Having players knowingly play from the US will not help this effort.

And please, don't bother with your "billion dollar company doesn't deserve any consideration" type arguments.

Lastly, cause I think I'm just about done drawing lines in the sand, I agree with everyone saying that focusing on individual VPN'ers uses up the limited resources we have in pursuing people that are doing the majority of the damage. We do agree that a stable full of grinders getting ghosted deep is way more detrimental and unethical than xyz playing $50abi's from home on his own name, right?

I would hope you're able to look at things from a neutral, realistic perspective rather than just what is best for you. Just because something is against the rules doesn't mean it is wrong.

yes. but why include 50 abi there? Do you think xyz playing $2500 abi or $200/400 cash is a higher priority target? But yea nobody is going to argue that the huge ring of guys dealing out new accounts or the guys ghosting massive stables is lower priority than individuals, but I think the community should look negatively at both of them and come down on both of them. But obv the community seems to want to protect one, and crucify the other. And trust me, you all have friends in the community who are getting ghosted or ghosting at one point or another, it's not that diff. than the VPN issue, going after all of them is going to get some people you like (and the community likes) in trouble

so your saying in that case, you would just bend over, grab your ankles, and take the 20k cut in pay, provide less for your children/family, etc. so this guy could illegally sell his carrots that you don't think is wrong of him to sell? You'd give up a huge % of benefit to yourself and your family for him to do that illegal thing?

If so your a really really giving person, where as myself on the other hand, I don't think what he's doing is wrong, but when it's affecting MY family and my kid and hurting their current/future situations, why should I feel like I owe them something by allowing them to continue doing what they are doing knowing it hurts me and it's illegal?

I don't think anyone is disputing that the bottom line on VPN'ing is that it's not at the very least slightly immoral in that you are breaching a contract that you have made. However, there is a lot of discontent with the laws that pokerstars (and therefore you) have to follow and I don't know anyone in the poker community who supports the actions of the DOJ wrt to the poker industry. I'm not saying you should break every law you disagree with, but following something to the T, when it's clearly just a scheme drawn up by one group of people to rob another... idk how immoral that is

"when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free"

Betraying Stars by generating them more rake am i right?

Also... I want to take this time to say how wrong it is that stars continued to stay in the U.S. market after the UIGEA. Oh and the bank fraud they did to process transactions. That was totally wrong and illegal. Amazing we even associate ourselves with this site. In fact, if Stars and FTP closed their doors to the U.S. at that time, I almost certainly would have a college degree right now.

Def this