didn't say it did, was merely pointing out that the poster I quoted was way off on there description of twitch streamers in general, including Gripsed which in my opinion seemed like he was targeting because he does have a store on his website with training material.

He certainly appears guilty and I don't agree with it, but timing suggest his reasons for doing aren't because he is struggling at poker.

YAWN go back to your 2 mins of fame in reddit .Oh by the way when you challenge someones "credibiity" your own credibility may be stronger if you at least spell it correctly .

I gotcha, and I agree. Poker is irrelevant sorta, he's doing it because its who he is, deep down. An awkward individual who is so oblivious to how a honest/upstanding broadcaster acts. Question is, can anyone be that stupid?

He thought that he could just plaster the chat with mumbo jumbo non stop and people would never question the oddness of this being.

I gotcha good Evan, how you like dem apples

The consummate gentleman and poker pro! Thankyou Jaime
keep on keeping on

another strange things are the twitter 1% giveaways. i experienced on all streams that the kids jump on those things pretty fast. And when gripsed got like 1.4k viewers or smth and was like 37 left in the super tuesday, he tried to convince people to retweet him. that was sure money the viewers could win, but only 70ish people retweeted out of 1.4k viewers. pretty strange for the twitch community to not jump on the free money train. So thats another indication that there are viewbots involved.

Good point! I've also witnessed him host bigdog and cswidler for under 80 viewers each time , where's the 1000 + viewers bruh?? i would guess those were the only unique viewers on his stream

Given how cheap these viewer bot services are and the relative infancy of the poker twitch market, I am surprised more poker streamers haven't been tempted.

Don't think this point is really proof of anything. Jeff Gross, I would argue, has had the most success with retweet contests. He's gotten 2K viewers + and run deep in big MTTs on stream. Sometimes he only has 70 entries too, sometimes less. This doesn't disprove anything either, just adding some data here.

I dont know about all this botting stuff BUT

Jamie and others calling a guy scummy because he makes a donation while online..

come on what world are you living in?


Seems pretty fair to me, at least he is paying for the commercial.

I heard about this debate and initially guessed it was just gossip. Then I was directed to this thread and saw that Jaime did indeed post here. For the record, I have a high degree of respect for Jaime's opinion. He's probably more informed on Twitch matters than anybody in the poker community.

Please note the following points, which are only my opinion based on my best understanding of things.

1. Viewbotting is diligently policed by Twitch. It is explicitly forbidden. I know of several cases of people not getting partnership just because they were accused of viewbotting, with no proof made public by the company. I am also pretty sure that partnerships have been taken away from people for viewbotting in the past, though nobody I can remember at this time.

2. I have been told in the past that some people get viewbotted against their will. In other words, there are streamers who have claimed they had nothing to do with such bots. Maybe somebody else with a lot of cash is a massive fan and pays some service. Or maybe somebody with hacking skills sets it up on their own with the streamer having no knowledge of it. While I know this point will be hard to accept, what I am trying to say is this: IF there is viewbotting, one cannot assume that Gripsed is necessarily behind it. Jaime himself made that point, but it is quite buried in his post.

3. Can we put a percentage on the likelihood that there is or is not view-botting, and if so what are the odds he is behind it? Others more knowledgeable than I have made posts and stated opinions. I am just making the point that the evidence does not make either possibility 100%. Many innocent people have been hung and executed for crimes they did not commit based on much stronger circumstantial evidence than what I have seen so far. I'm not necessarily saying he is blameless here, because I really don't know. Deep down inside, I just hate the idea of a lynch mob being incited based on circumstantial and limited data. Especially when someone's livelihood is at stake.

As for some other points made here, whenever you are a public person there will be those who like you and those who don't. Many things said in this thread about Gripsed and Jaime for that matter have nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is viewbotting. If somebody has hard evidence, please let them come forward and present it.

Jaime's point has more to do with Twitch etiquette and a general sense of Gripsed's character. Advertising one's channel in somebody else's chat is looked down upon. Since this happened a while ago, it's possible that Gripsed's understanding of etiquette has changed since then.

I have seen Gripsed support a lot of other streamers. I am sure there is some element of self interest in what most streamers do. Haven't personally seen him cross the line in that regard. But whether you agree or disagree, Jaime's point is relevant in the Twitch community. Some streamers have even banned other streamers for doing similar things in their chat.

All you arguments have already been pretty much dismantled either here or on Reddit from just how much twitch can and do police viewbotting to the likelihood that somebody else viewbotting your channel and that you neither know or don't report it.

1) Twitch take a very cautious attitude to outright bans for a number of legal reasons.

2) Those partnered streams have a dedicated skype group where they can communicate directly with twitch employees.

3) You get all sorts of stats about your channel, so it become fairly obvious when and how you get a big bump

4) This bump in traffic has been occurring over a reasonable length of time.

5) That would allow the channel operator to see that they are getting a weird bump and if it isn't from them plenty of opportunity to bring it up with the twitch people directly.

6) Yes people have tried to ruin the rep of other twitch streamers with putting a viewbot on them, then reporting them. However, it seems from Staples statements that twitch are well aware of this now and tell their partnered streams to look out for it and report it.

