This is fairly interesting. You really claim that 'poker scandals' never make it out of 2p2? This is about the opposite of what some high-profile players have claimed, that giving things like this publicity is actively bad for the game

There is a poster ~100 posts back claiming that he has turned '60 to 75' people away from the game, and not because they weren't capable of beating it

I understand your point, but it's not realistic that the 'gambling commission' investigate individual cases of cheating on the site. Nor would that make any sense. Of course the site should be responsible for dealing with it when people break the TOS.

it actually makes perfect sense and as a poker player yourself you should be happy these commissions exist. if it were not for effective & legitimate licensing bodies (aka state entities & not bogus american indian groups, for example) online sites could be operate in 100% self-serving fashions. did you know the UK commission requires, among other things,, that player balances are segregated & they audit to confirm that it is?

gambling commissions investigate individual cases all the time. what other type of cases do you expect them to investigate, group cases?? you should be happy you have the ability to contact gaming if you see cheating or bad management leading to unfair playing conditions in your local casino,for example. if you see some suspicious behavior & approach the floor & tell them you would like the contact information for the appropriate gaming commission or that you want to file a patron dispute re: game integrity, believe me you now have their attention. otherwise,they mostly don't care. educate yourself & protect yourself.

who else can hold over amaya to offer a fair game but the commission that licenses their operation? who else can compel them to get & stay serious about the botting & collusion & ma'ing? who else can burn in their ass that if employees are aware of cheating, are complicit in cheating & withhold the information--they need to act. even if to remove these employees from their business. this is a cliffs on what licensing is. and as annoyed as i get at our government institutions at times, i want gaming enforcement to have a big heavy stick & swing it at will.

and btw, they are looking at this thread & amaya is as well.

Bakes,

I think the amount they get out of the bubbles like NVG in which they seem major is very small. IE, I don't think that there's much actual publicity that actually happens from stuff like this.

I think that the nets cast to make (online) poker more popular are very big.

I don't think that the majority (or even honestly 25%) of the people who buy in to their first poker game live, or deposit to an online poker site, do deep-ish research on the legitimacy of the game or would have talked about it with a person who has similar exposure (so they might talk to a friend who has played online, but not a friend who has read an online poker forum). If I had to guess, it would be on smaller scale than total % of players who were taking advantage of rakeback plans?

As a semi-aside: I'm also not sure if we should care (when analyzing the overall health and popularity of the game) that someone talked his friends who might have been breakeven+ grinders from signing up. I am skeptical, without going back and finding the thread, that someone believes they know 60-75 people who can beat any stake of online poker who do not already play online.

i disagree with other parts of your post, but i will leave to others to address. the poker community is a large one & not everyone agrees with you on ike's history of ethical behavior. you would be better off saying "he has never been caught cheating" vs discussing your judgement of his ethics.

prahlad & many others will disagree with you on ike haxton's ethics. that thread is right here on 2+2. the exchange was quite clear, prahlad told ike face to face he did not want to play him & would not sit him on UB. so ike made another account on Absolute (perfectly legal at the time) so he could sit an unsuspecting prahlad on UB. does that make him a "cheater"? no, he didn't break the rules/tos, does that make what he did "ethical"? ethical behavior involves honesty & fairness. you may think he was perfectly ethical. if the circumstances of that situtaion have been accurately reported,i don't find that to be ethical behavior at all & i am fine with people having a different opinion than mine. but many people find those action unethical.

and bonomo making statements like this about the prahlad/ike situation:

"To the best of my knowledge, all three sites in question (Stars, FTP, Cereus) acknowledge that there is no one player to a hand rule online. Prah however isn’t accusing us of talking strategy, ghosting, or coaching. He is accusing us of outright cheating and account sharing …Isaac has the right to anonymity so long as he follows the site’s ToS…”

certainly is telling. i believe ike & bonomo have used this rationalization before. they seemingly love to refer back to the ToS. if they had a god, it's name would be ToS.

anyway, just say he was never caught cheating. many will disagree on the ethical part

Why do we have two hotwarmcold accounts? It's not as if the first one is banned...

email screwup. pm'd a mod to help me get it straightened out. probably just busy atm.

