What % of the players playing on Stars from the US would just move abroad to continue playing if the technology to do what they are doing disappeared in the morning?

My total guess is somewhere around 75%.

So all the non-Americans want the rule enforced so it adds another arbitrary barrier to enter the market where you make your living.

All the relocated Americans want the rule enforced so the only way to enter the market is go through the troubles they did (and for some relocating is actually a net-positive in their life if you remove poker completely!).

It just seems so petty to me.

No one in this thread actually believes that a person does not have the fundamental right to make a living playing poker on any patch of dirt they please.

I get the self-interest bit, and the stakes are high for some, but come on.

from one smoker to another:

STAAAAAHHHP

I wonder if my money is more at risk VPNing on Stars from the US or playing on Lock Poker.

I don't think paying a couple hundred dollars in rake each day exactly qualifies as a betrayal, Shane. In fact it seem more like "returning the favor"

Have we forgotten that Stars raised a middle finger to the US DOJ for years, while making making millions (billions?) of dollars off of an "illegal" service they very aggressively marketed to a largely unwitting customer base. They consistently maintained the company line that UIGEA was not applicable to online poker while going extreme lengths to deceive American financial institutions... and there are very few of us reading this thread who aren't thankful to them for doing so. Seems like the least players could do is say **** you to the same inane legislation and remain loyal customers in the face of adversity.

Also, it seems pretty absurd to me to suggest that TV'ing a computer that connects to stars from a country they operate legally in could jeopardize their future growth prospects. Neither the player nor stars is breaking any US law, and there is no way our broke ass government is monitoring this practice when stars isn't even able to. Unless there is some new legislation I haven't heard of, playing online poker is only illegal in a handful of states, and there is no chance anyone is deceiving Stars in to accepting payment from US banks. As far as I see it, this is a much smaller breach of trust between company and consumer than what Stars was doing for the years preceding BF.

Much more akin to scratching their back then putting a knife in it, imo.

Edit: to be clear I am only referring to people playing on their own accounts.

agreed. this is exactly why i would never do it, stars is my people.

lol, yeah

Primo, The Ironic thing is how many Americans who choose to stay in the USA and play mid stakes on Lock poker due to yourself and all the other Lock pros promoting them. Most of these people got ****ed by Lock Poker and many still currently are. You still support them! gtfo and go update the Lock threads plzzzz

The effect of all this mimics that of Alcohol Prohibition in the 1920s.

Alcohol banned, black market created, 'speakeasys open, trafficking booms, 'bad' people make heaps of money slanging illegal hooch (or rando forgeign poker accounts in this example).

Just another chapter in American History bros!

Disagree pretty strongly Shane. Of course Stars will deny this, but I don't think they care anymore. They just want the DOJ off there backs completely. And I obviously don't blame them one bit. Just don't make it obvious you are VPNing/TVing and I think you are fine, and honestly if I thought I could do it, then I would. But I play too much live/tweet too much/quasi recognizable for it to work.

edit: in before brag/subtle etc

anyone else choking on the sanctimonious bull**** of PrimordialAA who (according to his twitter as of five minutes ago) is still a lock poker pro? americans still playing on stars is where you draw the line at too far? this guy for real? just shut the **** up man

yea didnt realize that. makes his posts in this thread comical

These two things are not directly correlated. You can do wrong by a company even while contributing to their bottom line. Seems like the thinnest of arguments, surprised you made it.

I was certainly pleased that Stars took its actions and risks post-UIGEA based on legal opinions they stood behind. I don't see aggressively pioneering within a grey area to be inherently right or wrong. They certainly have had to pay the price for those opinions in the long run.

But imo, they have a lot to do with why a lot of us were able to make a living for a lot of years, and they met their social responsibility to us while the other major post-UIGEA players just dicked us, then Stars went above and beyond what I could conceive possible by bailing out FTP.

So, no I don't think it's an equivalent action to carry out your own vigilante justice within this new, not-so-grey area.

whether actual law or "spirit of the agreement" with the DOJ, it's pretty clear that playing Stars on US soil is the not allowed, and loudly flaunting it will help no one.

It's evidenced by how Stars stringently enforced relocation requirements to begin with. You might say the more laxxed current standards is evidence that they don't care, but you could just as easily look at it like they increased the amount of implicit trust they put in its players, or who knows.

But give people an inch and they take a yard, and I'll tell you for sure no one wants to hear in a public venue, casually told, that a person is "TV'ing now" because traveling "got too expensive." Two people told me that at a WSOP event this summer with two table changes, one person said it so casually, with so many other people in earshot, I was stunned.

And why don't I follow up and inform on every situation I get wind of? Because I am not police and I am not an investigator, and I spend quite a lot of time trying to do things simply and correctly, don't have much more energy to regulate the poker planet; also I'd rather not be told about whatever shady stuff anyone is up to, and if people don't have the common sense to avoid boasting about what they're doing in general, they should have the courtesy to avoid saying to me that they're sick of the cost of commuting (when I sure as f am too).

That's all part of a man's "code" I think.

When you're gonna do something illicit, bend the rules, function in the margins...you ought to be twice as careful, not half as careful.

If you're gonna multiaccount party poker, then don't make a brag post about how awesome your grandma played, for instance.

But what am I doing trying to explain to ppl how to be good criminals when it behooves me to let them keep splashing info around and hang themselves in the end?

