you whiny little girl

Yes, I hear you. I think I should have referred to "you" in the broader, plural sense of various people who suggested this.
I don't think that the precise timing is particularly important, though.

The timing doesn't increase or decrease the harm done in this particular situation.
Yes, we do have an idea of how that impacts that hand, because we can look at the relevant hand in question. Without divulging everyone's hole cards, the players who folded after that chat happened to have extremely weak hands, with no chance of busting anyone else out.

Yeah, but they didn't do this at all. Instead of punishing the cheater, and compensating the victim for his lost equity they took the easy decision and did nothing regarding the payouts.

Also, how can anyone playing poker not know that it is unacceptable to team up against one player to eliminate him to the benefit of the rest of the table? That has nothing to do with poker, but common decency to not cheat other people. The elky situation is different since that someone new to poker really might not know that it is against the rules.

This was also not addressed. There is no way to know how the previous hand would have played out.

Do we even believe that the players would be stupid enough to bet and risk chips when you have not even a bb left?

the timing isn't important?

wat. what if it's suggested an orbit prior. are you going to make judgment on how it affects every hand then? if it's clear that the holdings are "weak" that entire orbit does the collusion get ignored also? cmon. you can't say it doesn't matter because the event is tainted as soon as the suggestion happens. you don't know how it plays out without the collusion on the table because the collusion is actually on the table now.
you shouldn't be in the routine of making judgments that he's simply not affected at all when you have clear cut collusion in chat like this. the process shouldn't include you interpreting what you think people would have done if you can avoid it.

read the thread pal. And wake up. The penalty for collusion should be enforced. Colluding players DQ'd, other players bumped up.

What if OP had AA and won the hand?? Would Stars then say they had no reason to enforce any collusion penalties because OP won the hand? The penalty should be there regardless of the results.

It wasn't a $1 tournament, it was a $50 tournament. The players at that limit should know better.

really?

"sorry OP you were colluded against but you aren't a victim because we've determined the exact same set of actions would have taken place no matter what. unlucky for you, you picked a bad TWO hands to get colluded against on."

Exactly the guy told everyone to call and check down my BB with 4 players left to act in the previous hand. If he didn't say that, it is possible someone would have called and someone could have been eliminated that hand. Therefor there was a value lost to me despite the being unable to win the next hand.

Yeah exactly. I'm always amazed at how good stars support is from posts here, and am totally bewildered they are looking at the situation like this. If only OP could have beat the SB or someone got dealt like A4 the hand before his compensation is totally different?

The problem that I have is that Pokerstars is taking the stance that the players did not know better. I am sorry, but not many people jump into online poker and start at the $50 level. These players absolutely knew better.

Here's the note I sent to PokerStars:

I read this thread on 2plus2, and I wanted to forward it to you with my comments.

I don't understand why the colluding players weren't DQ'd in this instance. It is true that many tournament players understand the "implicit cooperation" theory against a small stack. It's also true that explicit cooperation is in fact collusion -- the PokerStars rules describe a situation *just like this* as clearly illegal.

Whether the affected player would have won the hand or not is irrelevant. I'm disappointed with the reaction of PokerStars in this instance.

The DON sit and go tournaments are relatively new on Stars -- I've played a few of them and I've been tempted several times already to say something to other players about picking really stupid times to fold in situations like the one described on the 2plus2 thread I've linked. I haven't though, because doing that is clearly against the rules.

If something like this happened to me, I would fully expect Stars to punish the players involved and make the situation right with regards to my being cheated.

Thanks for listening!!


I included a link to this thread -- I will post the response I get from Stars...

I agree with you that the players should have known better, and think a random person off the street would recognize that it was wrong to say that. However, the stakes don't really matter. Like the second night I ever played online poker I played a $100 sit n go. I know several other people who immediately jumped to relatively higher stakes. In a lot of casinos $100ish is often the lowest available tournament buy in.

Another fine point, according to sharkscope johnneee has played 564 sit and goes. I am sure Pokerstars knew how much he played when they looked into his account. To argue that a guy with that many sit and goes alone at 40$ avg including nearly 10% in the 100-200buyin range is absurd. The man clearly knew better., they just want his business. Saying he did not knowing better is a pathetic excuse to dodge responsibility. For pokerstars it would appear "fair" means "profitable".

ok apparently i was wrong and a bizarre claim by stars

Since I can't edit my original post about my note to Stars...

I was writing my note to Stars and unaware that MichaelJ had posted three times already, while I was writing my post and playing.

Long story short I received a personal response from MichaelJ 20 minutes after my note to Stars support. His answer:

-- contained nearly all of the points he had made in the thread.
-- was clearly not a cut and paste of what he'd written in the thread but a very literate, thought out response to me.
-- even contained references to past notes I'd written to Stars.

2p2 is pretty fortunate to have Josem as a member, and Stars is pretty fortunate to have MichaelJ on staff. More sites need more guys like him.

Josem is an asset for stars for sure.
I rarely disagree and even less rarely to this degree with things he posts.

In this instance I cannot reconcile Stars relying on an absolute knowledge of what happened in the bustout hand to say the OP is owed no compensation, and later saying they can effectively INTERPRET what would have happened or not happened differently in the previous hand.

The strength if there was one to the position of not disqualifying the offending colluder/s or compensating the OP was that it simply had no impact on the game outcome.

