Perhaps, but it's pretty funny.

It's also > pretty true.

While you talk a lot, very little of it has anything to do with anything other than your unwillingness to want to believe that full tilt screws people, or is ******ed. I for one have seen far too many of these threads to bother trying to figure it out anymore. Why, despite the fact that PS has tons more traffic, they have 10x less problems? OP looks legit, and FT, as usual, does not deal with these issues in a timely or appropriate fashion, and this has been an ongoing problem that they have refuse to correct for as long as i care to remember.

I'm removing my FT roll.
Case closed. Thanks for the info, OP.

Well after a week of hearing nothing from Full Tilt, I finally decided to email them to get an update, though I feared doing so would result in bad attention, looks like I was right, here's my response (less than 24 hours later for a change):

So add me to list of the reviews where they couldn't find anything wrong, but excluded me anyway. As you can see by the balance they are allowing me to cash out, I am not a pro, or even very good at poker. But I really enjoyed playing at full tilt. I usually employed a full stack normal strategy and tried to improve my game, but limited time to clear the Iron Man Bonus made me decide to level jump and shortstack. Now I am excluded.

Atleat they aren't taking my money, but you can see I didn't have much, so it was more about the principle to me. If they wanted to raise my min buyin or add some kind of CAPTCHA cheat detection to my account, that would have been fine. I realize after everything happening here, I probably wouldn't want to play at Full Tilt anyway, but with the limited sites available in the US, it's good to have options.

Take this as a warning anyone who shortstacks, you are not welcome at Full Tilt.

Why all the hate for FT on this?

Short stackers should realise and accept that their strategy (while technically legal) is very bot like.
Simply put if you do something that takes advantage of a quirk in rules and looks like it may be something illegal - what do you expect?
If you guys want short stack / bot infested games then by all means hate on FT for implementing security and enjoy the damage caused to the games.
I'm really really sure that a site would not be temp-banning SS players lightly, SS players pay huge amounts of rake and rarely make profit - essentially exactly what the sites want.

With that said the sites are primarily to blame because they allow the 20bb structure and ratholing so fixing this would solve that side of the problem

As for OP, props for effort and your probably not a bot and if your not I hope you get your money.
However I don't have a problem with short stackers (or anyone else playing suspicious strat) being investigated.

Its not taking advantage of some quirk in the rules, its a strategy that's been around for a long time. You can walk into any casino and do it.

And they aren't just temp banning short stackers, several of us have been perma-banned for doing something they had never indicated was against the rules (and they still haven't)

LOL this is the site where I found the basic SS strategy that got me banned, though I didn't sign up for any poker room through them or get $50. (I took out the referral info in my quote, I imagine the post I'm quoting will be deleted as spam)

I encourage everyone to use this strategy! I'd love to see what happens, will they ban everyone? Or will they actually fix the problem on their end.

Sorry but I just cant feel bad when the sites take action against potentially serious threats to the game.

good players are a serious threat too. why not ban them? and ban ppl that use 2p2, or training sites.

really the best players for the longevity of the game are the breakevens. why not rig the rng so everyone breaks even and stays for the longest time possible.

and really, if ftp wants to eliminate shortstacking, dont you think there is a far better way to go about it? i mean, think real hard, maybe you can come up with a foolproof plan that will completely eliminate shortstacking and the site wont even have to waste resources investigating. its out there. really.

"Pro shortstacking" is covered perfectly clearly in their terms. Particularly:

A basic short stacking strategy would be to just use your HUD/database to see exactly what percent of hands somebody is opening from a given position, and then shoving an unexploitable range against that percentage. The player himself would be making zero decisions and relying 100% on numbers provided by his database.

Compare this to fullstacking where the numbers influence decisions, but do not independently decide the proper play.

In computer science there is a basic proposal for the demonstration of an artificial intelligence known as the turing test. Its very simple: a human judge communicates with two other 'participants' via text. One of the participants is an AI, the other is a human. If the judge cannot determine which is which, then it is said that the AI has 'passed the test'.

Perhaps Full Tilt has decided to instate a similar policy for poker? Basically if there is a reasonable expectation that a bot of modest complexity could be developed to play in a manner that would be indistinguishable from a given player, then that given player is, de facto, a bot.

There is a difference between "threat to the game" and "threat to profitability".
Allowing players to play bot like strategies, regardless of whether they are bots or not is not good for the game because -
(A) It pisses off both good players and fish, pissed off players are not good for the game
(B) Provides cover for bot programmers.

Your second point I assume you are saying ban shortstacking rather than investigating every ratholer individually (which will of course throw false positives) then I agree 100%, as you will see from nearly all of my comments in threads like these.

