In a surreal turn of events, the real Noel Hayes has just become the director of the sportsbook at BetBright. http://www.egrmagazine.com/news/betb...book_director_ (full story only available to subscribers).

Maybe he won't have a problem with bettors using beards to circumvent betting limits.

karma everywhere

Gabe was great on HSP because his commentary was added AFTER the fact. Commenting live is much harder; particularly, if you want to preserve table talk.

PR on the subject: https://www.betradar.com/news-archiv...ting-products/

Someone start a gofundme. Lets make a poker movie. Rounders or 21 writers couldnt come up with the gold in these forums. 2+2 could produce it.

That virtual racing stuff is AIDS.

agreed. when i do live commentary i always tell the producer to turn up the table volume, ive gone with only table talk for long stretches when they are negotiating a prop bet or whatever, far more interesting than booth commentary.

THIS^^^^^

add:

IKE, Which stars pros were aware of the hayes/hastings account?

IKE, Are there other such accounts you are aware of?

I think only limon gets how serious this is and people are still playing it down as nothing are dumb as fk.

Maybe years ago it was stuff ppl turned a blind eye to but these days it's a big deal, esp with the surrounding knock on effect it's gonna have- you have an ex red pro and card runners lead instructor, not only that but the top guy from team online with another flagship pro who were in on it and knew .

These guys are employees of the site who knew about the scumbag MA and vpn on there and yet nothing's been done?

Wtf is going on at amaya? They don't give a sshizzle looks like

Lol, it's not that people don't understand the severity, but did you guys not learn anything from the heavy scandals... UB, stox, Chinese dons, furbean etc., to understand that the general public doesn't give two **** and thinks "LDO, gamblers" and that 2+2 is actually tiny, and poker players are apathetic when it doesn't directly concern their games?

Stars certainly knows this. Couldn't even get online players to come together to fight the uiega, something fairly simple to do, so the end result is this is just another gouge someone will toss into a thread reply 6 months from now, and 5 years from now it'll become another, "yeah, but that was a long time ago; it's different today" when history repeats itself yet once again.

why don't the "big name" pros seem to care much about this? their twitter accts should be on full blast against stars, hastings, and ike. where's negreanu on this issue? if this happened on a competing company a few yrs ago such as full tilt negreanu would be calling out all these people nonstop, yet where is he now when the issue takes place on a site he endorses?

i remember him (and other big name pros) calling out the masterminds behind full tilt when all the community got was silence from them so where are they now when a major issue occurs w/o any official response from stars, a site that currently sponsors many of these same accusers during the fulltilt fiasco? they claimed they had ethics w/ the fulltilt situations and spoke out so where are these ethics now?

Big name pros do not seem to care...sans bakes

what do they stand to gain? + this has been happening forever.

It's become increasingly clear throughout this thread that at best, the "big names" don't care. At worst, they themselves are engaging in the behavior. Many seem to be, at least, complicit.

if i'm sheldon or anyone else that wants to keep online poker from coming back to the US i'm absolutely loving this situation. i just checked the twitters of some of the "big name" pros sponsored by stars they are apparently leading a "coalition" across several california casinos to promote "safe and secure" online poker through pokerstars. unfortunately they seem to target casinos that typically do not yield high levels of poker players (i.e. they "mistakenly" seem to have left the commerce/bike/bay101 ect out of the tour schedule).

can you imagine what a mob it would be if they stopped at the commerce and did a Q&A w/ the players?

I agree that Stars can afford to not care much about 2+2 because the majority of the members are US citizens and they haven't been able to play on Stars for years so it's not like they can organize some massive boycot of Stars (like they did with UB and AP). So there's that.

I can't speak for all non US players (I'm one of them) but I can speak for myself.
I've been a member of both 2+2 and Poker Stars since 2002 and I've boycoted Stars after every scandal over the years, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months, and nowadays I only play the big weekly MTTs on weekends so they have lost a lot of my action in over a decade.
And that's all I or anyone else can do about this really.

No one from the public is going to care that someone played on a different pseudonymous handle than the pseudonymous handle they were previously known for.

It's especially hard for people to care about this when the behavior is explicitly allowed on other sites, like sites with multiple skins where players can have a different name on each, or sites that allow name changes.

Not sure if appropriate but screw it.

Bakes, do you have an opinion as to why Ike hasn't come into this thread to defend himself?

My 2 guesses:

1. He did something shady by sitting on the info and benefiting from it.

Or

2. He made PS aware as soon as he found but is unable to exonerate himself per the orders of PS as that would get them in hot water (basically the Limon theory).

I'm sure there are other plausible scenarios, I just can't think of any. In my mind, it's gotta be one of the 2.

3. You're all a bunch of nobodies and your opinion means nothing to him.

You're not as important as you think you are, this is just an internet forum and to over 99% of the population is totally insignificant

4. He is a pokerstars employee and is a mod for this site.

Would it be considered rude and disrespectful if one called him "Rasva Hastings" if they saw him at the WSOP?

Likely scenarios.

1)Pokerstars told them not to comment on the issue

2)If they call out Hastings they open themselves up to their skeletons coming out of the closet.

#2 seems the most likely.

limon,

if you were ike et al, what public declaration would you make, and what would be the point?