It's hardly a good thing for the future of online poker if the market leader has no way of enforcing its own T&Cs.

Obviously I agree with the difference being enormous between buying accounts/MA'ing and a narcissistic douchehole that feels entitled to not make the same sacrifices others made.

honestly he deserves a five finger slap to the face. for his own good

I disagree. Many of us stayed in the United States after Black Friday and were forced to grind out a living on Bodog/WPN/Merge. Not all of us resorted to cheating to continue making a living. I think we have a right to be upset, and saying "well you guys should have just cheated too" is not an acceptable response.

It's funny to me that its so hard for some of you to believe that there are ethical professional online poker players.

This. To everyone who says that VPNing isn't a big deal b/c it doesn't impact game integrity, aren't you at least a little concerned about what a possible widespread failure to police VPNing would say about Stars' ability to police other elements of site security?

Other players in the game have reasonable expectation that game organizers know where you are located. In case there is any foul play there is some recourse.
This is less of an issue as long as you still play using your real name and some address when you can be found at least some of the time.
I wouldn't call it "cheating" but still, there are reasonable arguments to call it shady in some circumstances.

MA'ing though is pure cheating. I think it's worse than botting in this respect (as long as the bots play on one account). Having reads and selecting the game you want to play in are fundamental parts of the game Stars supposedly want to keep. Game selection is the most important thing when it comes to making money at poker and thus crippling other people's ability to select according to their reads/views on other players is very serious case of cheating.

MA'ing using a name of established weak player is just pure scam imo. You get unfair advantage in the most important part of the game. Not only that - you deliberately mislead people to make full use of that advantage.

I don't understand why people are so hostile to whistleblowers here. "Name or shut-up about it" is disgusting attitude. It takes balls to even signal a problem as by going public about it you lose a lot of connections and opportunities. Giving names means you are likely to be harmed.
If someone says they get few offers to cheat a month, appreciate it. They already gave away some of their money making opportunities in a gambling world to do it, probably hoping it makes others speak as well.

It's easier and more pragmatic to shut up. People who choose to speak up even in vague terms deserve some respect.

You're conflating issues. If VPNing players all stopped that suddenly makes Stars security better at their jobs? (No, it wouldn't.)

So of course we all inherently care about PokerStars/online poker security being the best it can be. But what people are questioning is whether VPNing IS a security issue.

I have never VPN'd because I'd be too scared to have my account/balance lost, but it's objectively not a big issue relative to MAing or other issues (emphasis on RELATIVE). Is VPN-ing definitively unethical? I'm not so sure, because we break a lot of illogical laws all the time that you could draw the line to affect others (e.g. driving over the too low speed limit increases risk/danger on the road for others). But I can see how there are frustrations about it.

There are clearly different risk/reward values for choosing to VPN and risking your online livelihood/account when compared to picking up and moving out of the country. It's doesn't go against an inherent poker rule though like MAing/ghosting does when you are knowingly disguising who you are for an advantage.

.

I completely disagree with the new Noel Hayes thread being merged with this one. Your own point above is that this thread is focused on BH.

Noel Hayes being implicated in a cheating scandal and being an industry insider in a position of influence and power is extremely newsworthy in its own right (perhaps even more so). It is clearly getting lost in this thread.

Kudos to the new thread starter and I ask the mods to reconsider. Let us discuss the issues. The Noel Hayes aspect should not remain buried here.

(edited. thanks PP for reinstating the other thread if that's accurate. on my phone and couldn't open it. It always rerouted here)

actually professionalpoker is on our side about this. it was his time & effort that got the noel hayes thread re-instated. thanks again PP

Are there or aren't there?

ftr, I inadvertently merged the Noel Hayes thread with this one. PP alerted me of this and it has been fixed and the Noel Hayes thread is back as a stand alone thread.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...eater-1552119/

Flogging will begin today at 2.

We get requests daily from posters to delete impulsive posts where they'd prefer to not get involved in general.

Clinging on to cts wanting to delete his post and subsequently his involvement in this thread is inconsequential.

