I think they made a terrible mistake. They should have put your winnings into honest players' accounts, and put the colluders in a coffin.

I'll quote and bold the rest of the relevant part for you:

OP is absolutely right that this issue occurs extremely rarely. In fact I'd wager that it won't hapoen within the next 3 years for him.

This probably belongs in the Zoo thread..
The real question is why was he allowed to withdraw funds and why wasn't he perma banned.

Thanks. Well i posted this because i was curious about the opinion of other players. I realise when i read your post i got lucky, probably because they believed me that i wasnt doing it deliberately and only once in a rare situation unaware of the (serious) punishment.
I dont talk to many players i havent played in major live tournaments for many years and as you can see im not very active on the internet forums either.
Many of my old friends took a real job and some went broke or got huge tax payments of old winnings i dont know anybody from back then who still grinds on a daily basis.
Good to talk again to other players a lot of memories come back up especially after somebody mentioned that scam thread.fun to read.

You blatantly colluded. You admit to doing so. You're an idiot for multiple reasons including creating this thread. Accept your punishment for cheating. You should've been permabanned.

Ok thanks. In surprised by the harshness of the comments. I remember high stakes players who played on their friends account HU cash on Ftp and It wasnt even that big of a deal. And those pokerhouses in Mexico where they grind MTTs daily you really think if they would get shorthanded they wouldnt share the major hands? Pretty naive imo.

:

I have played poker in the same house as somebody else, and if we were at the same table we stopped talking to each other. If he had QQ and I had KK at a FT, I would laugh in his face when we got it all in, unless he sucked out on me and then I would tell him he was a fish for getting it in behind.

If you can't understand how most poker players actually approach the game, cheating isn't an option, you play as hard as you can against anybody you play against, if you aren't you are doing it wrong.

Actually, you posted this as a warning to other players about what could happen if they got caught doing what "90% of us would do in the same circumstances." And you were shocked by the response.

I'd wish this would have resulted in a lifetime ban + all funds taken. A thread like this would be acceptable as april fools joke. Other than that you coming here and bringing that up is just ridiculous.
And no, not 90% of players would do that - first off you shouldn't reveal hole cards to each other at all anyways, even being in the same room. Other than that, it takes a pretty bad lack of understanding that this is cheating and that it will probably be found out.

To be fair to OP, it's possible they share an office (which I realize you mention btw, read on). I shared an office with my wife pre-BF and we used to play Stars side by side so it'd be impossible to not to see each others cards.

I just reread OP for the massive lolz:
So first it's cheating but you don't consider cheating, cheating. This would've been a great April Fools thread.

Beginning to think this might be a troll.

surely can't still be fighting his corner.

Also, is this longest thread in the last 2 years where most comments are actually praising Stars?

Imo theres always a grey line between right and wrong.
Thats what i meant with its against the rules but not cheating (IMO).
Its also against the rules of the law to drive over the speed limit but if you drive over it with a less than 10 percent difference they allow it. Im originally from Amsterdam and officially its still illegal to use drugs of any kind. Its an old law but they never changed it because if they would make it officially legal within the law they are affraid it will put the limits even further for people, but ofc everybody knows drugs are common used within the city.

And your first point is what i mean, sometimes its almost impossible not to entirely live by the rules within a game. No reason to crucify somebody for doing so by saying should be life time ban idiot ****** stupid moron etc

How i got caught somebody here mentions u got reported maybe thats true or they have a security system that rings a bell when a premium is folded preflop idk it doesnt matter anyway.

lmao - grey line between right and wrong? No buddy.

There is right, and there is wrong.

Just because they 'allow' you to go 10% over the speed limit, that doesn't mean that the legal limit for speed is X+10%... the limit is X - they just give you some leeway if you're 10% over. You're still breaking the law, though.

Just as you were breaking the TOS, and from what it seems, Stars gave you some leeway too - rather than a lifetime ban, you got three years and were able to keep your money.

There's no grey area between right and wrong. You''re either in the right, or you're in the wrong. This case, you were in the wrong - hands down, no doubt about it.

Also beginning to wonder.

However, taking that old scam thread into account, it's still more likely OP is simply quite... inflexible with his life outlook.

I mean, consider his range pre-opening this thread? How many combos of naiveness and stubborness can we put him on?

Of course, there's the possibility he does realize he's way behind and is just trying a desperation triple-barrel.

At this point, I think it's a troll. The moronic gray line comment removed all doubt.

He is not a troll. Lots of people just like him who have minimal or no life skills and/or self awareness, who are also relatively immune to learning from mistakes over time.

A few years from now he will laugh at himself about this thread (as he has done with his other train wreck thread years ago) as he posts some new example of common sense failure. Hoping people like this are trolls doing a routine is optimistic, this OP reflects a large chunk of humanity. Common sense is not that common.

FYP

That got me thinking, and I've constructed a situation where I'm not 100% sure.
I'm genuinely asking for opinions here.

Suppose it's a live game at a casino, and you are there with your buddy. You've no problem with winning/losing some money to each other, but you are both strict about limiting losses to just 1 buy-in (or any other predefined limit) for tonight. Therefore, you'd be reluctant to play each other for stacks when that would mean having to seat out for the rest of the night for one of you.

Now, if you agreed beforehand you wouldn't play for stacks in such a situatuon, that is clearly collusion/cheating/no-no.
What about if the whole table knew about that reluctance? It's still against the spirit of the game of poker, but would it be just plain wrong and forbidden?

Depends what the Cardrooms rules were on soft-playing. If there's nothing in the rules to say you can't, then I would say it's fine.

We are talking about a spot that could tremendously impact on the outcome of the whole tourney. We are not talking about a cheat of 10% or less of a cheat here, you could add those 10% to the other 90% remaining maybe

Most (not all) players who play semi-professionally or professionally would know the risk of their account is too great to play around like this OP did if they happened to be on the same table of a large MTT, especially on Pokerstars, which has an actual security department. Most casuals are not sitting in a room playing with another casual on a different computer.

The segment that for the most part would do this are people who play regularly, but lack common sense/life skills and morals. The OP is certainly a card carrying member of this group, but it is likely in the minority of regular players (although perhaps I am the one being optimistic in that belief).

Lol Monteroy. You are pretty good at berating others i must give you that.
If Stars allows two players on the same IP adress and they allow them even in the same tournament I still stand with my opinion that THEY are responsible for any outcome.
Its the skill/hotrun of the two players that deserves them to take advantage of the endgame situation after Stars allowed them into the same tournament from the same house/room/desk.
Almost everybody here thinks differently but i still disagree with you all.
I clearly remember Phil Ivey in an English casino taking advantage of a baccarat game where he was in the so called grey zone what doesnt exist according to many of you in this thread. It got to court and i dont know the outcome but the case was pretty similar as in ethics of a casino game. He took advantage of a leak in the game.
The leak of Pokerstars is allowing people from the same IP in the same MTT.
I dont remember the Ivey case if it was posted here on 2plus2 im not active here but i imagine probably a lot of players agreed with him.

To sum it up Pokerstars should not allow two or more players on the same IP from the same location in MTTs if they cant accept people will use it for their advantage.
Why? Because cashgames and SnGs are forbidden to play, so they already know what likely would happen.
Especially without a warning to close accounts and seize the funds (with many) is not correct.

Ok, this is now confirmed troll.