Well, glad you see some advantage to them knowing the IPs. And yes, they definitely have many ways to detect cheating...if they relied on nothing but IPs, online poker would be in trouble. But removing the ability to know IPs would be a massive handicap. 2 players have played in a bunch of the same SNGs, or are often on the same cash tables, they have the same IP...investigation over. IP is unknown, now they need to find out a lot more. However, again you're missing a much bigger issue - those who have been banned before and are going to come back with different personal information. How are Stars going to catch them before they cheat or defraud again, if they can't see their IPs? And how many more people will start doing this once they know how easy it is?

And once again, you've skipped over the very pertinent question - what harm are poker sites going to do to you with IP knowledge that they can't do already?

Yeah, its not like those sites who processed illegal payments from US players despite it being against the law in the US..

Oh hang on a moment....

Then I seriously suggest you make a date for me to come and I will get to the bottom of it ,this is the only way one way or another test or proof that I can show in the best light and way possible whhether or not your site games of poker are rigged or not josem sir.!

I think when players are saying about the non-disclosure part it obviously means ,ok we sign upto something that we cannot talk about or discuss to anyone outside of the company , tell me josem why you think u need to have such an agreement of non-disclosure? does this all make the company feel slightly insecure ,because thats the observation that im seeing here .Its clear the site /sites are hiding something whether it be for the good of the game who knows ,but I think a company like pokerstars should have no transparency regarding thier software or thier players period and END OF.! sir

point taken bobo ,thankyou.

Exactly. So he didn't actually give you any technical support or explain/confirm anything. Like Wiki said and I suspected, he basically said what he needed to say to get the crazy man off the phone without wasting any more of his time.

YES! You said that you needed a Virgin Media technical guy there too? Please can you send them an email thoroughly explaining the situation and requesting their involvement. Then post the email and their response here.

Thanks

I'll post here when I have a date.
Given you already claim to "know" this, I think you should publish your information and stop keeping it secret.

What is the "non-disclosure part" that you are referring to? Can you please clearly ask your question in a succinct manner?
No, you don't need the full details of how the whole company runs. That's not a reasonable burden to place on PokerStars - obviously we invest a huge amount of research and development into the processes and procedures that make PokerStars the leading online poker company.

You do, however, have a reasonable expectation for PokerStars to share reasonable information about how our shuffling and associated functions operate. I think that information is already available.
Yes, absolutely our cashier systems are very safe.

I'd be up for that..

Just as a side note, what is the pokerstars policy on the UK data protection act. Supposing I were to write to Pokerstars and pay the £10 would they provide EVERY single tit bit of information they have on their servers about me ?

I don't know if Pokerstars are covered by the UK data protection act as they are an IOM company.

Non disclosure acts are pretty standard across the board where trademarked names and brands are at stake. Companies wouldn't want employees running around telling comptetitors about certain innovative ideas they have come up with.

Imagine being a software developer at Merge and you come up with some superb idea. The team work on it and the concept is just about to be launched. Suddenly one of the employees gets paid $1 million to spill the beans to Full Tilt.. They then get in quick and beat you to the race, getting the product on the market before you..

You'd feel really pissed knowing whats happened.

However a ND agreement means that sensitive information which could be lucrtative to the competition remains safe at your company, unless that employee or future employers want to pay you **** loads of money in compensation.

I don't accept that PokerStars broke the law. PokerStars was never found guilty, and has never admitted to breaking the law.

That's an important point.

No it isn't. You looking at a computer sitting on the floor of a massive data centre has no value in answering the question of, "is online poker rigged?"

If you have evidence of that taking place, you should share it.
PokerStars makes non-disclosure agreements to keep certain private information private. We think it's reasonable that private financial information and private plans are kept private.

Obviously, if a person has evidence of any crime taking place, then no NDA can prevent a person from disclosing that to the responsible authorities.
The sorts of things we keep private are our future plans for development and our financial results. That's pretty normal and entirely unrelated to the question, "is online poker rigged?"

PokerStars is subject to the Isle of Man Data Protection Act, which I understand is similar in many respects.

The privacy policy is described in more detail here: http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/privacy/

ahh the old Terms of Service takes precedence as it says.... please read that one.

Guess all those people saying it had no importance might want to ..... emm eat their words or something..

Is there a conflict between the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service?

