If u want to be the best u gotta play the best and the best are all on stars. But serious it's just one major dickswing contest nothing more nothing less.

That is who is doing it I assume or people who can hit supernova. I assume a rec 25nl player is not vpning.

you had 4 horses playing in which games? did they play in the same games and did the players playing said games know they were playing on the same money?

Take your stable to a court then. The UK will do the job. This happened at a UK regulated site. I think you could claim jurisdiction applies.

Now that will mean you risking a few hundred thousand in court costs, just like Ivey did vs Crockfords, but go for it. Put up or..

I disagree. I am sure there are tons of people who report stuff like that all the time. Just because there is no thread every time does not mean people do not care.

You're legitimately suggesting that because Hastings is likely a better player than his opponents he didn't cheat?! In fact, you're going as far as claiming he couldn't have cheated because it was obvious he was very good, so it was the responsibility of whoever jumped into his games to quit.

Ok.

you are an idiot. They will play for a much longer time against a "legit" account that have been around and the owner of the account is known than against a brand new account. This is the bleznick effect, if its unknown and plays somewhat good that is the assumption that people used to make and play by.

Noel account they will assume he is either sunrunning or randomly playing good, and if they have logged alot of hands against that account before they will chalk it up to variance and keep playing back at him with the "old ranges".
Also the games wouldnt even have formed alot of the time if he sat on the stinger88 account, people have said this earlier itt.

There is this guy on x site, whoms account is probably worth in the ballpark of 25-50 buyins of the biggest stake that runs on that site. because he plays those stakes and can go for 50buyin swings in any given session, he win and loses 100bi in a few days span and he plays like a absolute mad man(PLO). Since he is a rich dude with his own company and all that not a soul would believe somethings fishy is going on when they lose 30bi, he doesnt need the money nor is he having a playstyle that doesnt provide gigantic upswings.

Those games are absolutely insane and ive seen him with 100bi stack accumulated in hours, although those games play bigger/deeper faster since they rebuy for 200bb.

Anyone that knows who I am talking about although network/skin/whatever is censored please refrain to post accountnames, its a good bloke & well mannered, he just loves to gamble.

People post graphs of 50,000 and 100,000 hand samples and get laughed at for 'lol variance' and 'sample size'. Unless he's limp calling with utter crap and doing some other ridic things then you will need a lot of hands to determine if he is a whale.

Players should always beware of new accounts but established SNs owned by known faces should be beyond this **** now.

I find it interesting that Hastings said he had been a losing player for a couple of years now. Obviously cannot get the right kind of action with his own name so gets round this by using someone else's name.

The account was chosen to get action from players who would not normally give it to him and also give him an edge on players he had played in the past.

He cheated for sure. You've been around for a while Brian, go with the old school defence. It's better than the garbage you're vomiting all over us now.

As someone who worked for a media company with corporate spokespeople (loooong ago) what i believed was going to happen here was the corporate spokespeople directly or tangentially involved (surely mercier, possibly selbst & negreanu?) would be suspended pending an investigation. Normally a corporation with millions to lose from a scandal that includes spokespeople goes into damage control and throws any tainted spokespeople immediately overboard (NBC and Trump in the news now). Its an easy "fix".

In this case, we have, with 100% certainty, proof that a spokeperson knew of cheating/violations of the companies TOS and many have, rightly, assumed he wasnt immediately forthcoming with management. (let me make clear right now i don't believe these spokespeople owed anything to the poker community, but they do owe their boss if they want to keep their jobs). But herein lies the problem , if these sponsored pros knew of cheating, TOS and legal violations and willingly kept it from their bosses they would be instantly and viciously thrown to the wolves. ITS AN EASY SUPERFICIAL FIX.

So why hasnt this happened? How is it that information regarding a cabal of players cheating pokerstars paying customers was kept from corporate management BY THEIR SPOKESPEOPLE and no one has been canned? well..... heres where i think it gets interesting. It seems obvious that the sponsored pros DID TELL MANAGEMENT AND WERE IGNORED! STARS KNEW. Stars was going through a sale and then an IPO and they didnt need news that there was a huge cheating ring operating in their HS games. They swept it under the rug and now that its out they cant fire anyone because if they did internal documents would bury them.

WHAT DID THEY KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT?

The good news for the poker world is there is no honor among thieves, this story has legs.

^^^^
Big risk to take for Stars, but them being in the process of being sold (or a new asset just bought) might explain why they would keep quiet.

Certainly sounds plausible.

Well said again this forum can thow Brian under the bus but the blame clearly is with Pokerstars for ignoring the MAing and VPNs for years! How anyone finds what Brian did shocking is lol. Brian got caught basically fesses up and the 2+2 goes ape crap on him while silence to any blame to Pokerstars. The site is littered with MAing & VPN, and Pokerstars 1000% knows about it but their silence is deafening. At this point I hope they stay banned in the USA and let the charade continue abroad with a site that allows this nonsense

Im guessing a party(ies) with standing to sue amaya for damages caused by amayas willing and/or negligent allowance of cheating/VPN/MAing teams to operate on their site in violation of international law and their own TOS would get a pretty big settlement once the depositions started rolling in...

