This makes the most sense of anything posted ITT

Stars should give OP an extra 4 days to make SNE end of story.

Maybe, but traffic isn't going to be too big or at least the same on 31st December, 1st January, etc than on previous days.... That's my guess...

4 extra days to make SNE or whatever. Mostly an apology, like the OP of the other thread that I mentioned in my first post. I just don't want "extra strong sentences" like "we have detected that other players have used your account", "you do not deserve a compensation", or "you should not be rewarded for this".

Using this language they are first claiming that I'm guilty and second, as I understand it, implying that nothing would happen even if these were on Dec 27-31 with 999.999 VPPs. They never said something like "we do not think this will have any impact in your ability to achieve SNE". If I do not deserve any compensation for this on the date A with B VPPs, why would I deserve it on the date X with Y VPPs?

I don't know who the players people are talking about in the Spanish forum/ Twitter are. I just know that I do not know any person that plays poker seriously (unless I don't know that they do it!) and that nobody from the poker world knows me. Actually, just my family and very few friends know that I play poker at present. PokerStars knows who I am and I assume that it will not be difficult for them get evidence on this. PokerStars also knows (I suppose, at least I mentioned it during the phone call as a consequence of some of their questions and it is enough for them to google my name to find it out) that I have a respected and high level job that has nothing to do with poker and that I have never cashed out a cent (but as I said I will soon do). I wouldn't say this is the profile of a cheater...

I don't know much about the ring game situation at .com. I think this is not a problem at .es. But SharkyStrator is (should be) a problem. I talked about this with PokerStars. With such a small player pool, the situation becomes very obvious and that should warn the recreational player that something shady is going on. There is exactly one recreational player that usually just opens a new slot at €250 HU hypers instead of playing with whoever is waiting for someone. This player always get insta opened by the very same regular who, in addition, *never* plays this game. He is a regular at 6max hyper and the recreational player also plays 6max hypers. So he would get tagged there. I also experienced this with the mafia members. I cannot understand why they allow it (unless they have an agreement with SharkyStrator, which I think would be too shady to be true, allowing it should not give them any money, forgetting the integrity part of it).

I'll translate a couple of posts in the Spanish forum by two of the mafia members. I hope now all of you will realize how dumb these people are. I understand that it is hard to understand what I'm saying (me playing the role of a woman and so on) from a .com perpective, but please, make the effort.

The first one "I'm not surprised that he has been investigated. Honestly, it is hard for me to believe that the reason why his account has been investigated is due to the double personality, blog, twitter, posts,... As a poker player, I don't care at all about the fact that he played the role of a woman in the community; so long as there is always the same person behind the screen that should not harm anyone. I think PokerStars would not give any importance to the blog, twitter,...

Honestly, I have reported "lauraval" once by possible multiaccount. In the e-mail I told PS that I was sure that more than one person could be playing behind lauraval ("I was sure" and "could be" do not match very well, but this is what he says). i have my reasons to suspect that, so i decided to share my thoughts with PS given that if there were a multiaccount that something very detrimental for most of the players. I have no reason to think otherwise.

Fairness at the tables"

(The last sentence, I assume, is because one of the regulars that has respected me after playing just a few games always concludes his blog post with that sentence.)

And now knows alvaro951951's post. Please, read closely:

"There is where the owners of the account cheat the people again. Pokerstars does not ban anyone for playing the role of a woman. in fact, if this were the reason, they would have banned them two weeks after starting the theatre of the blog and Twitter until clearing it up. As a player, this (me playing the role of a woman) does not harm me and I think it is comic and even smart if they believe that recreationals will play them more and give them more rematch.

The problem is that obviously this is not the reason for the temporary ban, with all certainty I am the person that has played the most vs them the last few months and, putting aside the inhuman number of hours that he spends in the lobby (he has learned this sentence from his mafia friend zyclonator, who used to say these exact words about himself in the Spanish poker forum. But he can play a "inhuman" number of hours, of course), I confirm that there are at least 2 players using that account, both have a very different way of playing. And this is illegal and harms the players that play vs them and see a hud that does not reflect the reality of neither of them because it is an average of the movements of both."