If you do a little detective work in threads similar to this you will probably find what all the fuss is about.
A certain "strategy" site has for sale/download several short stacking software aids, there is quite a fuss over at their forums and my guess is that this is the basis of the problem.

Also,

I'm doing my best to be civil about the short stackers but I'm wondering how many of the posters who are taking their side play Full Ring NL, our games are infested and in danger of being ruined.
You might have a different opinion if it were your choice of game being exploited by sites allowing a strategy loophole.

unexpectedly poetic

This was my problem right there I think. I played only a few days of shortstack at a higher limit for about an hour each day, so I can't imagine I tripped anything Full Tilt had looking for bots. I got lucky from the get go and got Aces like 3 times in an hour, with one of more people calling my all in in each case. People don't mind short stackers when they are losing, but if they start to win they call them bots. Multiple complaints probably came in and full tilt tossed me out.

Your posts seem to take the assumption that anyone shortstacking knew they were putting their accounts at risk. I for one did not. I was aware players called you a bot, but since Full Tilt has rules in place that allow you to short stack, I assumed they knew the difference. If I had known this might happen, I would not have short stacked.

That is far from a basic short-stacking strategy. A basic short-stacking strategy plays your cards and nothing else. You have aces, kings, ak, you push and hope someone calls.

A moderately advanced short stacking strategy plays the cards and your positions, plus the action before you. Still not using the HUD at all.

I turned my hud off when I shortstacked, because it made the tables too cluttered and I didn't need it.

HMMM....

1.) The FTP rule you quote is completely irrelevant to the "bot-like" argument you make.
2.) Your claim that "The player is making zero decisions" is an absurd leap, even if you could somehow establish the relevance.
3.) Your implied claim that HUDs are an "unfair advantage" to shortstackers but not to fullstackers is just a circular argument, you are clearly assuming the result.

Again, if FTP wants to ban bot-like play, fine. Or just raise the min buyin FFS. I'm no fan of shortstackers, but I recognize their right to exist under current rules and long-established practice. Your type of argument just distracts from the real issues.

wtf is short stacking?

http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=short+stacking

buyin in min?

. The purpose of this whole poker thing, at least for someone serious enough to post on a poker forum, is to make money, is it not? I for one am not in a position to play the poker games that are the most intellectually rigorous, or whatever else meets your standard of "real poker."

I have seen many on these these forums say that SNGs (which is what I play) are not real poker. Now, since I'm playing mostly DONs, that to you might be, um, totally unreal poker I guess. But as long as I can multitable with a good ROI, I'm happy. Actually I would rather play MTTs, but I can't stand that kind of variance right now, so I am choosing what works better for me at this time.

One of the basic tenants of making money playing poker is to practice game/table selection. If I, or op, decide that we can make our money in what some would call "robot poker", then that's exactly what we should do.

beep beep I'm a jeep

yes, usually 20 big blinds.

As John McEnroe would say, you can't be serious! They have banned him, so he must be guilty? Wouldn't it be great if the US justice system worked that way?

Let's say a bank was robbed, and someone who looked an awful lot like me was seen outside the bank just before the robbery. I was home alone, so I have no alibi.

The detective thinks I must have done it, and they have no other suspects. I ask for a lawyer, and I want to see the security camera tapes. But the detective won't let me see any of the evidence.

The detective is almost always right, and makes good cases, so I must be guilty. Goodbye family, see you in twenty years.

I think you are a serious threat to the game. I cannot wait until Full Tilt takes action against you. I don't care if your not breaking any rules, their is probably a bot out there somewhere that plays similar to you, therefore you should be banned.

I'm not saying I condone short-stacking, I don't even play NL. But your argument is so flawed. It's like giving up our freedom for more security against terrorists -- eventually you won't have any freedom left.

As a very new multitabler, right now I'm playing (and making money from) $1 and $5 DONs with a very robotic strategy. I'm not getting good reads on players yet, so I pretty much always do the same thing.

I basically have three bet sizes after the flop: one size for a probe bet, another size if I think I probably have the best hand, and a third size to deny drawing odds or to try to take the pot down quickly. There are certain pairs I will raise from any position, but if the pair is lower, there is one pair that I only raise in middle or late position, and lower pair that I will only raise from early position, and another pair that I will raise only from the button or blinds.

As with my pairs, I use a similar stratgey with aces, that is, what kicker is worthy of a raise depends on my position, and I rarely deviate from that. Also, my postflop raises are almost always the same, 3bb+1bb for each limper+1bb if I'm UTG or UTG+1.

I won't be this robotic for long (that would be poker suicide once players using PokerTracker figure me out), but it sure sounds like FTP would have nailed me for being botlike if I was playing on their site.

Pretty scary, and very wrong.