I was railing the SCOOP final table,in fact i watched from about the last 4 tables thru to the HU final. Earlier on i had noticed this Noel Hayes especially as his avatar is a racing horse, and i happen to like horse racing myself so he sort of stayed in my mind. Anyways down to two tables and i noticed Noel was still there, so i Hendon Mobbed him. Back at Stars i checked to see how many tables he was playing besides SCOOP and saw he was playing the top games with Mercier and the likes and doing just fine thanks......hmmm, this guy musta been doing his homework, but i justified that by his pic at Hendon mob depicted a older gentleman, as opposed to a young wizard looking type, and no doubt had lotsa spare time to perfect his game....get tuition etc, but man he had come from nowhere it appeared. When final table was down to about 5 players and someone mentioned 'lets talk deal' when agreed around to noel Hayes he snap replied...Not interested,...wow what an old baller i thought, i assumede he musta made a dollar or two in his life and perhaps owned racing horses (costing telephone numbers) but not looking at numbers when he wasnt even first in chips, third of five if i remember correctly, but the speed of his 'No deal' really surprised me, mebbe he thought he could get mirrion.

I remember seeing an interview of Brian on Poker News i think it was, at the start roughly, of the WSOP, where he stated that he was looking forward to the mixed games, as he had been playing a ton of that format.

At the time i wondered to myself where would he have put in that much volume, seeing as he lives Stateside, and 'travels to Vancouver' to grind SCOOP etc.Now i have an inkling as to how he perhaps got in said volume.

Beggars the question....Are there many other Stateside players multi-accounting, those that were aware of this and said nowt, how many accounts do they have on tap avail, or even worse, prolly one guy, or a twosome can take up all seats but one (fishies.....me) and see five hands to villains one hand, in Cash Games, you cannot rule this out as a possibility now the 'integrity' of the game has been called out,that a name player had a pang of having to tell the truth (conscience can be better for one when unburdened) and combined with the Isildur incident, shows that indeed it is dicey to play online for real money,remember Russ Hamilton (another online thief). Perhaps the 2 cent five cent games are relatively immune, well the limit holdem game at least SHOULD be thief free at those stakes, but hey who am i to know, all i know is i think this has finally stopped me from playing online. I will use available apps such as Equity Calculators etc to sharpen my game now i am aware of the various learning things out there, should give me an edge live, but online is just full of crooks now so thats it for me, to hell with online sites.

Hastings move was very scummy and obviously downright awful but it's also a little concerning that someone multi-accounting gets a 1500 hundred post thread while an equally (possibly more) serious issue of the PLO and NLHE botrings on stars gets 400 posts and is already off the front page of nvg.

This is just a general musing not trying to say that BH should be getting less hate, **** him, he's obviously a **** and deserves all the ridicule he is suffering here. Just hope people are equally as concerned about other aspects of online poker that seem seriously ****ed right now. end of derail.

It seems to me that PS self-destructing right now.
This company is losing its integrity at a warp speed.

For me this is some kind of plot to destroy on-line poker as we know it.

That has a lot do with the fact that the bot thread was not full of delusional people making excuses for why botting is not bad and saying the people outing bots are the real bad guys.

How does this hurt Stars more than any other site? iPoker is even more lax (or incapable of policing their own games) with this kind of thing, and numerous other sites are as well.

Amaya sucks as much as BH

A Billion dollar Company WHO won`t adress their customers concerns is a disgrace and big LOL at Lee jones, worst PR person ever ?

meanwhile in a small town in the desert...

The crap would hit the fan if it turns out that they knew about Hastings close to the beginning and just decided to turn a blind eye.

What would Hastings be expected to do if they emailed him to have him explain their suspicions, he tells them 100% what he is doing and they just decided to do nothing and allow him to keep playing?

What if JM came out and also contacted the security team or higher ups and the same thing happened?

THAT would be sickening to say the least and although that seems highly unlikely, can we honestly say it is not possible?

EDIT: Taking into account what LJ also appeared to have said about their stance on MA and the fact that its also been posted that despite BOATLOADS of evidence from an outside source, PS security will only 'take action' when their own internal investigation comes up with something. Kind of scary stuff.

Good interview, thanks for sharing.

Nice to see pokermedia/pokerjournalist finding and interviewing someone with strong opinions on this. Not just reharsing this thread and some twitter posts.

b/c most of NVG tards don't give a damn about anything besides rambling around ... is MA new? sadly no, but this thread is getting bigger as if this 'scandal' is worse than UB or ftp

second half of the thread is pure speculation and stupid demands (like PS should comment itt, which they've never done if it's about banning players) or why PS is ruining the game (even MA and botting is worse on other platforms)

besides that .. i don't want flame ChuckBass (he is a great guy and has done tons for the community), but if PS can't find any proof for VPNing, how can they ban players? just because some one demands it?

