HaHa, with the notable exception that the divisions do not formally work for Pokerstars and unlike in the real world of job interviews the division's HR department is not subject to formal enforceable audits and division of responsibilities in roles that attempt to make collusive behaviour impossible.

The key issue is the appearance of potential for collusion, enabled by Pokerstars by continuing to allow group-based seating scripts.

If the divisions formally reported to Pokerstars then Pokerstars could impose division of responsibilities procedures and random and independent audits to greatly lessen the risks of collusive behaviour.

But Pokerstars should value their public integrity image enough to introduce blind queues for HUSNGs and introduce and enforce a ban on all group seating scripts.

Tell me, what happens to Pokerstars image when a 1 in 100,000 SpinNGo prize is mired in bad publicity when the third-placed player alleges the other two colluded against him to knock him out and the evidence is solely they are two friends who often play together in SpinNGo's enabled by a collusive group script? It can't be proven they colluded but it looks really bad for the two players and for Pokerstars whose inaction and misleading promotion of Spin&Go's with "blind" queues because it can't be proven they didn't collude either!

Oh lolz you're serious? God that made my day,HILLARIOUS.

Are you seriously ripping the job interview/probation period analogy apart because we don't have segregation of duties?
Within a division, "triers" need to prove they are up to the job over a decent sample over similar conditions - if it's not a job interview, call it a probation period.

So that analogy is way off the mark (I even received the dreaded lolz by someone) yet your examples make sense? "college fraternitys and hazing, think racism, think genocide, think state-sponsored denial of universal human rights of other states such as refugees, think certain countries claims to "exceptionalism."

No problem with formally reporting to Pokerstars just doubt they would take that on.

All the efforts re: the scripting software is to try and seat at seperate tables - not sure how profitable it would be to sit at the same table as your accomplice for spin n gos but think it's something that Pokerstars should consider.

this is a dumb idea.
the grinders will circumvent this rule and their winrates go up.
the weaker players winrates go down.
pokerstars collects less rake.
the "poker is rigged" fishes will be kinda sorta be right in a genuine way - in the sense that the game is unfair for them.

ps management really need to tell amaya to stfu and stop putting forward half baked idea's into an ecosystem they dont understand. the motto for amaya should be "if it aint broken, dont fix it"

I'm not sure either but I bet some people are running simuls as we speak. The collusion would be somewhat difficult to detect because the two players genuinely compete for 2x prizes reducing their EV compared with seating 2 recs but collude for big prizes and the collusion is not soft collusion but ganging up on third player aided by eg skype hole-card sharing.

Note I am not suggesting PS take this on. I am suggesting they adopt and enforce blind queues and ban group (aka collusive) seating scripts.

In the corporate world there is extreme division of responsibility wherever there is money involved. I worked for fifteen years at a globally prominent corporate. For example, *any* cheque had to be taken to the bank by two people never one. Redtape constrained us everywhere we turned to prevent fraud.

In the case of poker cartels/divisions reasonable corporate-style restrictions would include, for example:

* members undertake to NOT be in Skype groups or ever contact one another in any way other than through formal recorded audited communication channels on pain of expulsion from the cartel.

* Real-world friends would be ineligible to be members of the same stake cartel/division.

* Any and all Hand histories are never handled by any member of the cartel but where there is a need for verification it is done by an independent arbiter who has no conflict of interest as evidenced by them agreeing to never, ever play a HUSNG.

Given most poker players are young and lacking in corporate auditing experience makes me more certain that naïve organisation of cartels/divisions have left procedural holes are cunning trickster could drive a collusive truck through. Given past poker player history with for example multi-accounting in MTTs just adds to the circumstantial finger-pointing.

With respect I don't think you understand the concept of separation of duties in a corporate. The intent of separation of duties procedures is that no one person understands the whole procedure in order to try to prevent the planning of fraud and roles are divided such that multiple people would need to collude for fraud to occur and that checks and balances would catch them as elegantly as possible. The more money involved the more extreme the procedures.

The point of my racism etc examples (not analogies) is that human nature has a history of plumbing the darkest depths of collusion when given the opportunity to advantage a subgroup over a level-playing field and then perpetuating that advantage for as long as possible including until the current day.

We would be naïve in the extreme if we thought poker cartels were lily white meritocracies.

PokerStars is naïve in the extreme for allowing group-based AKA collusive seat-scripting to create and perpetuate potentially collusive cartels/divisions. If exposed widely to recs they will suffer major PR damage that will force them to ban them so they should pre-emptively act now to ban so they can spin the situation to their advantage before the s**t hits the fan.

If you look up collusion on wiki, cartels are mentioned as a form of collusion. In poker collusion is seen as an at the table activity, however, cartels by another name would be lobby collusion. That's not to suggest it's illegal or whatever, poker playing is a profession built on taking as much advantage of the situation as the game allows, still, Stars lobby needs an update.

Just to give some examples of practices/penalties in the corporate world I have personally witnessed. I worked for one of the largest multinationals in the world and was personally responsible for sales deals that ranged up to $100m+. The bigger the amount of money the more extreme the procedures. This company is idolized by Harvard Business School as a model of best-practice worldwide.

* Employees were prohibited from owning shares in any companies in related fields (sackable offence and upon discovery investigated for possible reporting to SEC for insider trading). I personally was privy to inside information that in hindsight would have made me millions of dollars because one of our major competitors was also one of our major collaborators in certain other areas and I was privy to confidential intellectual property secrets at both firms. Easy millions of dollars or jail? Hmmm, tempting.

* Employees were prohibited from fraternizing with employees of competitors (at a minimum immediate transfer away from any customer facing activity). One employee who resigned to join a competitor was promptly sued for theft of intellectual property and the court was asked to enforce that ex-employee's former contract of employment that they not work for a competitor in a related field for five years. A second employee was our number 1 salesperson when her disgruntled husband resigned to join a competitor. She was immediately moved to non-customer-facing activity despite being our best salesperson, costing our business megabucks to lose her sales skills.