One of these times BH is going to steal a few million dollars from the wrong guy,how the hell he get away with this **** is beyond me, lol poker players

Brian "thou doth protest too much" Hastings did some pretty scummy stuff, no reason to let him off the hook. In fact, keeping him on the hook is what is gonna get us farther up the food chain. This is how these crime syndicates unravel...

Poor guy can't even steal hundreds of thousands of dollars without catching grief, must be a rough life. I mean, he even basically fessed up (in a PM to someone else that he then requested the mods remove), what the **** is NVG's problem?

Don't quite see the rock-solid evidence that would lead to the bolded sentence above. Your line of logic seems to be that:
(i) Stars sponsored pros knew of the MA activity,
(ii) They would be fired as sponsored pros if they did not disclose known violations to Stars management,
(iii) They have not yet been fired,
(iv) ERGO: They told Stars management, who decided to bury the issue.

I find that to be a reach.

What do I think is more likely? Well, at the risk of sounding obtuse, there's "knowing", and then there's knowing. If a Stars sponsored pro says to a Stars CS rep at a cocktail party "hey, I've got it on pretty good authority that Brian Hastings is MA'ing", that's a far cry from, say, an all-hands-Stars-executive-team-meeting where they discuss the fact that they know Hastings is MA'ing and decide to keep it to themselves. The truth, as usual, probably lies somewhere in between. We glibly toss around phrases like "Stars knows", "Stars can't", "Stars decided", as though they're a single unit that acts at every turn with deliberate purpose and rationale. I'm not giving them a pass, and remain open to the idea that their 'level' of knowledge may have exceeded a reasonable-actor standard where they should have been expected to act, or at least investigate further. But not quite ready to sign on to the conspiracy-that-goes-all-the-way-to-the-top bandwagon.

Oh, no, he has to pay people back, but if you play this game against anyone -- good or bad -- you're playing a calculated risk no matter what your skill level is.

The fact that he gained an unfair advantage means he has to pay people back. He's sitting on some stacks right now.

All I'm saying here is there's a kind of person you don't bother to rehabilitate and toss them in jail. That person didn't spend years of their life doing training videos and coaching people to successful poker careers of their own.

If this game is only about money to you -- which is what Brian keeps saying -- then yeah, you kneecap him and drag him thru the street or whatever people do these days.

I'm suggesting the poker community make him do something less painful, humiliating and more genuinely helpful in addition to admitting his role and paying people back. He's actually given something to the game, and I would say this same thing about a lot of people who will read this post if they were in this situation.

But I guess if you're only out for blood here, a post on an internet forum can't stop you.

If PokerStars let this continue knowingly (the VPN part) and did nothing about it (how can they know you're spoofing though), what is their culpability? If Brian is so concerned about the integrity of the game (as he keeps claiming), why would he do something like this in the first place? And what's worse, why would PokerStars knowingly allow any part of what was happening (the use of a VPN) and still back him?

I know a lot of people who play do this very thing and you do it all the time knowingly yourselves -- using a VPN to play where you're not supposed to. Until they change the laws in this country back, that will just continue. If you force a community of people to break the law in order to make a living -- which the government did in the U.S. by enforcing UIGEA -- this is kind of what happens (the VPN thing).

But the multi-accounting thing has no excuse.

i still wanna point out this got passed over. the player pool for those games aren't that big. how often were your horses playing together at the same table?

Not letting him off the hook and Brian has to answer for misdeed(s), but still much of the blame goes to Pokerstars who KNOWINGLY has allowed this behavior for years and has done nothing about it. Will they make Hastings an example and then go back to status quo of doing NADA?
The VPNing has been going on since black Friday;hey come to Vegas into any HS stakes game ask around & you can get hooked up with a VPN account in a matter of weeks or go move move into the several VPN homes that exist in town. But SSSSSH dont tell anyone cause PS might find out lol

Was prob during a tournament.

I won money from NoelHayes, do I have to pay people back who lost to him?

Doesnt sound plausible one bit. If stars new theyd just shut down NH account and dont say anything. Wat would be their benefit for letting that account continue playing?!





He didnt fess up and handled teh entire situation as bad as somewat possible.
I hed just came in and said he made a giant mistake and is terribly sorry people stilld hate him but thered be fewer outrage and fewer poasts ITT

When did jason mercier or another stars rep tell stars mgmt. they knew of the hastings account? when did stars shut it down? we need a timeline here.

Why is any of this relevant?

Disagree. He did fess up and did apologize. (Before bakes posted teh PM). If stinger and 2p2 gives me permission to post PMs I can prove it. I have no reason to lie so you're gonna have to take my word for it.

Has Stars issued any response to this at all?

We can be certain they've either heard about this or, more likely, read this thread too.