I agree with all this (generally).

My point was, on a case by case basis, when there is cheating on Stars, who should investigate it? Stars, of course. A third party can get involved when there is something fishy, or for period independent audits, etc. But the idea that they would investigate each individual case is absurd.

You said it's Amaya investigating itself and I disagree with that. It's Amaya investigating Hastings. You objecting to Stars saying, 'we are aware of the case and are investigating it', doesn't make sense to me. That's of course what they should say and what they should do. It would presumably be up to the commission to decide if they should get involved beyond that.

This is the core of the problem.

HS players and absolute morons like you believing that because they are HS players they don't really have to answer to anyone except other HS players. If their HS peers say it's okay then everyone else and their opinions are essentially irrelevant as no one else actually gets it. Part of why they don't "get it" is because they don't know the full story and of course this too is okay because as special HS regs they don't need to explain a God Damn thing to anyone who isn't a HS player etc etc

Man, you are soooooooo stuck in a bubble. Your kind of talk is absolutely clueless and so wrong and damaging.

Ike Haxton IS obliged to speak to the community. How in the funk did he get his sponsorship to begin with? Because people want to hear from him, want to rail him, want to see him do well, want to learn from him, want to look up to him, want to believe he is honest etc etc. As one who takes the sponsorship money that comes from the pockets of the grinders AT ALL LEVELS OF THE GAME then of course, as a paid face of PS, he is obliged to speak. He (or anyone else) is absolutely NOT subject to a separate set of rules just because he devoted his life to poker study. Such a commendable devotion does not make anyone smarter or more capable or more untouchable than anyone else. In fact, being a known paid face of the game who accepts sponsorship, he makes himself MORE touchable and more answerable than others.

What "you want" i.e. us, me and other posters seeking more than a wall of silence on this, absolutely is and should be relevant to Ike and anyone else who wants to listen.

Man, honestly. People like you.

Nailed him, wp

i don't see why ike should be punished for other people MA'ing and stars failing to stop it. he can't be expected to let the community know every time there's speculation that someone is MA'ing, and punishing him due to the world's most popular poker site not having security measures to stop it is another thing that's not his fault.

Yes, I pretty much agree. Personally I'm not suggesting he should be hung out to dry. Obviously others have done much worse. He was caught in an awkward situation that I'm sure he didn't ask for. I'm pretty sure he is still one of the better and more honest guys around.

But guess what? The Kaka has hit the fan and he knew about it all along. He is a paid face of the game. His employers have yet to take any action against known cheaters. Because of all this Ike should feel obliged to distance himself from the whole thing even if it means affecting his bottom line i.e. Stars contract. I mean, this is not some 40k per year dude with 3 kids who can't speak out against the boss in the midst of a recession. The dude will be fine with or without PS. It's the overall attitude of so many people that it's no big deal and to just brush it off and that no one is obliged to say or do anything. They are obliged and they are culpable.

The accusations are that Ike not only knew, but directly profited from the situation by playing in the same game as the NoelHayes account and got to play vs people who wouldn't have played vs him (or probably stinger).

I believe that is why people continue to question Ike and not Mercier, although this could also be because he is a 2+2 mod and not just solely for the reason above. Its hard to keep track of this thread and everything that has gone on.


As a brief aside I sent an email to the UKGC but I highly doubt anything will happen. They are funded by the people they license. I imagine they may do something about Noel Hayes at Betbright, but they will probably listen to Stars excuses on the actual situation.

If Ike is obligated to anyone or anything, first and foremost it should be PokerStars. PokerStars apparently has asked him to remain silent. He should therefore remain silent, despite whatever you think you are entitled to demand from him simply because you paid some rake.

dude, you´re such a pathetic loser

"omg, omg, I´d still be making $100k a year playing 10/8 (lmfao) if it wasn´t for those cardrunners guys"

as for careers, abortions, etc., look no further than to your very own linkedin profile. made me laugh pretty hard.

