Interesting to see both stinger and duck posting walls of text to try to distract from the underlying issue, which is very simple and clear-cut.

For at least the past five years the evils of multi-accounting have been well-established. LOL at "gray areas" or "minor offense".

Try to deflect blame all you want, and go ahead and try to kill the messengers if you like. It won't help.

The reason poker has a bad rep is not because people are outing cheaters. The reason poker has such a bad rep is because cheaters are allowed to get away with cheating over and over again. Who wants to play a game for real money where cheating has no consequences?

It appears Vanessa really is as big of a douchebag as she seems to be on TV when she berates everyone who wins a pot against her. It's true what they say that money can never buy class.

That's because the highstakes beasts that would have played the games even if they knew it was Brian playing the account are not the main victims. If there's a table going with 4 beasts, the Noelhayes account and a significantly worse reg taking a shot because of the Noelhayes account, who's the real victim of the cheating? Most likely there will be 5 people at that table making money they wouldn't have made if Brian didn't cheat, sure they probably gave up some of their edge by playing Noelhayes suboptimally and deserve compensation for that, but the real victim is the person playing a couple hundred hands in a game he thought was great that he wouldn't even consider playing if he knew what was going on. And there must be dozens of those, maybe hundreds. The money lost due to the cheating is probably more than what Brian made and since Stars won't go in their own pocket to pay back the victims they will be screwed even if all winnings would be redistributed.

This already feels like opening a Pandora's box I shouldn't want to re-open but whatever...

The problem here is NOT Brian Hastings. It's PokerStars and their absolute joke of a security department. Two years ago when I went to IoM for the Stars meetings I did a couple of months of investigation beforehands and handed them piles and piles of evidence of blatant cheating, a LOT worse than what Hastings did here. To my knowledge they caught one person, and for this guy we had actual screen prints. A big case I handed to them was a guy who won over 6 figures and we had absolutely everything; the VPN he used, the precise address in Canada it was rerouting to, the precise address in USA where he played from, three witnesses who had been in the same room. Stars' response? "Our system doesn't show it, we can't do anything" or something along those lines.

I enjoyed talking to most people from Stars and all their different departments, most of them also seemed very open for criticism and new ideas. The only department that entirely shunned me was the security department, they just basically denied everything despite damning evidence of millions and millions being taken away from the poker comminity annually to the deep pockets of the few rich cheaters who organize these things. It's one thing that they can't keep up with the pace of rich cyber-cheaters, I can understand that. But their attitude, that they literally did not give two ****s about it and refused to even listen, that was something I'll always remember.

"No, this doesn't happen on our site, you are WRONG".
"Come on man just LOOK AT THIS"
"You are wrong"

That was basically the depth of our discussion, obv not a word for word quote but this is how I basically felt they responded.

Since then I have largely both stopped participating in the international poker community and playing on Stars (not trying to sound like a hypocrite, the cheating was not the main reason to this if a reason at all). But like Daryl (aaaaaaaa) posted above it's funny, I talk to people about poker probably 50x less than I used to, and still I actually hear MORE cheating stories than ever before. What Brian did here is like the 739th worst thing I've heard in the last couple of years.

I tried to suggest Stars that they would hire an outside group of tech experts to clean the games. Their security department was, and I assume still is, a complete joke and incapable of detecting anything. Why isn't Hastings banned yet? Because they are unable to detect him still. That PM Bakes posted miiiiight get him banned but without it no way. 0 chance of him getting caught through Stars' own systems. If they spent, say, 100k on hiring some tech nerds, really epic hackers, it would be less than they probably spent hiring Ronaldo's left foot and they could actually see some progress.

People say HS games are dead. Why are they dead? Because every "fish" is a Hastings in disguise and Stars is entirely incapable of doing anything about it. I personally voted with my feet and have opened the Stars.com client probably 3 times this year. It's by far the shadiest site, and depth of all the terrible **** that happens there still is absurd. I forget if it was Dylan or Kevin (imalucksac / lucsac) that posted earlier ITT but it was a very good post from a stand up guy who's relocated / never MA'd. Basically he said that the cheating goes on, everyone knows about it, even Stars might know about it, but it's not gonna change. The best thing you can do is keep playing and hope you can still make money after the cheater tax has been deducted from your paycheck.


