Let it go man, it's over with. I explained myself, we really do not need to be going in circles about my actions. It's really derailing the thread, so really, let's drop it.

No it's not evidence that they were cheating but pokerstars concluded they did. We dont really need evidence. They were found guilty by the people it mattered too.

If anyone has questions or whatever pm me. If I get hh I will post them as some of you seem quite curious. I probably wont be posting in here any longer. Good luck with the thread.

50,000,000

Also, stars should reach into the rake they took from those players and repay the players that were scammed. of course this will never happen, but it should

these are just the players that are in this batch as the superxia and sishun were two players involved back in june of 2009 from the exact same place that I know about and i'm sure there were many many more in between......I would guess that this ring of chinese players got off with over a million if you include fpps if I had to estimate. We will know soon enough as more details keep coming in and Jane we wouldn't mind if you helped us know what exactly went on....I'm just wondering how much i was affected playing nearly 20,000 don's.....makes me sick

Before i came back to the US for grad school (2006) i used to frequent the underground clubs in northeast china and hangzhou (my wife is from there).

The games were incredibly soft so it was worth being around the sketchy crowd.

I have been approached 3 times by different players asking if i would be interested in investing in their sweatshop operation. Most recently, Jason Ho (see stox scandal) asked me if i would invest in what he referred to as an arbitrage opportunity (LOLOLOLOLOL).

When the very first man approached me i was curious as to what he was talking about (i.e i was naive enough to think it might be something other than cheating), so i checked out his warehouse. It was basically a lan cafe running a bunch of vpn's with bunk beds and stuff and reeked of sweat and BO. There were at least 30 people "working" there, No women.

I politely declined offers to get involved in this nonsense.

anyone want to set the line for what page of this thread jane makes her last post?

Stars almost certainly didn't confiscate $400k I suspect. The players would have almost certainly been cashing out as they went along. No way of knowing for sure of course. Your points about the FPP's and the rake that Stars profited from the games they were involved in I think are both valid.

The FPP's especially. The value of those things doesn't just vanish. They are pretty much the same as money. Stars should treat them as being worth 1.6c each and include those funds in the refunds, etc.

the rest of the rake part seems fair as well. If 5 of the gang were involved in a 100+4 together then I think taking the $20 in rake that they paid to redistribute as well is appropriate....as well as the $20 in rake that the 5 innocent players contributed on the false assumption that they were participating in a legit game.

Because there is practically zero disclosure on their methodology for redistribution the players are left to simply trust the site to do it all correctly. And it certainly seems reasonable to inquire if it's just the confiscated funds getting redistributed or if they are also including FPP and/or rake value.

I think the whole thing calls for more transparency in several different respects.

Micro he was saying they netted 400k, not confiscated 400k.

flopp - Sorry to throw more work at you but it might be interesting to see the dates that each of those players STARTED playing. If you don't feel like doing this then perhaps someone else would be willing to tack it on at some point. No rush or anything on that of course. Just something that occurred to me. I saw you mention in the SNE Pursuit thread how you had spent a year playing the DON's...and it just reminded me of the point that we don't seem to know right now how back all this stuff goes.

I cranked all of the names into 2+2 search to see if anyone had complained about these people before. No allegations, no suspicious hands and only a couple names popped at all. I find it odd that these people could collude for months and no one complained here.

i don't see why the names should be found on 2p2. if you post on here complaining about possible collusion all everyone will say to you is "email support ldo"

People holding their breath waiting for Stars to present some evidence are probably going to turn blue.

Stars will not want to show the specifics of what they examine to determine collusion, nor how they reach their decisions. Such information could aid current or future cheaters.

The best we are likely to get from Stars is what we already have, which is a description of the behaviour indicated by the evidence. We also have from other sources some circumstantial evidence in the form of win statistics. Perhaps some players will produce hand histories. Just don't expect more from Stars. They are well within their rights not to provide actual evidence in this forum, and on balance I prefer that they do not.

And Mitch, no, the fact that Stars closed these accounts is not evidence that these accounts were cheating. It is evidence that Stars' position is that they were cheating. Depending on the actual evidence of cheating, or lack thereof, Stars' decisions could be evidence of Stars' corruption, sound judgment, incompetence, or skill at finding cheaters.

"They said he's guilty, therefore he must be guilty" is a dangerous place to be. Stop going there.

Right, because stars has a storied history of banning good honest rakers for no reason, and the chinese online gaming community has such a clean, stellar history.

Somewhere a village is missing their idiot

That's why they have so many accounts. 5-6 guys with 50 accounts is a lot harder to track what's going on.

rize - dothemath is correct. When Stars says they have caught a cheater I believe them. But that doesn't mean that their decision qualifies as actual evidence.

It's the best evidence that we are going to get.

You're going to tell me that begging people in this thread for a couple hand histories which may or may not even be real qualifies as "actual evidence" but Stars' verdict doesn't?

If Stars' verdict of the situation counts for nothing, then we might as well close this thread now.

Would love to read more threads/posts regarding Chinese sweatshop poker. Fascinating stuff.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...d-stud-100932/

Meh, I knew you would come in here and nit it up. I know you're a black and white kind of guy, but I think Stars being able to see every players' holecards and actions for all hands the suspected colluders played and deciding that they colluded is evidence enough for me. Full Tilt, I wouldn't feel as comfortable.

If you can't trust Stars' ability to correctly asses cheating after looking at all cards face up, then you certainly shouldn't play at Stars. I don't need to see ******ed bubble squeezes as evidence of cheating if Stars says it happened.

Mitch and Rize - Nobody is saying that Stars can't be trusted when they say they have determined that someone is cheating. You are really twisting things around here.

I do have some distrust of them catching such cheats as quickly as possible but it's difficult to say for sure of course.

But "Stars said so" is not evidence. It just means that Stars had the evidence to make that determination.

no seriously what is the evidence you are hoping this thread will garner that will be so much better than stars' 4 month review w/ hole cards? i'm just curious, will a couple of HH posted by an OP with an agenda, that may or may not be altered do the trick? man, that is so much more concrete, you're right.

Yeah, this looks like a fairly open and shut case, but thanks to OP for spreading the word, so we can be more vigilant of you guys in the future.

You are twisting my words quite badly.

Nobody said at all that Stars' verdict counted for nothing. So I'm not really sure why you are implying that I'm somehow saying or thinking that. Stars decision counts for a lot. I specifically said in a recent post "When Stars says they have caught a cheater I believe them." But Stars' decision meaning a lot to me and me trusting that they made the correct decision is different than saying that the verdict itself is "evidence." It just isn't.

The decision was based on the evidence that they compiled. That does not mean that the decision IS the evidence.

cool so we have no evidence of anything then. what exactly are we hoping to accomplish here then?

If Stars can be trusted to make the correct decision, then that is evidence and you shouldn't need to see specific hands. It really is that simple. Yes, you didn't see the direct evidence, but if you trust they will make the correct determination using said direct evidence, then the account closures are evidence that he cheated.