I didn't read the hand history but no one seems to mention that they were playing lower stakes together so that would factor in the higher roi.
13% in 7$ to 30% in 1.5$ especially in small sample doesn't seem so absurd and for sure should not be the core reason to banning them.

I completely understand bro, thanks for the post.

We will definitely keep everyone updated with the case leading up to the result. I have forwarded the hands I posted to stars as well.

Unfortunately, because I never kept hand histories saved to my hard drive, I have no way of getting all the hand histories of the hypers merzgotgame and I played in. If pokerstars request more hands in order for us to prove our innocence I will find a way to get hold of them. However, I feel we have more than enough evidence in our favour now. Add to that the fact that there isn't actually any evidence against, I am getting more confident every day.

Thank you to those have posted showing your support to our case, I will let you know when we hear anything,

Boxley

.

OP, if you ask stars support they will send you the histories for every hand you have ever played.

Download a trial version of hem or pt and import the histories.

Merzgotgame will do this tomorrow. Thank you for the info, I will message him now and tell him.

Let's get some facts.


1. Knowing each others game/pushfold etc. is good for staying alive because you know when someone makes a value or not - that's not collusion. Think about Dwan and Negreanu "knowing" their ranges and therefore "colluding" at some high stakes mtt.

2. If you bust less, your ROI goes up - simply as that. And if you bust less in a 1.5$ STT when you're a winning player at 3-7$ then an increase in ROI is absolutely normal. He's sitting with a known player and 4 microdonks - whose winning player's ROI wouldn't get higher there? Maybe if variance hit you in the face, but maybe it's with you this time..

3. Add a low samplesize to the softer field and the fact that the Sharkscope stat isn't limited to 6max hypers afaik, ROI seems reasonable.

4. OP and Merzot giving out HHs which don't show colluding doesn't make them unguilty. In fact, 1 STT with super colluding is enough if it really happened, but I don't believe it.
If there was some sort of colluding, Stars has to provide those HH since they're the ones who hold them all. Giving out two standard HHs and hiding all those where the softplay or chipdumping should occure is like presenting a kitchen knife as an evidence in a case where someone got killed by a car accident.

OP, what happens if go under Requests -> Hand History / Tournament History / Playing History Audit - anything there you'd need?

Good luck to you.

This will show all my hands from a certain period of time, however I play most of my games without merzgotgame, so most of the games the hands will come from will be just me on my own grinding. I need a way to just get HH from all the hypers we played in together. Will stars be able to provide this?

They should - if they can look into it for collusion, they must have them stored somewhere.

Just pop a mail to support asking for your histories in 1.50$ 6max hyper (since you only played these with Merzot, you wouldn't need to ask for specific HHs with Merzot in it).

Sounds good, Merz will give it a go tomorrow, off to bed for now.

If stars can't provide just the hyper HHs then request every history and import them into PokerTracker. It will be relatively easy to construct an SQL query to filter only the required hand histories and export them as a text document. PM me if you need any help with this.

I do find it funny how people say something along the lines of "Pokerstars never makes mistakes" as if every employee working there automatically gives the same level of customer service once they are hired. I've worked in the gaming industry in the past, and have dealt with Customer service teams from the business and customer end also - the obvious truth is that a Team is built of many people. And people make mistakes. I should say here though that overall their support is one of the best if not the best. But there are exceptions - hell someone could just be having a bad day or hangover they aren't robots. At least with them by not giving up you can get additional assistance and they seem to care. Some rooms just stop responding when an issue is annoying or too much of a hassle. Other then this don't think I have much to add but personally (yes my opinion) and with the limited info I have I don't think it's collusion - so goodluck with your issue. It would suck so much being banned from PS (and probably FTP now too :S)

Cheers mate. I just sent them an email requesting the hand histories of EVERY $1.50 hyper I've ever played. Will post the email and response when I wake up in the morning.

If this doesn't work though, I will find another way to get the histories. Either way, I will get every hyper I've ever played with B0xley. And even the ones I've played with out him, and post them straight onto this forum. If I have any trouble sorting it out, I'll hit you up with a message for advice - so thanks again for the offered help.

Can I just add, one day I was playing those $1.50 hypers by my self. No word of a lie, I non-cashed 22 in a row. While not ridiculous, it's still kinda sick. Especially with the amount of droolers in those hypers.

This most definitely has had an effect on my ROI in games with out Box. Esp since I think I've only played about 50 odd games with out him. Something to think about I guess...

Like this post. May be not everybody is as good as the best or even their better staffers. But even good to average staffers have bad days. But from player point of view, I hope they have very few of them in number.

It’s important that they have opened the thread and promised a relook into this issue.

Don’t want such complacency creeping into their support staff who take decisions based on feeling of gut and instinct rather than sound knowledge about the game & situations which constitute to team play.

don't worry about this. as long as you can provide each 239 tourneys. any half decent file search tool should be able to filter out hand histories that a) contain the respective stake in the file name and b) contains both of your names in the text. google "file search tool" or similar.

create a foler "JamosWOW" and another "B0xleyNZ" and dump your hand histories in there. pack both folders in one zip and upload it to a file hoster like [ http://depositfiles.com ]. finally post the generated link here.