Could you imagine any .com high stakes regular being as dumb as these guys? They have no shame. They simply don't know what to do to get more money. They do not realize that I cannot be stupid enough to come here making up a story about PS that is not truthful. If this were the case then I assume PS would be more than justified to close my account permanently. Don't you all agree?

You will also see that they have no problem with me playing the role of a woman. As i said, this is hard to understand from a .com perspective, but it is not that difficult to understand in Spain and even my enemies understand that.

As far as their opinion...well...either they are that bad that they still have no idea on how I play (despite their collective efforts to understand it...and this should be somewhat shady...) or they are just making up whatever story they can to get rid of someone that is costing them money. Or more likely both...poor guys.

Lauraval, here is my suggestion to you. You lost 4 days, you still have 1 month left before the calendar year is over. Try to make up those 4 days by playing more poker this month. Should be easy to make up for the 4 days. Stop posting here, and the other forum and concentrate on playing poker. We have no power to help you in your situation, really. Play hard and reach SNE and all your problem solved.

He already made SNE apparently which makes this thread even more confusing.

wp sir ;-)

I see... why did you take so long to "complain" here about your account being frozen a few months ago and didn't do it at the time???

What is it that confussing? The main reason why I'm coming here is not to achieve anything material (money/VPPs). I think I deserve that, at the very least VPPs. They have no value for me now, but I deserve it. How would you feel if PokerStars closed your account with no wrongdoing on your part and treated you like a
delinquent? I mainly want PokerStars to admit their mistakes in this case.

Now, I also want you and PokerStars to see the way these players from the mafia behave (see me previous post ITT).

As I said I was trying to focus on reaching SNE and ignore this case. I tried to ignore it after reaching SNE too, but then I had the chat case that I explain in the other thread and couldn't/didn't want to stand any more.

no, not if you're an innocent euro

Not sure if I missed it, but where does your claim of the cartel / mafia come from and what evidence do you have?

Well, I don't know were to start. It's just too blatant. They never play each other and, when zyclonator was basically the only regular at €250s, the remaining mafia members would open any other regular that was trying to get a bankroll at the €100s to play against zyclonator in the €250s. This is not a matter of believing that they have or have not an edge on someone, as they like to claim. This is just a matter of convenience. For instance, they have never played with alvaro951951 (he started playing at €100 later than me and later than the remaining mafia members), so there's no way they can really know whether they have an edge on him or not. Also, as I said, zyclonator is the worst regular by far. Given that he didn't post his graph against me (after saying for months what a bad player I was), I'll have to do it (Cliffs: His $EV against me after around 1700 games at €250s is around -€14k.) It doesn't matter. The remaining mafia members will continue opening me all the time at their stakes but they will never open zyclonator.


I'll just mention what I think is the most meaningful example. At the beginning of September I was sitting at the 250€s. Three of the mafia members were sitting at the 100€s. These mafia member *never* opened me at €250s. All of a sudden, after around 15 minutes with all of us sitting there without playing, the 3 of them opened me at €250s at the very same time. That way I was busy with them and they would get all the fish. The next day they made exactly the same thing against another regular that they never opened at €250s.. I explained this situation in the Spanish forum and they have not done that since then.

You can also see this in post #35. They're always perfectly coordinated saying the same things.

You didn't really lose anything. They locked your account to do some investigation and reopened only 4 days later. It's a good thing when sites investigate in my book, much better than turning a blind eye to MA'ing, collusion, etc... like many sites do.

Regarding cartels I agree they suck.

I did lose something. Now I'm SNE, but at that time there was no way to know for sure that that wouldn't make me reqach SNE (as I explained, what if I was not going to be able to play anymore after, say, November 15th?). Also, I'm proposing a more general question. As I understand their answers, they would have done the same thing no matter if that prevented me from reaching SNE ("you deserve no compentation for this. period", "you should not be rewarded for this. period.") This has also costed me money, as I explained in other posts.

But for me there is something more important that what I have of could have lost from a material point of view: their forms, their language, their way to treat me (ignoring my e-mails for 4 days when they had claimed that I was guilty). I cannot accept that. I don't know why that is that hard to understand for some of you.