Anyway, now that the behavior is on blast, don't be surprised if you see a crackdown and some people made examples of. Which leads to the last point I will make: it's so much easier to do things properly, even considering the expenses and hassle of doing it the right way now. The best thing you can do for yourself in any aspect of life is live without paranoia or fear or guilt. This is also part of one's code, his willingness to be comfortable and relaxed while doing semi-shady or shady crap.

People will think I'm a) being hyperbolic, or high-and-mighty b) blindly defending Stars c) some other form of crazy but really d) I think I am making a more logical argument than "it's really annoying that you chumps can't be bothered to go to the same expense that I have." A sentiment I also abundantly relate to.

I think perspective on this is a bit too narrow.

For example, while regs playing against site TOS or against country rules (for the former, say USA players, since they are likely primarily regs) hurts a reg who is playing within the TOS, there are many fish from many countries where online poker isn't really legal (but just not enforced bc it's too hard, similar to VPN stuff) that you benefit from every day.

And if you kill all the USA vpn regs on PS or any other non USA site, but then also kill all the players from places like say Thailand, China, maybe Russia or other countries where the legal authorities would say "hey, it's not allowed" (throwing examples out there, please don't be nit picky), I think you would not come out ahead.

So if we want to use examples of carrot dealers and all that, I think we should also use examples of all the fish supplying you with carrots all these years too, since they are doing something just as "illegal" as the carrot dealer taking from you.

As for VPNs, I think it's pretty clear that Stars has no interest in helping VPNers. Stars isn't exactly lacking regs or needing regs on their site (and most VPNers would likely be regs), and obviously for their image and moving into the USA, being known on tolerating VPNers would also be bad.

I'd imagine detection is the primary issue there, and that VPNing will likely continue until the market conditions change (viable USA poker so that USA players have no incentive to VPN or to move to play). It may never go away (restrictions often push workarounds into the unknown territory), but will likely all but disappear if there is a viable market to play in the USA, one as good or better than ROW.

The long term solution is that there are no restrictions on what poker players you can face, but politicians have a long way to go before that happens. The near term is all about the local money grab, then the national money grab, then "oh hey, there's more money involved if we join player pools." Unfortunately, nobody really cares about what is fair to the participants, but online poker doesn't exactly have the mass support of non playing citizens in any country.

Some of these issues can be emotional, people uprooting families, leaving loved ones, straining relationships.

Back to the OP, I think it was a perfect case in point on why policing ghosting and/or taking over accounts is incredibly difficult: OP knows people who do this, considers them friends and won't name them or turn them in.

The answer there is that most people that do this aren't going to go around advertising it to anybody except people they consider somewhat close or at least e-friends, and e-friends aren't likely to out those people for cheating.

I guess that means the community doesn't consider it a big enough problem, or else they would out their friends more often.

The other explanation would be that a lot of people care, but that it doesn't happen very often (so there's no opportunity to out people cheating if cheating isn't happening). It could be a combination of the two as well.

If you compare it to say scamming or stealing, I think you see that scammers and thieves are likely outed at a much higher frequency by semi friends in the poker world.

But even then, when there is no benefit to the person outing the thief (like when the thief owes them money, is still scamming others but is paying back the victim), you still see situations where the community is not warned. Given the examples we've seen of that over the years, it does not shock me that severe ghosters (guys that tell people how to play most hands towards end of MTT) and habitual account takeover people are not outed too often.

Maybe someday you will realize how egocentric this sounds. Bad things happened historically when ****ty rules are followed.

How can anyone take what you say about Lock cashouts seriously when you clearly only care about yourself?

Sorry for semi derail. Delete if necessary.

Christian,

What are your thoughts on playing on Stars anonymously?

Primo,

**** you and your high levels of morality you lock pro scum.

Primo - Why don't you just out this one guy who is playing from the US costing you 15% of your yearly income?

Clearly your only interests are your own

I would assume, and certainly hope, that he is against playing on anonymous accounts. In which case, I hold the same opinion as him. I really see no major issue with people who want to use whatever means they can (VPN/TV) to play on their legitimate accounts from within the US due to inability to travel or whatever. However, like you said, it's incredibly unfair to those of us that have played on the same name forever and everyone knows who we are, to have to play against people we SHOULD know equally well but don't due to them using a random new account. That advantage should not be allowed, and it is really the only part of all this that I personally have an issue with.

Cause I'd end up more of a leper than I already am. I'm not going to be the one guy who outs individuals for VPNing in a community of people who don't see it as an offense worth reporting. Same reason I don't multi account euro sites that allow you to make new/2nd accounts, grim people, or sit/decline husngs, all probably don't get you in trouble (except jarma getting banned for like 2 weeks lol) but the community sees them as wrong so most of us respect them. If the community sees everybody VPNing and taking $$$ out of community as no problem then I'm not going to be the one to swing the axe on people even if I personally disagree with it

Time to reopen the peachymer thread?
#cleanup

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61...1/index85.html

These are good posts (most of primordialAA's posts itt are tbh).

This is some lol_reasoning coming from a poker player, how can you say that nobody should care about the VPNing americans on their own account, its somewhat sickening and telling of your ethics (for everyone ITT claiming that tbh). Its all me me me.

he's a big jokester

I Don't think Charder is a bad guy and have no knowledge of anything systemic but who knows I guess?

The constant deluded psychopathic justifications from some people really piss me off though, I keep hearing/seeing stories about people really deep in big tourneys with "friends" and not telling them who they are and it just makes me really mad and sad