That base argument is gone once Stars has to say "no really, we can see the hole cards and no way was anyone doing anything differently in that second to last hand if the colluder doesn't speak up."

They've gone from "knowing" what the outcome on the bustout hand is, to making a best prediction of the actions on the previous hand if the colluder doesn't speak up based on what they see in the hole cards.

I can't reconcile that at all.

The thought process sounds like it included the question "okay but does it really matter" every step of the way about a clear violation of their own rules.

If fairness is the concern when choosing how to punish the offender, it should also be a consideration when relying on interpretive subjective lines of thought on how it played out once collusion was suggested.

The OP didn't get to play an untainted end game in this sng.
How is saying anything else fair?

Nice to see you chime in, and I agree with stars assessment in this case regarding the OP's right to a refund.

PSMJ,
You're awesome, but you're wrong here. It's the responsibility of the poker room to keep the games free of cheating. OP paid his buy-in in exchange for playing in a clean game of poker, and you did not provide that service. When you fail to provide this service, you should compensate at least the buy-in of the tournament. In this specific case, I think that's all that's necessary.

You can lower this cost to your site by making the rules more clear and by confiscating funds won by cheaters. In satellites, where cheating like this is rampant, you need to somehow inform players that play like this is absolutely not allowed. You might just want to remove chat deep in satellites (this wouldn't prevent deals, as deals still require an e-mail to support first anyway. You just need to give support reps the ability to freeze the tournament and put chat back up.)

Anyway, regardless of what you do to try and prevent this kind of cheating, when it occurs, it's your responsibility and you should absolutely err strongly on the side of compensating the victims.

I do wonder at times whether Stars ever confiscates winnings in this type of collusion and distributes it to the person(s) colluded against.

I do think in cases such as this that the colluders should be warned and any repeat they lose their winnings. Unfortunately we never know whether a repeat offense is ever punished.

Whether the OP had the worst hand is totally irrelevant and I am not sure why this is even put up as a defense.

I only agree that the OP should not be refunded. I believe the 2 players who initiated collusion should be punished more harshly, but that is obviously pokerstar's decision and their's alone.

I stated my reasoning for why the OP shouldn't be refunded, which was based on the fact that no matter what any other player did in the hand, the OP still busts out. This wouldn't change if OP has 72o or AA, if his hand doesn't win against SB's, he shouldn't be entitled to a refund imo.


I'm not saying the colluders shouldn't take a penalty, I'm saying the OP doesn't deserve a refund.

If stars decided that the colluding players should be DQ'ed, then the OP would be bumped up into the money, and I would not object to that. Stars did not choose to take this route.

I read the thread. How about you focus more on your ****ing family instead of talking down to me. Thank you.

wow, this is the first one of these types of threads that i've ever read where i really adamantly disagreed with the stars response

wtf are you talking about? focus more on my family? are you on crack?

Besides talking down to you is pretty easy. All I have to do is type real slow and stick to words with one or two syllables ( that means really short words )

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...appear-226281/

Same way you talk to your poor wife and oldest kid?


But that's off topic.


In cases like these, where players collude to eliminate someone on the bubble, I expect stars takes a similar route as the one in OP's case and simply warn or chat restrict the offenders if this is their 1st time. We all make mistakes, sometimes players might not know the rules, and some slack should be given. I'm not saying 1st time offenders shouldn't be punished, but I am saying no need to get out the big guns in 1st time cases like these. However, multiple infractions of this sort certainly should require a harsher line which I expect (but not know) stars to take.

i have to disagree with you again CQ, i think their punishment of the cheaters was too harsh. they had to admit they broke the rules and have their accounts frozen until they did, wow, thats brutal.

seriously though, great response by MJ to explain why you arent always entitled to a refund when you get colluded against and other issues. however they are wrong on 2 issues, imo:
1. "What ape and others said."
2. their punishment of the cheaters

based on the fact that they "might" not know the rules, they give a warning instead of a punishment. ignorance in this case shouldnt allow for zero punishment. i dont understand how you can consider what you did a punishment. it sure seems like you have a blanket policy, when it comes to 1st time explicit colluders, to let them off with just a warning.

so is it -ev to pass up my one free opportunity to collude on stars? MJ responded to my comment about this by saying it isnt true and they consider other factors, implying that sometimes explicit collusion does have a harsher penalty for the first offense based on a lot of factors.

MJ, could you explain a form of explicit collusion where someone might get a more severe punishment and what that punishment might be? (cuz this one sure seemed really bad and i just dont understand how you think it was likely they just didnt understand the rules)

my guess is stars changes its stance within 24hrs based on Ape's and others comments about the previous hand, plus it would be good publicity. they will admit that there was a very, very small chance that OP was harmed and refund his entire buy-in. an entire refund would be generous in this case because the likelihood of him being harmed was so low.

unfortunately, i dont think they are going to issue any punishment to the cheaters which is very disappointing. lol at them thinking they did punish them.

I know you are being sarcastic here and i understand why because effectively it is no punishment. However, I do think for the majority of 1st time offenders this is appropriate. They need to admit it and obviously cannot claim ignorance if caught again.

I sit firmly on the fence here in that I can understand why Stars take the action they do with 1st offenders but as the person offended against you feel very let down and cheated.