As I have said and I told PokerStars it is great that they take care of cases of possible collusion, multiaccounting, whatever. I'm the first one that supports that and has reported many cases where I turned out to be right in that they were breaking the TOS.

These threads wouldn't exist if they had closed my account for the same 4 days (causing me the same potencial material prejudices), but with different forms ("we need to make a security check" rather than "we have detected that someone else has used your account", "don't worry, you can go to sleep because this will take a while" rather than "we will answer you when your case reaching the top of the waiting list" (they know, as I learned during that night, that these cases take days for them and not hours), "we think that this will not cause any prejudice and you're in good shape to reach SNE" rather than "you should not be rewarded for this" and "you deserve no compensation for this",...).

All I want is them to apology. All I want is them to understand that the situation at .es has nothing to do with the situation at .com, so they should be careful with that and understand the differences. Most of the .com players here cannot understand that I pretended to be a woman. But as you can see in post #35 even the .es players that reported me and caused this situation understand that and see no problem in that, and they are as surprised as I was that Stars could close me my acccount due to that (well...they actually say I'm lying...)

Please stop saying "closed", when a more accurate word would be "suspended".

Your account was suspended for a few days while you were investigated. It's now back to normal. You haven't lost any money. You just lost your mind.

That's was SNE can do to a person.

Even more: That's what trying to achieve SNE in PokerStars.ES can do to a person.

Kudos for standing up against the "mafia"! I hate all types of arrangements and software exploits which give an advantage away of the tables and have nothing to do with skill.

LOL @ Stars owing you a compensation though. It looks like it's a cat&mouse type of game between you and the mafia boys and you certainly have used your fair share of shenanigans in it. This comes at a cost of a higher risk and as you seem and intelligent guy, I'm sure you're well aware of it. Your account being temporarily suspended for security investigation is probably on the top of the list of likely scenarios.

Also, I can confirm that the way Stars handled the communication with you is completely standard in such cases. You're overreacting on it.

OK, now I see that it is impossible to understand from the .com perspective that someone plays the role of a woman. But from the .es perspective everyone understands that. At the Spanish forum, nobody has said anything against that, and as you can see here (in post #35) even the mafia members that reported me understand that and do not believe that PokerStars can suspend my account due to that.

As the Spanish forum PS representative told me while my account was suspended, what was obvious to me (and to anyone that knows the .es situation) is not that clear to someone that doesn't follow closely the .es situation. This is what happened to PokerStars Security.

I would never even think of opening a blog playing a role at .com, of course it would make no sense. In the same way at .com, with the large player pool, no one care of one particular player, no one cares what one player says of does because it has little impact on any other. But at .es, with very few players, *anything* is huge. Zyclonator comments at the Spanish forum long before anything I did had a huge impact on me.

In fact, I think PokerStars has learnt from this. A couple of weeks ago I saw alvaro951951, another of the mafia members, saying at the tables "I discovered poker in February 2014" when his opponent was congratulating him on his good year. But he has an account at PokerStrategy since June 2012. So, following the logic of PokerStars Security I reported him: "if the person playing discovered poker in February 2014 and the account owner has a PokerStrategy account since 2012, several people must have been using that account" Wouldn't you agree? Shouldn't Pokerstars suspend his account?

I know that they didn't at least not for more than 24h, because I've seen him playing every single day since then,

Leaving this aside, I like that you want me to be that precise with my language ( I'm sorry that I said that they "closed my account for 4 days" instead of "they suspended my account for 4 days". I'm not a native English speaker.) because this is precisely what I'm complaining about.

If they began saying "we have suspicions that some user, other than yourself, has used your account" I assume I'd quickly imagine that this comes from the role I was playing and I'd wait calmly knowing that nothing would happen.

But if they *claim* that the *have detected* that other users have used my account, then I cannot think that those other users are that fake persona that I'm making up!

If they *have detected* that other users have used my account I just can think of two possibilites.

First (I gave this like a 90% probability): This is a false positive. I just can wait to see what they say and then try to make them see that they're wrong...but who knows that they'll come up with and how can I show that they are wrong. I can never be sure that nothing will happen if this were the case.