________

I don't meant to defend Hastings in any way, the level of delusion in those PMs is absurd and they guy should be shunned from the community. All I am saying is that he's just doing the same thing hundreds of other people are doing every day and is deluded enough to not realize how bad it is. And this is the key point - the ONLY reason we even know about this in the first place is because Hastings actually warned some friends about it. Stars would never have caught him. If he hadn't at least tried to make it a tiny bit better - again I'm not saying it's still not terrible - this thread wouldn't exist. Same with gboro that someone brought up earlier, rarely have I felt so bad than I did about outing him when I realized afterwards what a tiny drop in a bucket it was an the only reason people know about him was because the told them.

________

And to people demanding Mercier & co dropped from Team Stars etc for knowing and not reporting it... come on now. It's a ridiculously horrible spot to be put in as Mercier. Assume you are close friends with Hastings and he confines with you about this, what are you supposed to do? Reporting him would be like a personal attack towards Hastings, because there's 0 chance Mercier & co don't also know how much cheating there's going on and how Hastings is just a drop in a bucket. Why would he report Hastings and not the 500 other guys? If I were in Mercier's shoes I would certainly have said nothing because it's the most reasonable way to address the situation - again a situation that wouldn't exist if Stars gave two ****s about the integrity of their games.

It always baffles me like most regs don't seem to care about this at all. Often I hear people say stuff like, "I play NL50, the pool is so big I don't care if a few guys at my level cheats, I play them very infrequently anyway. And why should I care when someone at 200/400 cheats? That's not my level, I'll never play in that game". But that's just such a wrong way to look at it. If you are a reg on Stars you should be looking at the economy as a whole, nothing is that straightforward. When a guy cheats at levels above you it still has an effect on you indirectly. Maybe a shark at your level fails at his shots to the higher levels because he gets cheated out of his money, and as a result returns to your stakes hurting your winrate, etc etc. I don't know how much gets taken away from the money pool every year to the pockets of cheaters every year but I'd throw the o/u line at maybe 10M (could be really wrong ofc). That's a LOT of NL50 buyins disappearing as extra rake. Think about it. If I were a Stars reg I'd certainly demand some safety and integrity in the games I participate it on a daily basis and vote with my feet if I wasn't given any.


___________

Vanessa, I also agree about many of the things you posted but I don't think you're expressing yourself very well (for the NVG environment), you come across pretty hostile and as a friendly suggestion I'd suggest you stop posting ITT just because there's no upside for you (I assume) but lots of downsides.


_______

I'm not interested in discussing this further though and please don't bombard me with PMs, I have 0 proof of anything anymore as I let go of this two years ago as one of the most draining things I have ever taken part of, and most certainly I'm not interested in looking into it ever again. Just felt like posting that's all.

Making a prop bet while concealing why you think you have an edge is not cheating. The essence of a good prop bet is having knowledge that the other guy doesn't have. If you lose a prop bet because the other guy tricked you, that's not his fault, it's yours.

Reality is that you shouldn't gamble without expecting that people will try to cheat you. Learning to avoid being cheated is part of the game. That's true everywhere in the world, from the local car dealership to Wall Street to everywhere.

Chuck wins the internet today.

That Pandora's Box he mentioned is gonna explode in the coming days.

That's a good post from Chuck. It's quite telling that Pokerstars has not responded in this thread at all. They are usually very quick to answer in these types of threads and there is no way they are not aware of this case/thread.

Very true and the main reason why I got fed up with poker a couple of years ago. I spent hours and hours sending Stars rock solid evidence that systematic cheating was going on in my games and yet they did next to nothing. Game integrity should be their highest priority at all times. Very sad for online poker.