Perhaps it is all a big misunderstanding, but I doubt Gripsed hasn't seen this thread or the one on Reddit...and I believe people pointed them out to him in chat on twitch (I think in Tonkaaaa's channel when Gripsed was there). But radio silence on this issue, but he is still tweeting away promo stuff today.

i get how people dont care about this topic but viewbotting is very unfair and shouldn't be allowed. the streamers who work their way up slowly are getting cut off by these cheaters. as far as i know, twitch doesnt care because bots dont contribute to ad revenue.

Many points I made are matters which are well known. Ask Twitch executives at the next conference how seriously they take viewbotting. No matter how others may perceive it, Twitch does take it very seriously.

As for you openly dismissing my rather long post after 30 seconds by pointing to reddit, I think it says more about you than it does about my post. I admit, the threshold others have for guilt is much lower than mine. You clearly fall in that group too. But I never said he was innocent. Just am stating that the data presented so far is not enough for me to feel comfortable saying he is guilty in an open forum.

I don't generally read reddit, but can't see how anything written there would negate my opinion. If I am wrong, I still have an opinion that is based on a lot of experience with Twitch.

Oh great your going to give gripsed an excuse to use "plausible deniability"

You edited your post quite a bit after the initial sentence you posted. I find some of your line item points are relevant information. I am aware of of how twitch works. But I don't see in any of your points how this *dismantles* any point I made.

I truly believe in "innocent until proven guilty." But we live in a world where people see a trial on TV, and then demonstrate for a guilty verdict without ever having even read the court transcripts!

The fact that Gripsed has not yet responded publicly to this is curious, but once again it proves nothing. Perhaps he has a service that sends promo tweets on his behalf.

If and when he replies, then we will see what he has to say. But he may very well feel like he has no obligation to reply to allegations like these.

Where did I say Twitch don't take this issue seriously? I said they take a cautious approach to outright banning.

I actually said they tell partners about this and ask for them to report if they suspect weird things going on in their channel

As for being able to read quickly, not going to apologise for that.

I am also not saying he is guilty, I am saying it looks very suspect, and that I am surprised more poker twitchers haven't been tempted to do so.

He was in a chat of a channel when this stuff was brought up. The OP of the reddit was taunting him about it repeatedly (it was rude on OP part, but it was unmissable as the rate of chat at that time was very slow).

Also, the twitter stuff, no it isn't an auto-bot promo tweets, they include personal replies to people saying they won something on Sunday thanks to him.

I agree with you, view botting is incredibly unfair. But bots are not exactly always easy to detect and fight, and the people who make them are getting more sophisticated.

I think you are backtracking quite a bit from what you first wrote (pre-edit). But for the record, nothing in my initial post implies that this does not "look very suspect." In fact, all the points made by those before me proove that this looks bad. But if you want to ignore the larger points I make, that is fine. We both agree: this looks very suspect.

So what? So we should all ruin a person with an argument that amounts to "where there is smoke, there must be fire?" Many public figures in poker have been accused of things with no hard evidence presented. I'm sorry, but the fact that this looks suspect is just not enough for me.

It isn't just a random guy with one post on 2+2 popping up and say hey guys so and so is up to no good. The traffic graphs are evidence of something not right.

Now, it is really for Gripsed to provide an explanation of what his side of the story is. If he was aware of the weird traffic, if it isn't him did he report it to twitch reps. If so, what did they say. If not, why not. etc

Wow, you edit your posts so much, it's hard to reply to them. But I did want to point out something. I should have replied to your original post. Regarding the fact that you are "surprised more poker twitchers haven't been tempted to do so" a large part of the point I made was that they have been tempted. Once again, this issue has come up many times. And in a few cases, people were accused of botting and "punished" for it without any proof. Does not mean they were not guilty, but yes you are right that botting is too easy. And it has been done before, perhaps maybe more for non-poker streams than for poker.

As for the promo tweet thing you bring up, honestly haven't looked at his twitter but I will if it's relevant. My point was only to state that there are many reasons why he might not have seen this or replied to it yet. I hope he replies. But once again, there are valid reasons why he might choose not to.

With all due respect, you are doing some really circuitous logical circles around this issue.

Why is it required for Gripsed to provide an explanation? Why does he have to report it to Twitch, or even tell us if he did? I do hope he does, but he is certainly under no obligation to do so.

Those first two sentences basically amount to you repeating "this smells fishy." We already agreed, this smells fishy. You think that's good enough, and I don't. Let's stop beating that point.

ghost_of_m do you moderate on twitch?

Lmao @ anyone that thinks Twitch is going to fight something that brings them more revenue.

I guess you didn't know about the CS GO streamer Cro_ that got caught with not only the website to buy views up on his stream but also flashed his gmail with A RECEIPT FROM THE SERVICE. He got a temp ban for a few days. Yeah guys, Twitch cares so much they banned him for a few days! Surely they care!

Well I think he finds himself in a bit of a tough spot now. If he streams again and gets the same amount of viewers as he has been recently (bots), he will risk more trouble for himself. If he streams again and doesn't have the bots, people will definitely think he botted, got called out for it, then stopped. My bet is that he will wait a while to stream again then play off the drop in viewers by the fact that he hasn't streamed in a while, Tweeted about streaming, *insert excuse here*, etc.

Of course, there are still other scenarios. Maybe he'll keep buying the bots and deny he's buying them. Perhaps he'll stream again without the bots and claim it must have been someone else doing it before.

I'm not saying he is the one buying the bots, but it has been proven beyond a pretty reasonable doubt that viewbots were in his stream. Could play out any way right now.