Rek - Yes, that is possible and has occured to me as well.
I truly think that Stars is just better at catching the bots and in doing so more quickly and in a more professional way.

There was a situation last year where a player here had his mom accused of being a bot on Stars playing micro-stakes. Since it was his own mom he knew that Stars had stumbled on a funny false-positive. But Stars insisted that the account was a bot via the timing of the actions, etc.
They were also kind of rude about how certain they were of the guilt of that player.

But the masses arose at 2+2 and Stars eventually corrected their actions. It was still a pretty stressful time I think for them even though they didn't have $47k on the line.

The situation involved poster TeddyFBI and his mom. Look up TeddyFBI's Mom in the archives for more of that zanyness.

Stars took much quicker actions and gave some kind of insight as to how they catch bots even in their rudeness to Teddy FBI's mom and it very much seems they move and communicate much faster than FT.

It doesn't matter if its one or two, the process by which Full Tilt Poker seizes funds, with NO Notice to the player of what they're even accused of, no evidence, no oversight, no appeals process, and a history of the occasional false positive, should be absolutely unacceptable to any sane player.

If I was pokergirl, and then continued to stonewall, I would haul their azz into a california court. Let's see them tell a judge they are not gonna release any evidence. Or not show up. Can you say default judgment.

I think you might overestimate how easy something like a California court hearing on this matter would be.
FT isn't in the U.S. I don't know how possible it is but it doesn't seem terribly realistic.

Hopefully her lawyer may have an idea or two.

The trouble is that $47k isn't much if you play $100-$200 HU like pokergirl z did. That's only 230bb. If you play a 5 hour session (about 1000 hands), your stdev is about 75bb. So a -2 sigma session is -150 bb, or maybe -140 bb for a winning player. Likewise, a good winning session will be +150 or +160 bb.

At lower limits, you could simply cash out after each winning session, since it's so easy to transfer money back in after a bad streak. But at stakes like 100-200, it is a lot harder to deposit a fresh 100 bb, and generally takes a few days at least. During that time you are out of action.

It puts high stakes players in a tough spot: either trust the site with a few hundred bb, or play somewhere else.

-pyg

Even if pokergirl z cheated, which i dont believe...

FT's rep getting rapêd all over the place < 47k $.


[x] Unfreeze the mobniez.

yes FT has gone to great lengths to maintain their polished reputation in the past. i can't believe they handled this so poorly.

Maybe they needed to get hold a a copy of the relevant HU bot and set it up to play duplicates of 10k of SS's hands to compare how it would play them vs how SS actually played them?

That could easily take weeks...

We simply don't know - and have to wait to see what they send to Mike and what he thinks of it..

FWIW, I've sweated friends playing pokergirl z and casually watched her play on many ocassions. I personally never saw any evidence of botting. As telling as anything, she was definitely prone to tilting and did so on many ocassions. Another thing pokergirl z did that a bot wouldn't do is leave games quickly after getting stuck ~5-10 bets (even against known fish). I'm just not sure what to think anymore.

Can someone who's seen some information answer whether multiple accounts (per Mike and specifically "pokergirl z" and "greggo77") had anything to do with Full Tilt's decision?

Doesn't this just speak to their integrity? If they were a PR firm like Stars, they would have refunded the money and gone out of their way to avoid a situation like this in the first place (including appeasing the cheaters or giving them a warning first so they can hide what they're doing). This whole situation is going to cost them more than 50K in business and they knew that from the start, but stuck to their guns.

The customer service side of things could be handled a lot better - they definitely need to say what they're investigating. Other companies do it and it's unacceptable that they stonewall completely.

yes, I've also considered that they are actually possibly costing themselves MORE than $50k worth of business by coming to this conclusion because of the heat they are under and the fear some now have of playing there.

This is really their own fault though and nobody else's.
If they handled this professionally and said they are investigating the possibility of bot use and would like to talk to her about some suspicious play and then later said, "We have talked with the player and she maintains her innocence but we believe our evidence to be absolutely conclusive on this matter and thus will be confiscating the funds. We are open to continuing discussions with this player about this but we do not foresee changing our decision as we would not have taken such action if we didn't have extremely clear proof that she was using a bot."

Something like that....
ANYTHING like that would have been a TON better.

you would still have pokergirlz freaking out about her money. But you would have far fewer people taking her side or fearing that FT takes your money if you happen to get unlucky and accidentally set of their alarms.
Because people will at least get SOME impression that the investigation was fair and that FT really did know what they were doing.