It's astounding how a major poker site would sponsor you to represent them considering how staggeringly elitist, entitled and unlikeable you are and how few casual players probably know who the **** you are

Hopefully Amaya will come around

Polarizing: big nit
Polarizing: if i know u can u send?
Polarizing: i think i know you
Polarizing: but not 100% sure
BigNittyBanker: can't transfer sorry
Polarizing: ok

Now everyone can go after Ivey too

I'm not defending Stars as they can fend for themselves, but, I'd guess providing bullet proof security or anything close to it on any site is incredibly complex problem that some might consider impossible. Not the kind of thing you could just throw more bodies and technology at to fully solve.

Will stars drop the ball on things? Yes for sure. But what company executes at 100% quality levels? Take FedEx... their error rate at the Memphis sort center for overnight is maybe .001 But they still end up pissing off several thousand customers per day just from that one facility.

Stars has an enormous amount of varied transactions to monitor every second of every day.

I am quoting this because it's clearly, by far, the most important post in this entire thread.

What this tells you is that the system is completely broken from top to bottom, with no hope of repair.

What an indictment…nicely done, and thanks for posting.

does PokerStars game integrity & security department even exist? it seems like they do absolutely nothing and they can't even catch, stop or ban people MA, VPN, cheating at the highest stakes where the player pool is super small and you need to email them asking to unlock the table for you to sit down. i would think that game integrity/security would be the most important issue to Stars cause it is to the players but it seems like anything goes on there site even when shown indisputable evidence of cheating they will deny it before they even investigate it. Stars security is a joke.

+1

You're right, I don't disagree. I do think it's probably close to impossible for Stars or anyone to have complete control over their games. There's too much money to be made and too many tech savvy greedy people in the world that there wouldn't always be someone who's a step ahead. What they could do, for example, though is to at least make it harder to get away with and make the environment less attractive to consider cheating in the first place. Currently everyone who's in any "circles" at all has a go-to-guy to call if you need a secure VPN and to get back on Stars on a new screen name. And I don't blame the players either, the US legislation is obviously bs, many people have families etc and can't move out. As a young rich poker player I'd move elsewhere, explore the world and play on the side, but if I were a 35yo online reg with 3 kids when BF happened I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't at least be seeking to see how easy it would be to VPN - not for the extra edge playing anonymously but just to be able to participate. Feel free to bash me for this opinion, but I feel like it's just a cold hard fact for many, and what Stars should tackle is these big operations that are providing 100s of players the VPN option all the time, not single players - which in turn are responsible into 100s of anonymous crushers and all of a sudden their combined edge is pretty big from playing anonymous and actually hurts the games.

Like I said before, more than anything what really tilted me about Stars security's response was not that they were unable to catch these guys, it was their attitude. Sure, we were only there for ~4 days, maybe they were just having a bad day 4 days in a row. But the attitude they seemed to have around that time was complete DENIAL, they were nearly rofling me out of the building when I told them what's going on. I could see the head of security guy looking at me like "who the **** does this kid think he is, I've done this job for years, I know better than him", and it really seemed like they didn't give to ****s about even looking into the evidence. This is obviously just how I personally was made feel, and there's some chance I misinterpreted something, but this is how I honestly still remember it. And given how things have only got worse since it seems like they still have the same attitude.

They gave us a number of cheaters they catch, I can't remember how they came up with the formula, but basically they said (iirc) that they catch 9x% of cheaters (really high number). But they singled it out in a way that it was ALL forms of cheating, when most of it is obviously very easy to catch like idiots chip dumping playing HU raising 99x and folding to 100x shoves etc. I'd be interested to know what % of high stakes, high level, intelligent cheating they catch because I don't think the number is very big at all.



Anyway I didn't mean to come across as some poker Jesus, I tried and very much failed to go on this crusade and I don't really have any interest in discussing this further, so I'll go back to lurking now. I hope Stars eventually gets their **** together because I don't see how they can ever gain access back to the US if they don't.


