He is far from being respected and never will be respected. Tolerated maybe. Look at people like Ferguson and Lederer. They were once at the forefront of respected poker players and now they are not even welcomed at most cash games. Poker players do not have short memories for cheats and liars especially when that cheating affects the bottom line. All poker players should support the people cheated and shun the cheaters. But you like the cheaters which is indicative of "Birds of a Feather Stick Together." There cannot be any other rationale for your support.

I think what a lot of people here are missing, probably on purpose so they can keep the pitchforks out, is how little they understand the philosophy or w/e word you want to use for the HS community. There is a reason the response mostly has been a collective shrug from them, when you look at this situation in complete black and white, of course its simple. But no one is talking about how many times BH has probably been MA'd, or how often jungleman had before he did it, or whoever. I'm not saying just because this scummy thing was done to him it justifies him doing it, but I can understand how one could justify it as being ok if they had say lost a couple hundred K or something to probable MA'ers.

Being mostly a HUNL player I have been MA'd probably many many times, a couple of which were my worst sessions ever at the highest stakes I've played, it sucks, and it's been going on for years, and everyone who has consistently played 5/10+ for the last few years is very very aware of this. Bakes and whoever else acting like they literally got robbed is kind of a joke, when a new name, or basically a new name for those stakes or even close to them sits, I'd bet a lot that any reg with half a brain basically immediately assumes it's a MA'r until proven otherwise & plays them accordingly mostly.

Not condoning anything Hastings did, just don't think this makes him a gigantic scumbag, and if he actually paid back a suitable amount of EV it should almost completely clear his name imo, since no MA'r of the thousands that have done it have ever paid a penny back I'd imagine.

fail logic... other people hve done it so its ok

Except Hastings wasn't playing a an unknown account, he was playing on the account of a known fish, and starting his sessions of with fishy plays to get action.

Exactly. Here is an example. You get into a 100/200 NLHE HU with Jennifer Tilly. You are stoked but unbeknownst to you Antonio Esfandiari is in town hanging out with Phil Laak and is playing her account. Big difference in the style of play but in one session you will never know the difference.

All Hastings needed to do was use a VPN just like many other US players do and use his regular account. He was using a VPN anyway. Otherwise, he could have hopped a quick 1 hour flight to Toronto and played from Canada for a week at a time. If he missed the g/f or family he comes home for a day or two.

But Hastings with malice and forethought decided he wanted to make some quick money before the WSOP and masqueraded as a degenerate gambler with major swings in poker that eventually end up in the red. In the short term most people are not going to know any better which is especially true if the manner of play fluctuates with an air on the fishy side. Any decent player can play that game short term. It is typical bait and switch. It is Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason in The Hustler.

If Hastings truly was trying to just play mixed games from the US with no ulterior motive then a new account with no history could easily have been established in a country which would have allowed him to play. But he chose the Noel Hayes account to make big money at the expense of others. If he truly intended to not use the Hayes account to his benefit he would never have even contemplated playing under that name.

Any person that comes to Hastings defense or play the everyone does it rationale must have either cheated or contemplated cheating just like Hastings. Hey, everyone screwed the fat chick with Herpes so I screwed her also does not rationalize the fact that you now have warts on your dick.

I thought the accusation of acting like a fish were unconfirmed? I know nothing of Noel Hayes, hes a "known fish"? Even if that's true (I'm looking at his stars PTR) it looks like that was at baby stakes compared to the games the MAing took place. I promise you every reg at those games were extremely suspicious before they played a hand vs him. Unless I'm massively misinformed by PTR about what kind of "known" fish he was.

Feel free to explain my "fail logic" Aristotle.

Please do post, I would sincerely be interested in your experiences and thoughts on the whole matter.

People who bought datamined hands would have been shown incorrect leaks though and they say that's not fair.

well, aside from the hypocrisy of that, faulty datamined hand info is an issue with not MAing accounts.

Well it made me laugh. We have a whole bunch of new accounts from non Nevada based players entering the bracelet event and somebody chose a topical name, likely in part to help wind up "Chufty" Brian Hastings. Excellent.

Frankly if you don't find this sort of mild hazing of Hastings* funny just what does make you smile?


*boom boom, "hazing hastings", puntastic I'll get my coat.

gonna disagree, youthblood.