Chuck suggested Hackers to get proofs .... which is mega lol (i guess every gambling authority would be happy to learn, that on of the licensees is hiring cyber criminals who hack their customers).

fact is, there will never ever 100% safety ... not online, nor live (btw another discussion which is almost forgotten, is the card problem at the wsop). ideas like webcams or other high security stuff only make the experience worse and a lot of recs wouldn't play. and i guess even webcams etc can be fooled, so again ... there's no 100% safety

BH cheated and i hope he will be banned, but this is neither the end of the (poker) world, nor will his ban or any new security measurements end cheating

There are only two people who have basically said "Listen you all, I'm not replying in this thread. I'm important enough that I can put up what I want to say elsewhere in a format that where there is no possibility for reply and you have to come and read it." Those two people are Pokerstars PR, Lee Jones on the podcast and Chigago Joey on his video blog. Imagine if the whole forum was just people linking to their blogs and podcasts - discussion would break down entirely.

As far as I can see: the US pros think it's ok that Brian told everyone he was playing with, where "everyone" doesn't include non-Americans like Danzer. They also tell us that large numbers of people are multi-accounting and playing by VPN from the USA.

So the solution is simple - ban US citizens from playing on Stars regardless of location. They aren't bringing any rec players with them anyway.

Breath of fresh air.

he was playing on an irish account from a presumably irish IP address.

If we had some regulation in the U.S. , we could avoid some of this hopefully. This really hurts online gaming credibility. It just gives more ammo to the opposition .

How do you say that with a straight face? It starts off with someone apologizing for hurting others by playing underage. How do you hurt anyone playing underage? It's face-saving B.S.

As far as this getting overblown, absolutely it is. However maybe that's what's needed right now. BH can be the scapegoat that hopefully makes people think twice about MA'ing in the future.

Not sure if anyone's following pads blog in the PGC forum. He told a story about atrocious behavior from Bleznick at his table berating players all day. The best part of the story was when another player came over saying he wanted to shake his hand as he's a legend. Once he did the guy unloaded on him and pretty much called him out on being a piece of ****. Later on Deeb apparently gave him a mouthful too.

This needs to happen more to these guys. Will it get rid of it from the games? Of course not entirely. But it might make them think twice about it if they see these guys getting treated like the excrement that they are at live events.

Hastings knows now that everyone hates him now.. Will probably continue to scum. Scum gonna scum..

The highest level golfers playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars routinely penalize themselves for breaches of rules that oftentimes no one else sees them commit and they do so for "the good of the game" and to maintain its reputation as a "gentleman's sport."

If only high stakes professional poker players as a whole had 1/20 the ethical standards of high level professional golfers.

Yes, but when they follow the line of player-to-player transfers and cashouts it will go through Americans, not some Irish guy with a gambling problem (confirmed by thinking about it).

Also, other people playing on their own account over VPN has already been mentioned here.

The main reason though is that it's clear that the US players ITT see themselves as having a social contract with each other to prevent cheating that doesn't apply to non-Americans. It's like when Greenstein wanted to use the money he owed to Full Tilt to help US players only.

Having them on the site at all just seems like a negative freeroll for Stars - poker attracts recreationals with its "winners welcome" business model - but these guys are not the winning counterparts to any recreational players in the markets where PS operates. They are supposed to do all in their power to stop US residents playing - this is in their power.

I personally think what BH did is just the tip of the ice-berg, what impact does this have on the USA legislations could in fact be very
harming towards online play in america, the part that really annoys me here is the fact that when BF happened alot of american players
gave alot up in the scence they moved countrys to be able to ply there trade in online poker, and i would assume alot of these players
had alot less finance than BH has, to me he has kicked those players in the teeth and the repercutions for these players could be more
damaging then it will ever be for BH, its a unjustified act and he needs to be punished heavily not just by PokerStars but hopefully
by some laws, have it be the UK law or the USA law, i have no doubt he will be sat there laughing and not caring 1% about what he has
done, shame on you sir.

i like that people trust poker sites at all. cant prove that poker stars runs the bot ring so it must not be true.

If you follow the line of player to player transfers, there won't be any Americans, because you've said they should be banned home and abroad.

just because you are not aware, that ppl cheat, doesn't mean it don't happen ... also, like every professional sports, organizers really try hard so scandals don't get too big (since they need a clean image to get sponsors)


so everyone thinking golf is a gentlemans sport w/o scumbags should do some research