Well lets see then. Let us wait and see what action PS take. Let's see who gets away with what and after a few more months lets see who has and hasn't felt they needed to say a single word or do anything other than keep collecting the checks.

If people are reprimanded and Ike comes out and says he knew and obviously shouldn't have played in those games, then he gets some cred. If he keeps collecting checks and people get away with stuff (including him for breaking T&C) then it's an entirely different matter.

If the taxman doesn't pay any tax then he is culpable and every tax payer in the country is entitled to know about it and see him reprimanded.

If a sponsored poker player plays in a game on his own site that he knows cheating is taking place in and he himself is in a position to benefit from that cheating, then he is culpable and every poker player on the site has a right to an explanation and to see action taken against all culprits.

sitting out wasn't an option. he could've made a post saying the NH account is sketchy, but a HS player almost never does this...?

i think i am just a bad communicator because your misunderstanding my post. of course amaya should be investigating the cheating on their sites & obviously to some degree they do. but this is a situation where you want & need a third party (gambling commission) involved because the cheating involves their own employees. and Amaya has a large incentive to sweep this away because of the downside of having sponsored pros being complicit in cheating. bad for business, present & future. "Hello USA market,we are Amaya, we run a tight ship & offer a fair game, please don't mind the fact that our own employees are involved in cheating." you want the gambling commission investigating Amaya on this one, just like you would want them investigating if their were superusers playing on the site.

and btw Amaya, many,many people don't care about these stupid,poker savant, sponsored pros. like someone else suggested, stick with well known, interesting people with integrity--oh wait, vicky coren already left the building.

Licensing has many faces, that "big heavy stick" you drool over sure was swung "at will" on Black Friday against online poker and its players, glad you can applaud THAT action.

Why do you so eagerly embrace millions of poker players having been hit with a "big heavy stick"; an overly regulated igaming industry, being unnecessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to play poker online should not be infringed.

Three States, fortunately for their players, acted to restore online poker, in some reduced form of markets ....Too bad I guess that 47 States' players are cut out off from online poker.

good job sending an email!

people question mercier & many other pros & sponsored pros just as well. ike is a mod here, mods are members of the 2+2 community, he is also a sponsored pro, etc...

c'mon guys, let's see how much integrity the big boys have. Shaun Deeb is not a sponsored stars pro, right? so according to some people's logic here, he can't be under some super secret contract from stars not to discuss the cheating right???

well, maybe Shaun can come in here & tell us he had no idea that Hastings was ma'ing the noelhayes account. What say you mr deeb? you are a 2+2 mod, no reason ike should be the only mod taking the grief.

very poor logic, my friend. not even a good reach. is this you Brian?

we are talking about regulation where it is legal to operate. there is no federal gambling commission in the USA regulating online poker, because no igaming operators are licensed to operate legally across the entire USA. get how that works?

-1 to you nvg pussies saying punching him in the face is dumb.

this fat slob runs so good its annoying.

u woulda scammed a real ***** like me you'd be missing some teeth at the very least

You may be just unaware how badly a "big heavy stick" swung "at will" hurt US poker players on Black Friday.

I am not sure you have a very good grasp about "how it works", as to regulation and, especially licensing. I can't say you show much grasp of how markets work very well either. My comment was directed solely at your obsequious rush to embrace "regulation by big heavy stick .... swung at will".

Just an aside, and not directed at any particular site, regulator, persons, tribes, situation or jurisdiction ....... carry on.

gambling commissions that regulate ipoker operators in legitimate & legal markets should have strong powers to hold over these operators & ensure they provide a fair & honest game. their primary mission should be to protect the interests of the players. it is clear that site operators cannot be relied upon to protect the interests of the players.