edit: For the record, they did "look into" all of the stuff at some point - I sent them a bunch of stuff beforehands and the plan was to look into their findings once the meeting happened. It's just that they found absolutely nothing and dismissed all the evidence because their own investigations suggested that all I sent them was false (which I can assure you was not, I have seen many of those things happen with my own eyes). I didn't mean to say that they didn't look at all, because I have no way of knowing how deep into it they went. All I know is that they said they looked really hard and found nothing, and whatever I tried to argue with them was pointless because they had already seemingly made up their minds that I was making the things up. So either they were incompetent or just didn't care. The vibe I had that they probably have an outdated formula they still believe in, and when that doesn't give them results they shrug it off. That is just my own interpretation based on nothing but my hunch though and should not be taken for as an any kind of fact.

oh just noticed that. I don't think its unusual that a company in the gaming industry (or really industry involving movement of money) would not want to walk non-employee guests through their security processes. that in and of itself would be a breach

is that a joke? someone please estimate Stars' % of payroll devoted to game security? might be different pre / post Amaya as well.

No Josem in this thread ? wat?

You seem to have misunderstood what Chuck wrote. Read it again. Seriously.

What Chuck said was that Stars security had no interest in examining the evidence he had to show them about the cheating that was going on.

My guess is that they either knew and wanted to downplay it because they couldn't stop it, or they just flat out were incompetent.

Either way, it's very bad.

It doesn't seem like Chuck was asking for Stars security to walk him through their security measures, as that would clearly be stupid and counterproductive.

What he was trying to do was give Stars a sense of just how bad the games were in terms of cheating at the higher levels.

Nowadays, it would appear the problem has grown astronomically. Stars seems to be willing to look the other way because cheating is so prevalent at this point that they can only try and catch the most obvious stuff and let the rest go...

Nice post fslexcduck

TheTenderVigilante, where to begin. Firstly, reading your post brings up a sort of insane emotion in me that makes me want to slap the **** out of you. Everything about your name and your post reeks of some sort of smell-your-own-fart sniffing hypocrisy on arrogance and self-righteousnes that you directly accuse Vanessa of. The only difference (and it's a big one) is that Vanessa is actually attempting to move the situation positively in some way, while you are simply aiming to shoot down another human being while crushing them for exhibiting the same qualities that you want to change in yourself. Take 3 deep breathes. Can you not see this?

I see what you're trying to do and nobody is going to fall for it. It was clearly a guess from Ivey, I was railing the game at the time. It happened while EPT Monte Carlo was on, Iv known Hastings was using the NoelHayes account since mid to late may. COME AFTER ME TOO

Pokerstars are corrupt and have been ever since I.S set it up! He's to blame, chuck bass makes lots of valid points but even he hasn't touched the tip of the Ice burg. And before someone wants to get mad at me for not outing "Noel Haystings" their was two main reasons 1) I was scared because this is huge, and we all know what happens when someone whistle blows "what the rich and shady do to that person" and the other reason 2) Is because if I had outed this guy then it would have never gotten as much attention!! Hasting's was bate and he can confirm himself by posting the pm I sent him a couple of days ago. (I have said pm screenshotted but I'm just a grinder I don't much about how to post stuff like that but happily will if someone pm's me how too)

Remembered one more thing I should add. Stars security also looked into some stuff after the meetings, so it's not like they did nothing. It's just that the end result was the same, they caught 0 bad guys. As a funny side detail they did randomly slap bans on a few people I know who to my knowledge did nothing, and they then got super mad at me thinking I had somehow orchestrated it lol.

So yeah I didn't mean to make it sound like Stars don't even try, I def think they try. I just think they don't have the methods and competence to catch anyone who isn't blatantly obvious and I also stick by my observation that their attitude didn't seem very good.

Sorry for the rambles

Chuck: There isnt a bunch of VPN go-to guys. It's a single person handling 95% of them. If stars cared at all they would of been banned a long time ago.

I don't think you should back peddle here. I understand you want to be fair and even handed in your assessment, but clearly the whole thing left a bad taste in your mouth.

Likely, based on current evidence, your read was correct. Stars is incompetent/uninterested in stopping cheating in the game.

It's a big deal and since your experience was from 2 years ago, you're not by any means a current barometer. However, since things have only gotten worse apparently, your experience from back then is very telling about how things went and where they're likely to go.

Why not out the guy then?

The poker community is so strange. They pick and choose what cheaters they want to get mad about.