Level? I don't think pokerstar's has a "no murdering a fellow player" rule either but that doesn't mean players can go around busting caps into opponents who beat them out of their bankroll.

Brian,how can you be so greedy,man?After you and your friends beat Isildur absolutely unfairly you didnt even apologise to him did you?And now this?I dont think that Bakes is making that up-I wonder why,with your skills would you do that?You werent broke,so what did you do it?You may win 100000 bracelets,but people will respect you for your actions,not for your money,bracelets etc.Still,I think you are a great talent and you dont need those kind of things in your career;I think you are better that 90% of the fields you play so I dont think you need help by ohters,I first saw you in a PLO game in PAD with Ivey,Dwan,Adams and so on so you have the skills,man!
Wish you good luck!Have fun and win the bracelets!

Oh what a tangled web we weave

A tangled web indeed

Seems like this is another thread that can be folded into the thread "Why the public thinks poker players are losers."

If true, scummy to misrepresent yourself online and to do so in a way that entices "friends" to bet against you in a bracelet bet.

AFAIK Pokerstars has never publicly told players it has no rule against murder, so we can presume it's frowned upon at the very minimum.

But Pokerstars (Lee Jones back in the day) repeatedly publicly stated it has no "one player to hand" rule. Their reasoning was it wasn't enforceable on the internet.

So if you are sitting in your living room and playing a tournament, anyone sitting with you can offer advice/suggestions. They just aren't allowed to log into your account and play the hands for you.

It's seriously unethical.

I mean, I like Joey but look at the facts: A 5/10 & 10/20 reg (at a time when those stakes were well below the highest being played and the gap to high stakes was much bigger than today,) is rooming with one of the confirmed best PLO players in the World at the time. Suddenly the 5/10 reg starts crushing and is playing as high as 100/200 with many suspecting it is actually not him playing the account. Then straight from the horses mouth it is confirmed that for the biggest ever pot on the account that Hastings was apparently sitting behind him telling him how to play. To quote Stinger himself "draw your own conclusions...."

Sure it's hard to enforce for online but it's still scummy as. If it wasn't then I could call up Phil Ivey to sit behind me next time I play my 25/50 game at the local. Totally cool, right? No one else at the table would mind?

I was in Vancouver for the tail end of Joey's upswing and he was certainly playing alone on the account, unless you want to count the real estate agent with the fake titties that I gifted him.

It's against the rules in live poker play, live poker has always had a OPTH rule.

It's not against the rules on Pokerstars.

You think it unethical and I'm not sure why you think that. For example, anyone who plays with a poker coach, and it's common to get poker coaching, can violate this rule online.

This. If it was a rule it would be impossible to implement. I'm often being berated by my brother for taking dodgy lines.

Although, I would not play on his account, and he being a far superior player to me, would not play on mine.

Obviously it's against the rules of live poker as it would be ridiculous. And as you said, it is only not a rule online as it is impossible to impose.

You are not sure how I think it is unethical??? So if I can't count to 5 but have an online maths exam that I need to pass, it is totally cool to get a mathematician to do it for me because no one can prove it wasn't me????? If I sit a state exam in a live setting it is totally cool to cheat if the examiner is not looking??? etc etc.

C'mon, man.

As I said, I like Joey and actually don't want to include him but far too much of this kind of crap is going on. People like Hastings are scummy and he needs to be outed. Despite what anyone says, it is another extremely suspect situation that points towards possible multi accounting/cheating on the part of Stinger.

So Brian and his GF have left building?

After all Brian's success I don't see why he can't just admit it assuming it's true or deny it.

@ Desert Cat: Likewise if Stinger played some 5/10 HU NLH v some known Swedish account and got owned for 20 buy ins. Then it transpired that Isildur was actually sitting behind one of his buddies from school. Would Hastings think it was cool? Would he complain? Yes he would. He would moan like a baby.

Ok, so we agree it's not violating a rule online.

It's wrong to violate the rules of the tests, but your examples don't give any reason why it's "unethical" to NOT violate the TOC's of Pokerstars?

Right, c'mon man. It's clear you don't like multiple players discussing a live hand online, but it's allowed by the sites and there is nothing unethical about it.

It's so clear that it's ok you can't even come up with an example to explain why it would be unethical, other than absurd examples of breaking actual rules that have no bearing on a site permitted activity.