I bet we can all agree that Vanessa wishes she could have removed herself quicker as well.

There was nothing impulsive about cts post re:hastings. it was a clear & level opinion about why ma'ing is cheating & unacceptable behavior. why he chose to delete his own post which only stated his belief in fairplay, anti-cheating, anti-ma'ing, anti-vpn'ing etc..etc.. is of great consequence.

as to vanessa selbst posts, would you like to go on the record that her posts were not edited with the help of a moderator? that is that they were not edited beyond the 1hr users are able to edit posts without the help of a moderator?

I do think VPNing is a security issue because it makes multiaccounting and colluding easier by hiding connections between players, but even if you don't buy that, you should be concerned anytime Stars demonstrates an inability to police violations of the TOS.

Regardless of whether you think VPNing from the US SHOULD be prohibited, Stars says that it IS prohibited. And if Stars had knowledge of a large VPN ring operating on the site and was unable and/or unwilling to stop it why would you have any confidence that it would be able to crack down on bot rings or colluding players sitting in the same games?

Thanks to Uncle Sam, Stars had to adopt a policy which is very difficult to enforce. Internet traffic doesn't obey imaginary lines on the map, and even totalitarian governments have a hard time policing this. What makes you think a private company can do it effectively?

Oh look, someone who makes sense.

Please go away, nothing for you to see here.

1) There is a difference between not stopping every incident and being so bad at catching anyone that an apparently large number of high and midstakes players have apparently felt comfortable for VPNing for years.

2) Catching bots, ghosting, and smart colluding players isn't easy either (especially if you assume, as you argue, that Stars can't actually tell where someone is located)

Of all the arguments against VPNing, this "freerolling" one is bad. People who VPN are not freerolling anyone. The people who decide to move abroad or not play have the exact same choice available to them. They just decided to go a different route and I'd venture to guess the choice they made has NOTHING to do with integrity and everything to do with utility/risk. There is a fundamental difference between things that affect in-game integrity (ie, multi-accounting) and things that affect factors totally outside of the game itself (life expenses due to relocation).

This is horribly incorrect -- the kind of statement a politician would make to intentionally distort and twist the truth try to gain favor. It appeals to the lowest common denominator. The average idiot would not be able to tell that he was being manipulated.

VPN detection is about identifying the location of a user. It is done through a variety of technical data, and there are technical ways to avoid detection.

Detection of collusion is a totally different can of worms. It can be identified programmatically purely by statistical means. The question is whether or not the people at Stars are capable of this -- it seems they are not due to the recent PLO bot ring, but the difference here is, the first problem (detecting VPN) can't be solved without webcam or unannounced drop-ins (don't see either happening) and the second one can be solved by hiring smarter people and paying them what they are worth.

Please stop making it such an issue, 90% of any semi-serious MTT or Cash Game player has multi accounted at least once based on 2p2'ers ive met over the last 10~ yrs.
I don't know how many VPN but I assume that pretty much any serious american has at least once since Black Friday.
Stop being such a bunch of hypocrites bashing Brian for what pretty much everyone has done.

Do you think that it is more difficult to VPN into some sites than others? I.e. if someone offered you a prop bet in which the only requirement is that you logged into a site from a prohibited area and played X number of hands without being detected, would you pick a site at random, or would you pick a specific site that was known to be easy to VPN into?

If your answer was anything other than "pick a random site," then you have acknowledged that there are things that sites can do to make VPNing more difficult.

Unlike Brian, Cole owes us nothing.

Imo you are deluded to believe that the real % is anywhere near 90%.

What kind or ppl do you roll with where 90% of 2p2ers you meet have been or are currently multi-accounting?

You clearly verified all this by thinking about it, right?

nobody anywhere said that cole owed anything. people are disappointed.


if your going to let a forum mod who it has been alleged was aware of the cheating continue to be a mod without responding to any allegations then why not take it one step further and say that hastings owes us nothing.

nobody owes anybody anything.