* All employee communications (email/phone (texts/voice)) were monitored pre-emptively by IT department security practices (both by manual staff and by computerised analysis) and employees were fired for breaches. I'm sure you've all heard of employees being sacked for pornography usage but corporate practice goes way beyond that. We could be fired for any non-work activity and that is pretty standard.

* Every employee who resigned was promptly marched from the building by security staff and prevented from accessing their own personal belongings or communicating with other staff. Security access was revoked. Personal belongings were then searched by security before verified personal belongings were sent to the ex-employee recorded address.

As someone experienced with corporate practice I am shocked at PokerStars integrity naivety and ignorance of public relations 101 in outsourcing the HUSNG and SpinNGo lobbies to an unregulated group-seating bunch of naïve young kids with obvious conflict of interest and zero experience in appropriate integrity procedures.

Pokerstars needs to act pre-emptively to regain control of their lobbies before the PR s**t hits the fan.

Many whales in high stakes games have a similar corporate background to me. What do you think they might think of cartels/divisions sloppy ethical procedures? Why shouldn't a corporate-experienced but poker recreational whale reasonably expect similar procedures in poker games to what they experience at their place of work?

Working in a corporate environments for 20 years including the last 5 in risk management I have a reasonable understanding of segregation of duties and controls, 3 lines of defence etc. Just as a tip, people not understanding the "whole procesure" end to end is pretty well the perfect recipe for fraud.
I'm pointing out that any comparison/analogy is by definition not the same thing.


Btw on analogies: "a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based: the analogy between the heart and a pump." Seems apt to me...

In most of these examples you're talking about either illegal activity (insider trading), employees with access to highly sensitive information (marching out) , breach of policy or employees creating reputational risk for the company they work for.
It seems like you may have taking the employee analogy way too far.
I'm simply saying that the employee analogy is comparing an employee to someone "working" in a division and how potential division members can be compared to new employees. It's not a perfect comparison but no doubt it's lbetter than gencide, racism etc

If they have the full facts, they should think the same about this as they do on seat scripts
The words "Sloppy ethical procedures " is just inaccurate in this context.

Actually, there is one piece of software I feel quite strongly should be forbidden: timing HUDs. This isn't because it gives anyone an unfair advantage, but rather because it has caused a whole bunch of regs, mostly towards the 'complete bollocks' end of the spectrum of regs, to start using all their regular time on every. single. ****ing. decision., in some ridiculous fantasy land that people are paying close attention to timing tells which is only created by this software. Pretty sure zoom has slowed down by like 40 hands per table hour this year.

The spin and go seating software needs to go. Its not even debatable. Unlike the other issues with other seating software, at least a non software user player has a "chance" to sit where they choose in other games. In spin and gos its not the case at all. A player with out the software can not do the same. There is no option. They just blindly go while others get to choose what tables to sit. This alone means its unfair.

And if above is not enough justification to nuke it, add the fact how one joins spin and gos one reasonably would expect and believe its just all random, but its not which its common sense as what needs to be done.

There is no room for argument here.

Cartels wouldn`t share any data.
No, they would make a video of it!
Didn`t they have that big scandal, when one guy produced videos of how to play against specific opponents? (Not specific in a sense of nit/passive/aggro villain in general. Specific in the sense of strategies against specific players in the playerpool.)
That`s amazing! What you get is not only a lame HH, what you get is a whole video tutorial of how to play against someone, that you have never played before...

It wasn't as direct. It was a coach who was a division member provided video to his students - a couple of opponents were division members. Either way, he was kicked out of the division for sharing data.
Cushy club it ain't

So he wouldn`t have been kicked out, if he gave his guidelines only vs. non-cartel players?
That sounds even worse!

I must not have explained myself well.

The common thread is financial risk. My ex-employer had these procedures in place to mitigate financial risk.

Pokerstars has a financial risk in losing the rec depositers if they found out about third party group-based aka collusive registration software in HUSNG's and Spin&Go's.

Pokerstars is taking a financial risk in publicly approving but not explicitly publicising this software to rec players that may well perceive they are materially disadvantaged by the software.

Pokerstars is taking a financial risk in not altering the lobby to ban such software and instead relying on external parties not to collude in ways that could do Pokerstars brand reputation financial harm.

Pokerstars is taking a financial risk in underestimating what its US online opponents would do with this information to make sure that Pokerstars fails to get access to any online USA market, painting Pokerstars as a "demonstratively unethical company that not only broke the law under its former owners but also under its new Amaya owners continues to engage in deceptive conduct, enabling collusive behavor and failing to take all measures necessary to stop known potentially collusive behaviour."

No - if he deliberately was targetted anyone he would have been kicked.

two wrongs don't make a right. a cheater punching a cheater is still a cheater.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_wrongs_make_a_right

Of course, it's more of an onion ring thing. I meant the ignorance of the cogs in the process not those auditing/monitoring/creating procedures. I understand and accept that preventing fraud is complex.

Again, back to Pokerstars, the minimisation of unnecessary complexity suggests that PS needs to do lobby management entirely in-house so they can better control game integrity and simplify their own burden on ensuring game integrity.

Comments Pies01? Are these restrictions unreasonable? How close do divisions come to these restrictions? How much unverifiable communication occurs between division members? How can recs/Pokerstars be sure no collusion is occurring otherwise? As a risk expert, if you were a rec would you play in these games or would you prefer to have a chance of playing another rec in a blind queue?

If you make the same reputational risk point for all table selecting software, 2 players+ colluding on a 6 max+ table and any other random example then I agree.