With all due respect, but thats playing with words and doesn't alter the fact that processing payments in the US was made illegal under the UIGEA. Like it or not, that was the law. Pokerstars broke that law, whether wittingly or unwittingly, they did it.


The US government make the laws and they said you broke them.. thats good enough for me...

Not that i can see, but the fact is that the T&C has relevance... Legally speaking

josem seems excited... ole buddy franklin aint gonna help you now

The data protection act in the UK allows that ALL ( and I mean every single little tit bit of information ) must be disclosed to someone who pays £10 for it.

Therefore am I entitled to see every single little bit of information held about me on your servers, in its entirity.. Nothing withheld or altered ?

The data protectin act over rides any T+Cs pokerstars may have, so therefore if they are holding any information on me on their servers then I am entitled to see it, and their terms and conditions do not supercede that right

Having just checked the IOM data protection act of 2002, anyone can apply for a SAR and it must be provided..

Its not a clear case of simply publishing information on here ,I have a job to send screenshots lol let alone any serious data like log files/ip records etc and mainly the pysical aspect of actually showing how its done .

The key element as I have explained needs more help from my virgin media tech support team, they have now discontinued the old cable modem "the only bit piece of proof I have at this current moment in time , if I get a date set up at the office then we would need thier help with your permission.

I am not keeping any secrets ,the only one keeping secrets is pokerstars and their lack of so called transparency in disclosure over the company logistics and how its run ..Thats all some players are asking for ,we want full disclosure not kept behind secrecy and lies and not be stonewalled everytime we have issues.

Obviously your company have just dealt with showing around the inspectors well thats what I would call them ,although u class them as regulators .What surprises me is how much and im speaking from experience how much absolute poker did in respect of hiding stuff from said regulators when they visited thier ship ..I forget how many times i bet they showed them false details or false records or explained how we decided to not give anyone thier hand history files ,or say simply ohh our harddrives failed blah blah blah. when in reality they were blatantly defrauding customers to a high end degree. Thats why they are shut down josem.

And you know who profited from the whole process ? One can go through all of that but im not going to bother to explain .My purpose is to get what I know about the software out in the open for review ,whether or not I indeed had your source code remains a mystery .

And personally I think its important to give your valued opinion on how pokerstars serves its customers best , a lot of players just think its a waste of time playing and give up .Its a win win situation for your company in any case .I understand their are overheads of the company ,so what my point is how u get to pay for those said overheads , obviously its run as a financial business so the point is basic understanding of the usage of your said business.

Cheers regards Aaron.

Yes I understood part of all that because some sites are in competition with one another , thats a bit like using diff phone companys ,they are all branded products trying to outdo one another ..What I dont understand is though this sounds all too fishy why they dont come clean about how they run that information .I mean lets fact it ,absolute poker handed out all our email addresses to spammers ,888 are currently doing the very same thing , whats clear is they couldnt give a stuff about our privacy or data protection yet have the gaul the look after thier own /.!

the question will always remain WHY DONT POKERSTARS WANT TO CLEAR THIS UP WITH A PROPER HUGE AUDIT.

not just 2 possibly independant hand histories and a Cigital audit (that only checked the source RNG, not the entire hand shuffle and flop turn river).

WHOAH.. you are getting a bit carried away with yourself here.

Let me give you an example of how it works. I have several pokersites on my PC and visit forums like this one. My computer picks up cookies along the way.

Sites then have tracking cookies that when i visit them, they scan my cookies and see if they can find anything identifiable that may interest me. They then link onto that item and find a relevant site that they are affiliated to. They get paid for any advert relating to poker that appears on my PC.

Thats why every time you visit ropey sites you will get inundated adverts from poker clients or gambling sites because thats what you have indicated ( via your browsing history ) you are into. If you liked goat porn then no doubt there would be adverts for goat porn...

I think you are reading too much into it....

I'm pretty sure the Cigital report says they used actual card output for their randomness tests, in addition to just confirming proper operation of the RNG hardware.

Flop/turn/river are meaningless, a proper test just spits out a gazillion cards (i.e. just values 0-51) and checks the sequence for randomness. The rules of any specific game are irrelevant to that.

Forget the hand histories ,the sites would diffuse the situation by explaining it away on some loss/win rate margin agenda.

They have no time investigating individual hand histories , even at 888 on my account they have no buisness investigating they simply earmark you down for winning a tourney and send you supercard data./....

