Hello
My name is portemilio. I recently made a thread about my account getting temporarily suspended. What I was told about this temporary ban was that it was a protocol ban after a large cashout. I waited patiently and contacted global poker. They asked me to send them 1 hour and 40 minutes of myself playing, recorded, so that they could review the clips. I assumed that they wanted to see if I was cheating or not. A couple days go by and I receive an email that I was indefinitely suspended, however my funds were being returned. Ultimately they determined I was not cheating but banned me for the following reasons:

1) knowingly shared access to your Customer Account with other person(s) for the purpose of engaging in activity that breaches Global Poker Terms & Conditions to the detriment of other customers in Games and reputation of Global Poker;

2) created or accessed two or more Global Poker accounts, including submitting false information about the actual controller, for the purpose of exploiting anonymity advantage to the detriment of other customers in Games and reputation of Global Poker.

The first accusation made sense- i had another debit card linked to my account. I explained to global poker however, that i was being staked two years ago and the player that staked me had to put his card on my account. I am no longer staked and do not plan to be again as I have my own bankroll now. Again, this was over two years ago and the amounts he deposited were very little compared to the roll I amounted the past couple of weeks. This player did not play on my account, he simply funded the account so that I could play.

The second accusation did not make sense to me. I've had my global account for well over 3-4 years now. I remember when I first began I had made another account to have a new username. I was shortly emailed by global poker saying that they had to deactivate my account because I could not have two. This problem was RESOLVED.

It is very concerning that global poker is using two accusations from the past to indefinitely suspend my account when I am innocent. I have done nothing wrong and it is very frustrating as global was the main site I was playing on.
I'm hoping a moderator or global poker rep could help me out with my case- I can provide any information needed.

Thank you,
portemilio

Have you read the TOS re: staking?

It would probably be best to share the full email thread between yourself and our Game & Platform Integrity team, so that readers could have a clear picture of what was actually sent to you and your responses.

Yes, I'd like to see the full emails.. thank you port.

Port, please provide screenshots of all emails, unedited, by EOD.

Thanks,

Attached are the following screenshots of the email thread, there are over 12 replies, some of them not very relevant as it was just going back and forth regarding how to set up the video recordings, however below are the most relevant ones containing any information.

1) https://gyazo.com/4e2c2cd08e1223df26738c9f390ba89c --> original suspension email
2) https://gyazo.com/4097e563ece0972f61bf3735f395e9c4 --> original reply answering basic questions
3) https://gyazo.com/77cb4edd505e22c33a456d34cead8b5d --> follow up questions regarding debit card on my account
4) https://gyazo.com/a7e358606c6776b986edea94f6f90314 --> follow up reply
5) https://gyazo.com/1b59937b0cb60b16ef4b823167f29eb6 --> asking for 140 mins of recording
6) https://gyazo.com/1bb1b80b9e71dd06f26e76afd11c463f --> sending the recordings
7) https://gyazo.com/443c2faba17a40387a9c10499507fefd

You might have to zoom into some of the screenshots they were lengthy emails - but the general gist of the situation was that they banned me not for cheating but for actions that occurred very long ago. Why didn't they ban me for these actions when they happened? Why did they wait for me to run up a roll of SC20,000+ to ultimately ban my account but return my funds? It just doesn't add up. I hope this brings some clarity to the situation and am looking forward to resolving this.

I have and I understand but I am no longer staked and have not been since that stake. The stake occurred so long ago and I know atleast five players on the site that have been staked and Global Poker ultimately forgave them. (E.g. "Spork" on global was in the same staking group and was ultimately relieved and allowed to play on the site again). I don't understand why some players are forgiven and others are not. I just want to play poker at my best capabilities.

So, did you redeem your Sweeps Coins that were in your account? That's the part I'm confused about.

yes they did return all my funds thankfully.

"I don't recall his global screen name" from 4), first paragraph

Isn't the person who staked you a former RTA user who was banned from Global? aSquid?

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...3&postcount=56

or am I wrong?

*I totally may be in the wrong here. It's just hard for me to keep it straight since there's insane overlap between you and Kappatalist/Spork with all the RTA, HUD usage, staking, etc.

Good!

I am not commenting on any specific case, but in general terms the answer to the question “why didn’t they ban me then?” is either

1. They have more data now
2. The team is a lot better now at what they do now

so, to clarify, if a player:

uses rta
uses a hud
is staked by another individual who makes deposits on behalf of the player

they should be banned?

Thank you for editing my post for accuracy.

Be well and stay safe!

Really crazy that this site allowed a player to come back after using RTA (self admitted even in some instances). Your hypothetical answers don't make sense with some of the cases at least:

1. What more data do you need than someone admitting to using it? Understandable for other cases where someone needs to be caught.
2. What kind of team would not have the common sense to perma someone using RTA? Again understandable from the aspect of catching individuals.

Issues like this are annoying from a player standpoint especially someone like me. I'm ass enough at poker and play for fun while making some sweeps coins, but things like this are like wtf is the point.