Second: (with the remaining 10%): Someone has hacked my computer, which made me even more worried. I wrote them at 6am the day that they suspended my account telling them the malware that I had in my computer those days, that I had read that it was also a spyware, that I wondered if this could have something to do with this,... No answer.

In the thread that I mentioned in the first post everyone said that PokerStars owed something to the OP of that thread due to the stress caused (to a recreational player with about $0 in his account!). Fine, I played a role that the OP of that thread didn't. But this is a role that everyone at .es understands and even if it made no sense, how can you justify that pokerstars claims that they have detected that other users have used my account when they haven't detected anything????

You should consider writing a thesis or a blog on this poker concept. Perhaps do a video (which would also really clear up any remaining issues...)

All the best.

It's not that difficult, really. I'm sure you have read on the importance of simply the screenname/avatar and the image it gives. (How many people have said on this forum that someone with the avatar of a child/pet is likely a fish, or that someone whose screenname is jack1234 is likely a fish,...?) This is just the same when the player pool is very small and everyone will know everything everyone does.

I also don't know what you're understanding that my blog is. It's just like 5 forum posts talking on what some players do and the only things that I say about "me" are that I'm a female aficionada that is doing well at the tables.

All the best, and again, thanks for the honest advice.

It kinda seems that you are wasting your time complaining that by temporarily closing your account to investigate the possibility of a woman playing on your account Stars may have prevented you from attaining a goal with monetary rewards by making it impossible for you to build toward such goal during the time of the investigation when you have already since attained such goal.

Also seems like a waste of time to complain so much about the language they used. It is too bad you didn't know it was going to be a few days so you could have gone to sleep and it would have been nice if they gave you some sort of timeline, but these things always take a few days at least.

I also don't really understand all this drama. As I understand, you keep saying that you are better than all the other regs. I assume this means you are better than them to a significant enough degree to beat the rake by a decent amount. If so, I don't see the problem. Just keep playing them over and over and over and win their money. Eventually they'll realize that playing you is not a good idea or they will eventually run out of money. Then you can have the lobby and not play them if you so choose.

Did you look at the thread I mentioned in OP? Could you please tell me why everyone said that PokerStars should have been more careful with the language in that case and nobody says that in my case? I just cannot get it.

Regarding the last paragraph: it's not that easy to beat the rake by a decent amount against a regular in these games. No matter how much I beat them by, playing like a team can allow them to make more money than me: if I'm playing 3 tables, one against each of 3 different mafia members, they have the lobby and the fish. This way they win more money against the fish than the amount they lose against me.

I can understand this from the PS perspective. You're a brilliant drama queen and based on that, your female persona must've been so convincing that they thought there's more people using one account.

You should also know that, even if you didn't legally breach the TOS, you were still being a douche pretending to be someone else. Karma's a bitch and while some really get the worst paybacks, you got through this cheaply. Now, please man, stop being your other persona, do grow some balls and stop whining. If you're as good of a poker player as it seems, there's obviously no reason to have mupltiple personas at all and you probably have an edge over anyone.

P.s. I do agree that cartels suck and something should be done about that. But I believe in the case you described, they didn't breach the current TOS either.

That "convincing" female persona said in the chat "what?" when my opponent in a HUPLO match said (100 BBs?), because I just had like 10 BBs. That female persona said in the chat "what's that?" when a player asked me how many VPPs I had. Before this I had asked PokerStars on the benefits of achieving SNE at .es because it seemed to me that they were smaller than they should be comparing them to those at .com. These are just 2 out of many possible examples. Come on! How can that "female persona" be convincing to PokerStars?

It's not that clear the cartel didn't breach the TOS. In depends on what you understand by team play and collusion. If you look at the definition of collusion in the Wikipedia (Collusion is an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage.) they are colluding. They have an agreement to limit open competition, unlike the cartels at .com that do not limit competition (at least not that clearly) because everyone has the chance to be in.

Below is a link to a thread that discussed groups like this. I haven't played sngs regularly in a long time.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18...hread-1409288/