Easy to program into someone game if they implement "packet injection techniques".

Now tell me im wrong josem!.......and other perps

Are you saying pokerstars send you free advertising ? wow just wow

Nothing is free in this world but u can expect free advertising from online poker sites.Just fantastic ;:sarcasm

I agree completely.

Sites shouldn't be allowed to choose who checks their info, as standard the commissions should appoint a completely independant scrutineer and make sure all sites offer complete access to every single bit of information they have ie

Player databases
RNG programs
Program software and its application
Financial records

Everything should be available and if any site were to refuse they should have their license revoked until they do comply.

In fact I would like to see it extending to a commision set up to cover worldwide regulation of gaming and only those sites approved by that organisiont would be permitted to operate. Any bank found processing payments from sites not approved by the commision would be fined heavily.

The biggger the organisation, the more power they would have. That way sites couldn't hide away under the regulations of little islands in the middle of nowhere with the regulatory powers of a cabbage patch kid.

No, pokerstars asked Cigital to confirm that the RNG operated as per its manufacturers expectation.

They did not check hand histories or any statistics whatsoever.

You do know about online marketing I assume.. CPV, CPC etc

There are people making lots of money out there by checking what you are browsing on the internet. Every time you click on a webpage someone is earning something..

In fact the chances are even posting on here makes 2+2 a few cents.

The internet is big money for site owners selling advertising space...

LOL besmirchaments

If you're back to this, then I'll ask you yet again - why do they need "packet injection techniques"? Why wouldn't they just send you these "supercards" the same they send all the rest of them?

I don't agree with you.
Yah, obviously the Terms of Service are relevant.
So wait, you think there's this massive fraud happening, you think you have evidence of this... but you're waiting until the alleged fraudster is willing to meet you before you publish this?

This does not seem coherent.
I don't accept your allegations, I've been extraordinarily comprehensive in responding to each of your nutty and baseless accusations.
PokerStars has had their RNG systems properly reviewed.
If you want to conduct your own review, then we'll happily send you a copy of all your real money hand histories.
You are wrong. You can see my previous responses to your comments about so-called "packet injection techniques". They are nutty and absurd and literally incoherent.
PokerStars already appoints the worlds best independent scrutineers: the millions of players who we are happy to provide all real money hand histories to.

yes they have had ONLY the RNG source checked (2003).. they have not yet allowed a CONCLUSIVE AND ENTIRE AUDIT OF ALL THE OPERATIONS OF THEIR POKER SOFTWARE.... YES THE WHOLE DEAL INCLUDING FLOP TURN AND RIVER.

this has not been done ever.. and i am sure this has been mentioned at some point in this thread... for you to close your point down to only the RNG being a conclusive audit is a big joke. you expose yourself... the more you do that, the more any intelligent person would be concerned.

WHY DONT THEY COME OUT AND FINISH THIS ARGUMENT??

Yes and I implore all to read those conditions and act with respect to that.

As a result I shall be withdrawing my paltry winnings and cancelling my account until there is a COMPLETE audit of pokerstars software. not just the RNG.

Because it's a huge waste of time and money?

The US government didn't agree that you hadn't broken any laws.

Oddly enough the moment they stopped your .COM website and closed down your servers you seemed to agree with them too...

Whether you agree with the law or not, the fact is you broke them. subsequent actions by the US government and PS backing down and agreeing to suspend taking any players or payments from the US somehow seems to back that up.

Using the "I don't believe we broke the law" argument is nonsensical. I don't agree that two people shouldn't be allowed to play from the same IP address. I don't agree that I can't play on Pokerstars when my brother comes to visit and we can't play using the same broadband connection.

Just because I don't agree with your rules it doesn't mean I can blatantly ignore them, and oddly enough, if I protest innocence and tell PS security that I don't agree with their laws so therefore they can go **** themselves, do you think they'll let me carry on breaking the rules.

Thats the ultimate irony. A representative of a site who suspends and closes accounts without allowing the players to defend themselves, is here telling us that its OK to break rules as long as you don't admit to it, and you pay to stop yourself getting prosecuted. As long as you don't get caught legally and refuse to admit guilt then you can do what you like.

Irony at its finest.

A waste of time - possibly

A waste of money - potentially

A loss of profit - almost inevitably