If only someone would invent specialised database software for storing and filtering hand histories. They could call it holdem manager or something I imagine.

you mean a specialized software for hand histories villains never had? i'd call that grep.

facepalm.jpg



You see, if he gets the hand histories then he can import them into a specialised tool that can apply filters etc, rather than having a huge cut & paste job to do to examine and collate hands out of a massive text file.

Its true though, I didn't know that you could use grep to search for text in files that you don't have. I can already think of tons of uses for this, it would be awesome if you could explain how it works.

I woke up this morning to find this email:


Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your email to PokerStars.

Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to you. Every player has a right to appeal against any verdict issued by PokerStars and each appeal has a potential escalation path right through to the Senior Management level. In your case the emails that you sent were unfortunately delayed in being escalated owing to their arrival coinciding with scheduled rest days for the agent then responsible for your case. While a two day delay is not ideal, it is sometimes unavoidable.

All collusion cases resulting in action being taken by PokerStars are reviewed by at least two members of the Game Security Team. The intention of this is to ensure that fair and correct decisions are made and that those decisions are consistent with PokerStars’ policies and procedures. In this instance the original investigation was conducted by a less experienced team member who misjudged the case. This error, which would normally have been picked up by the peer review, was not spotted and hence an incorrect decision was made.

During my past 7 years as a team member, the Game Security department has reviewed many thousands of collusion cases. During this time I can think of only a couple of occasions when errors of such a nature have been made. While the peer review system is not perfect, it certainly mitigates the chances of errors happening. The Game Security management team will look at further ways in which this can be improved in order to reduce the chances of such errors in future.

As a result of your appeal, I and other senior members of the Game Security department have reviewed the case. It appears that during the original investigation, emphasis seems to have been placed on hands that could look suspicious in isolation, rather than them being viewed in context. As a result of this, the initial investigators appeared to take the stance of guilty until proven innocent, which is not how Game Security cases should be reviewed. This approach was highlighted in those hands where you and ‘MerzGotGame’ were 3-betting light and these occasions were mistaken for pot builds or squeeze plays. A review of both players’ hands when playing independently from each other later demonstrated that these were standard play which had been misinterpreted in the original review. The second review also found evidence of exonerating play which was missed originally. The manner in which the initial investigation was handled will be addressed with the staff members concerned.

On completion of the additional reviews we have determined that the original decision was certainly incorrect and that there is no reason why you should not be allowed to continue playing at PokerStars. Both you and ‘MerzGotGame’ have been reinstated and your account balances have been restored.

I deeply apologise for the mistakes made in this investigation and for the inconvenience caused to you.

Should you wish to discuss the matter further either by email or phone then I will gladly do so.

Best Regards,

(Name deleted for privacy reasons)
Senior Manager
PokerStars Game Security


We've done it! A big thank you to Michael J from pokerstars security who helped make the appeal go ahead. In the future I think merzgotgame and I will just avoid playing in the same sng again, I don't think I can take the stress of this again.

facepalm.png

+ congrats OP. why did you guys not post the hand histories from the very begining?

Woke up to the exact same email. I'd suggest a few of these people might want to read it carefully.



Can I just say thank you to all the people who supported us with advice. Thank you to the people who didn't look at one statistic and instantly conclude that Pokerstars never gets this sort of stuff wrong.

I mentioned before, when cases come up like this, don't let assumed knowledge cloud your judgement. We came here with everything we had and absolutely no evidence against us from Stars and people still concluded that we cheated. It's fine to be critical, but don't be judgemental. Well done to the people who made up their own minds based on the facts given. And thank again for all the advice!

Back to the tables!!

- "MerzGotGame"

This was still in it's early stages and we hadn't even thought of it. When someone mentioned it though, OP went searching for all the exonerating evidence he found.

cool!
I am really turning into a huge starsfan. Not because they made a mistake (which will always happen where humans are involved) but because of the way they handled it.

Yes, I agree they handled this grave mistake well.

In the second investigation, they actually found us not guilty quicker than they found us guilty the first time.

Great work guys. And as I stated in an earlier detailed post - I started to come to "your side" about halfway through the thread.

And after Box was able to come up with the hand histories he posted - from that point on I was pretty sure there was no foul play between you guys.

Merz - I'm included in the post you just made for "those who should read the email you received from pokerstars carefully"... I have read it carefully and entirely. As I've read every post in this thread and I have to say again... I tried my best to look at it all objectively and without judgement.

In doing just that - at first I was very much in the opinion that you and Box were guilty. As I added posts (trying to be objective and not judgemental) and read every post in the thread - I was soon very much in the opinion that you and Box were NOT guilty. (And posted such).

As the Security Manager stated in the thousands of cases like this that he has been involved in there were "only a couple where errors such as this have been made"...

I am sure glad that it was an error in this case!

I appreciate both of you and your "fight" to right the wrong! I know that it must have been so harsh to be accused and "banned" to start with - and then to bring it to this forum where those who are involved in collusion or any other forms of cheating, etc. get very much smeared and trashed! You have to understand our point of view as well (and you both have stated that you do) - as players this sort of action is the worst and can not be tolerated.

I for one "salute you". You have fought a good fight and cleared your names!

I wish you much success in not only poker but in life!... Both of you!

Best,

CH

Trying to change the title of the thread, can anyone let me know how to do this?