No one wants cheating (other than cheaters), but when you conflate legal, allowed behavior with cheating, your hysteria makes cheaters more sympathetic. Calling people with poker coaches unethical cheaters is pointing the finger at a huge swath of players who can now say, I'm ethical and what I did wasn't against the rules but now I'm being called a cheater, so maybe multi accounters aren't that bad either.

I wonder if Hastings had busted some other player other than Isildur whether anyone would care about it. There is some serious moral and ethical gymnastics going on to try to paint Brian as a villain here. The weak ass examples are

a) He coached his room-mate while the room-mate played, totally in accordance with all site terms and conditions and while breaking no rules.

So now somehow poker coaching is unethical, making most of the internet player pool cheaters.

b) His poker coach admitted to buying hand histories in violation of the site TOCs, and was punished for it. So now Stinger is somehow guilty of the same crime in every hand he played after his coaching, even if he and Brian still had a good number of hands gathered under site rules to analyse?

How much help were those Isildur hands with mostly randoms vs. the hands they had actually played vs. them in analyzing his ranges? I can't imagine they added much unless Isildur is a robot who never adjusts to his opponents.

Would the Isildur fan club be calling any other player a scumbag because their poker coach violated some TOCs, and demanding the student return all their winnings to "repent"? Aside: No one ever seems to say, gee why was Isildur so unbalanced and exploitable, and whose fault was that? If he played more balanced all the hand histories in the world wouldn't have been enough to break him.

The only actual alleged wrong doing by Hastings is the multi-accounting accusation by Bakes, of which is obviously a violation of TOCs. Yet at the moment it is lacking in verifiable proof.

The fact that the HS regs stopped playing him after a week or so tells it all really. If this was really noel hayes (irish and s**t at pokers, they would still be there now, bum hunting him for every $£$£$

In this case obviously would be multi-accounting and it's against the TOCs.

Again, you can't come up with a decent example to demonstrate why the Joey story is unethical. Joey never said Brian played the account, just advised him which is explicitly allowed.

lol @ ghosting not being unethical, really? Then why did it get awkward and Brian "not want to talk about it"?

You're also misrepresenting Lee Jones statement as he acknowledged the unethicalness of ghosting while pointing out that it's impossible to enforce.

Man, I don't care about Isildur. Just because someone points to shady behavior from Stinger doesn't automatically mean they have a hard on for the Swede. But as we are on the subject, Isildurs imbalances and degen tendencies are irrelevant. They do not mean that it was okay to cheat v him. We can justify just about anything if we throw enough BS at it. You can throw all the BS and "everyone is a deluded fanboy" talk you like at the Isildur situation, but the absolute facts remain that he was cheated. You are calling me an Isildur fanboy who can't see straight when in fact you are perhaps an isildur hater who as a result can't see straight?

As for Joey/Stinger. You are conveniently overlooking that the whole thing ties together. There is not just him sitting behind for one hand or potentially more. The account exploded at the time and many suspected, long before they knew who was living with who, that Joey wasn't playing on the account. Then it transpires he was living with Stinger and now it transpires that Stinger likely multi accounted years later in a very scummy way. And also, if it is so cool and totally okay for a 5/10 reg to play a 60k pot at 100/200 v a known HS reg (in this case Jeans and perhaps a 3rd person?) with another HS reg sitting behind, why then did Hastings become so uncomfortable and move the subject on so quickly when it came out in the podcast? I mean, it's totally cool, right?

The only reason it is not a rule online is because it is impossible to implement. If it was cool it would be legal in live poker, but clearly it is not cool and thus illegal. To do it online in HS games is shady at best.

What???? It is the exact same situation! But apparently it is perfectly ethical in one situation and multi-accounting in another?

Where you at Stinger? Where you at? You're scared y'know.

I wish he'd just come in, admit it, and laugh at everybody. I bet there's a ton of hs players who at one time or another have played on a different account. It's clear that people don't take it seriously and that nvg'ers that are taking it seriously are the type that love to witch hunt and love their drama because it's got nothing to do with them.

Yeah but in this instance it's very scummy because of the bracelet bets and the fact that he spent the months previously secretly practicing in the hardest games in the World, against some of the very players who then bet against him. Not one bit cool.

Perhaps but the "one time" for others occurred years ago, long before multi-accounting was universally understood to be a form of cheating. The "one time" that Hastings is being accused of occurred within the past few months.

+1

And I really hope Desert Cat's lengthy diatribe (reminding me of pro or anti Russian trolls on geopolitical websites) in support of hastings doesn't take away from the facts at hand. Hastings needs to come into this thread and confirm or deny the Noel Hayes multaccounting accusations.