Right now they are leaving the exact opposite impression even if it's the furthest thing from the truth.

To that end, FT got themselves into this situation somewhat and continued to dig their own hole.
They see this thread with various other players freaking out and still don't even meaningfully communicate with the accused and barely communicate with those on here.

In other words, they should be able to pull off taking $47k from an accused bot...even a falsely accused one...without scaring so many of their other players nearly this much.


Curious that you describe Stars as a 'PR firm'.
Obviously I'm a fan of Stars and perhaps I'm gullible to their PR. But I just don't look at them like that.
I just think they do a better job all-around which includes actually communicating with their customers.

PokerStars doesn't offer highs stakes HU LHE cash games.

Unless they want to play small stakes, the type of bots that pokergirl z and BeatMe1 are accused of operating have no place to play at Stars.

Interesting. So I google pokergirl z and the first listing is a blog that looks to be her. Correct me Sal if I am wrong. Down the page a bit she describes her play:

"My Mecca .. Online gaming. I started playing 5-10 Texas Holdem heads up limit games and realized the world was my ocean. Good fishing and an endless horizon. I quickly moved up to 10-20 and now I play up to 300-600. I’ve been playing online for over 2 years now. I wish I could say I was a cool headed Zen like poker master. I cannot say that. I’m volatile and have been known to go on tilt on occasion."

Part of her Aug. 05, 2005 post. Doesn't prove anything, but sounds alot like how she was seen by previous poster. Someone who goes on tilt is not a bot. Hand histories should show this. Come on FT, cough em up.

finding cases of her tilting in min bet hands will be 100 times harder than finding them in NL

Nah, tilting in limit is easy to spot in an otherwise solid player. You get a monster snapped off and suddenly find yourself calling a raise with K, 10 off or a double raise with 66. Bots will not do this.

Johny - She plays heads-up.
I sure as hell hope she calls raises with KT and 3-bets with 66. She might be the weakest heads-up player in history if she doesn't.

Woops sorry, you are right HU not ring. But tilt should still be visible from the histories.

Yeah, this is my impression. Since there was, in fact, seizure of funds Full Tilt should have some iron-clad evidence. Also, since I'm sure Crazy Mike is at least partially responsible, I think someone (whether it be Mike, FT, or both) should provide some irrefutible evidence to Mike Haven not only for pokergirl's sake, but for online poker in general. I really hope this isn't a witchhunt on Crazy Mike's part.

You guys seem to be making an assumption that ive been thinking bout over the last couple hours - its that she hasnt been using a bot for very long - maybe a week or two before being locked out.

This would explain how she was on FTP and other sites for years without having problems and now is suddenly "found out". It would also expalin how she has been seen tilting in the past, and even could be used as part of a method to combat her tilting.

Not passing judgement just throwing it out there playing devils advocate.

not to mention, its probably in ftp's best interest NOT to confiscate her 47k. if she's a high stakes LHE player shes going to generate a lot more than that in rake in one year.

correct. She could conceiveably have been occasionally using a bot 3 years ago too.
Sometimes she is playing live and ends up prone to tilt. Sometimes she actually goes to bed and just lets the bot play for her.

Just because you have a bot doesn't mean you have to play it 100% of the time.
so occasionally tilting really doesn't prove she never used a bot ever. It MAY prove she wasn't using a bot at that exact moment though but that isn't exactly going to clear her.

This really is a difficult thing to prove to be honest.

Prove that I've never ever fired a gun or even held one:
"Well, I met Bob once and we chatted for a few minutes. I searched him and he definitely wasn't holding a gun at that moment. And he seemed to know absolutely nothing about guns. Therefore, I think it's probable that he is telling the truth that he has never even touched one!!"

There seems to be a correlation between being accused of wrong doing, and playing HU LHE.

I might be completely wrong, but I think it wouldn't be quite that high. She's a HU player, and they cap the rake on HU tables at $.50 per pot. So the fact that it's high stakes shouldn't make a difference on rake, especially compared to a 6-max player.

Although I really have no idea how much rake she generates, you're probably right that it's -EV long term to lock her account and "steal" her money (which they said they were planning on using to reimburse those who she has played against).

I'm looking forward to reading Mike Haven's opinion on the evidence that he has had presented to him.

FYP for ya.

Augie, its easy to come up with a scenario whereby not banning her could cost more than keeping her (serious hypertheticals here).

Basically, if someone, or a group of people, were to lobby sites to remove certain winning players on the grounds of them cheating; then if the threat of bad publicity was great enough a site could be forced to bow to the percieved expert skill of said person or persons.