I've never received one refund from any of the banned players...like throw us a bone with the amount of rake some of us have paid while playing with cheaters. I was told I "didn't lose" (laughable) to the players and was shown some kind of stat showing my winnings against them. No way for me to verify it, what's the date range of these winnings, is this only HU pots or are you digging into multi-way etc. I've also never received an email alerting me of a name change even though I know I've put in 1000s of hands against at least 3 who had a name change.

I really do like Global and it's the site where I've put in most of my volume. I just hope you all are able to improve in probably the most detrimental thing to online poker. Even ACR attempted to communicate with the players about catching cheating and attempted to make amends.

Well, I think I know who you're referencing, but I completely understand Global's POV. The individual in question brought an entire group of people who were:

autoclicking for priority seats
using preflop and postflop rta
using HUDs

to the attention of Global Poker. Also, the individual exposed the MASTERMIND behind the project who was depositing funds in every stakee's account. These are people who played together regularly. I will not speculate that they were also colluding, but...

Anyway, like I said, the person you're referencing alerted Global of these issues. He should be cut a little slack.

oh

wait

wait

no

He actually didn't bring it to Global's attention. Some random reg ended up doing a deep dive, figuring this all out, and reporting it to Global.

So why the **** is this individual still allowed to play on Global Poker? Him and the rest of the group stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from other recs and regs who were playing at a disadvantage the whole time. How in the **** is that fair?

And he changed his screenname. Wow.

Banning those who use HUDs is a big reason why I decided to start playing on Global Poker. If he has been caught using a HUD or other performance-enhancing software, BAN HIM! Let's get back to the basics and fight it out on the felt... the way it's supposed to be.

I recorded every Global PLO cash session played via Loom, and have hours of gameplay footage from some of the players and who admitted to using RTA like RIO Vision while playing.

I've received no refunds, nor do I play cash on this site anymore. Too much work. The fact that Global is allowing this player to continue playing is pushing me to go back through all the footage, review all the hands played with said player(s), and escalate, if appropriate. I am contacting Global Support tonight to see what they have to say.

As an aside, how can a website based site police people firing up Vision/PLO Trainer while playing? They will only catch the blatant and greedy, or disgruntled former stable players who rat on each other.

Why not cheat? This is the message Global is sending by not banning this player. Worst case scenario you get your money returned and are banned. Best case is you never get caught, OR you do get caught, get a firm talking to, then are allowed to keep playing with RTA, just smarter and quieter then last time.

Also, OP we can see your real name in the second email you posted.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=291

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=295

so we're allowed to use preflop RTA, HUDs, and autoclickers all at once until we get outted by other regs, as long as we are apologetic? because that's the "proportional resolution" you applied to this case

so where does the line get drawn for an actual ban? is it just postflop RTA? let me know please so I am on equal footing with the rest of the players in the pool

I'm not sure where you get the information that nothing was done until "outted by other regs". Numerous times we have said that the investigation was started by Game Integrity team due to concerns flagged during a routine game/accounts monitoring. That said, we are investigating all reports we receive from our customers, and sometimes customers might be faster than we are, however, this case was not started because of the customer report, it was an internal process. So, while we will never claim that we are the best at detecting such incidents, we are working on this constantly and we will eventually find out about cheating incidents.

How apologetic one is - does not matter, we consider every account and its activity holistically, in the context of the actual evidence collected about the breach corroborated by internal data, harm done, etc. So, yes, if you have used a preflop RTA but lost 200 buy-ins while doing so, we may or may not be more lenient than we would be otherwise. We might still adjust balances of those you played and won against during the time we believe you breached the rules. We may even consider allowing you back depending on the history of account on our platform in relation to the extent of the breach. The outcome of investigation is not always binary.

We do not take action against anyone because "someone outed someone", if that was true, every reg could report another reg just to eliminate an opponent they do not want to face in games. We take action only when we have sufficient evidence of wrongdoing based on our internal data.

A player literally outed themselves as having used RTA and was allowed to play again. Seems pretty lenient to me to the extent of you all not even imposing any penalty and allowing a known cheater back on the site. It's terrible precedent to set by a poker site.

Idk if others received any compensation from these players as you all aren't transparent with that info, but I never received a penny back from these cheaters. I'd wager I was one of the higher volume players during this time against them as well. I've also never received any notification on a player name change even though I played probably 10's of thousand of hands against at least 2 of them.

You see where we might have a gripe now? I'll self-out myself right now in fact. I'm going to use RTA. Apologies in advance. I expect the same treatment once you all catch on.

Seems like OP was banned for violating the staking TOS, albeit 2 years ago according to him.

RTA use was ultimately forgiven.

There is your line.

The same player, "Spork", who was also in the same staking group, admitted to using RTA, is back on the site playing. Where as I, who left the staking group and had not been staked for 2 years, get banned two years later? Can you please explain this suspension to me as I am confused. if RTA was not the issue, then what was? Is this indefinite suspension ever going to change 6 months down the line, or am i just doomed to never play on global again?

We believe we have explained everything via our emails to you. If you wish to discuss this further, you can contact us via email - we will always respond. If you wish to then publish correspondence it is up to you, but we will not be discussing your case publicly.