I absolutely hate the state of online poker but this truly falls under the guise of 'popular opinion of those effected = moral standard'.

90% of NVG can hate the rules in which high stakes operates (I certainly do), but 99% of the people who post in NVG simply don't play those games and will never be impacted by it's ethics. their opinion on the way they should operate are idealistically irrelevant.

from a player POV, the rules for poker are different from site to site, stake to stake, and venue to venue. non-universal in nature, so disagreements in how said rules should operate at a truly ethical level are literally left up to those who are playing in the game on the regular, and you socially shun those who don't abide by those accepted rules by not letting them play. so far that really hasn't been done to BH by anyone in those games other than the ones who came up loser vs NoelHayes

until you can correct the problem of a single breach in the T&C's not being punishable by ban then people will pretty much always enforce which rule they agree with most (or benefits them the most) amongst the available popular options. the crux of the issue falls at Stars feet. what should they do to BH to either encourage or discourage the current moral compass of the community in their high stakes games?

You mean hayesing hastings, surely?

Maybe I should be a bit more careful. ave stake for me is plo200, tiny volume a bit higher and lower. I've been pretty active on it since about 2010 (used to grind MTT fulltime).

I have a feeling I may have emailed support one of the first times I realised I did it and getting paranoid, and they said something similar to your response. It is quite possible I've completely imagined that though as it was a few years back.

There is a differnce between a mistake and knowingly doing something wrong. I love when sports players get caught on steroids and say they made a mistake. No u did not make a mistake u knowingly did something u knew a a wrong. If u are asked a question on a test and don get it right it's a mistake cuz u did not know the right answer. Everyone know steroids are wrong, multiaccounting, robbing banks, collusion and anything else u can think of. Someone cheats in their spouse and gets caught....I made a mistake. U did?? U forgot it was wrong to do that? Stand up for what u did wrong. Take the blame. Don't use the I made a mistake excuse. He wanted to play on pokerstars he knew what he did was wrong but it was worth the gamble to him. Just played multi accounts in same tourney. He made a mistake??? No he tried to give himself a better chane to win.

How has he owned it? That email to bakes is def not owning it. It's deflecting. Which is basically the opposite.

Interesting to note the first online WSOP FT

They're talking about zeeJustin owning up to his mistake from day 1.

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Brian has not owned it.
(I think they were referring to Justin Bonomo, who has owned it.)

People bringing up Bonomo as an example of shady individuals in poker are idiots.

He was made a scapegoat for something that was an extremely common practice back when it happened and he has gone way above and beyond to prove himself ever since.

The wast majority of those who accuse him would never have handled his situation anywhere near as well as he did. They would've whined and cried still about how they were treated unfairly.

And the thing is - they would've been right to do so. Still Bonomo did not. He has way more integrity than pretty much anyone else in poker and if you don't recognize that, then you either have no clue about the situation he was brought down for or you are just a generally clueless idiot.

Or perhaps just not put themselves in his situation to begin with.

It was an extremely common practice to play in the same tournaments with multiple accounts? I'm going to say that's bull****.

Mutli-accounting may have been common. But few were playing multiple accounts in the same tournaments.

And his initial response was a joke. Good on him that he quickly realized how ridiculous he was being, owned up to it and apologized, and seems to have walked a straight line since then.

This is true.

From what I remember with Justin's dramabomb is that he accidentally outed himself in a ******ed fashion, said he opened extra tables to take away some of his edge (lol wtf). So I guess not from day one but he definitely didn't act like Stinger and accepted that what he did was wrong and seems to be an upstanding member of the community. He certainly has my respect.

Why would multi-accounting be common among tournament players if they were not entering several accounts into the same tournament?

We can argue the semantics of 'extremely common' but it was certainly common enough so that no one player should take the fall for what was going on back then.

What happened to Bonomo could've happened to a lot of big names back then - he was made an example of. And it just so happened that they decided to make an example of one of the few guys in poker who it actually turns out has a lot of integrity.

Yes, he screwed up - but he screwed up by doing what "everybody else" was doing and something that really wasn't seen as much of a big deal at the time. Still, he learned and grew off that experience. As we're seeing more and more - a lot of the people who should've been made examples of in his place, never would have.

Moooooooom,

But everyone else did it toooooooo!!!!

Pretty compelling arguments ITT.