Quote:
Originally Posted by ChicagoJoey
Feel free to give me any questions/topics for the podcast w/ Phil on Monday.
A few months ago there was a topic on 2+2 publicly outing a shortstack HU PLO player kidopham who was unanimously considered by the HU community to be using real-time assistance software. He held the entire highstakes HU PLO lobby on ACR for 2 years, little was done about the situation despite numerous e-mails to support about it. A tracking site has him up over 400k and since it does miss quite a lot of hands, his profit is most likely significantly higher. No regular battled for the tables vs him as it was very apparent he was cheating, therefore the times he was online the stakes from 5/10 to 25/50 were basically his to wait for fun/semi-rec players who were unaware they were being cheated.
Shortly after the thread (the day after) was posted the entire heads up lobby was removed with no explanation given by the site. It was shocking and very sad as the heads up ecosystem was hardly predatory compared to other formats, there was a fair bit of battling between regulars on every stake level. This along with the king of the hill system made the site special - one of the few so welcoming to people who enjoy 1on1 poker.
It's hard not to assume that the outing and the decision from the site were related. Removing an entire game format because of a single cheater would not only be incredibly unfair and disrespectful to the rest of the players on the site, but it also disincentivizes people from exposing cheaters in the future (why bother if this the end result). I'm sure many regulars now regret that the subject was made public and that seems to be a very unhealthy situation to be in.
Why was the heads up lobby removed? Was it influenced by the topic?
Does he regret that there was no communication on their part regarding this decision?
What kind of investigative work was done regarding this player?
What are the chances of reimbursements in this particular case?
Would ACR/BCP be willing to reconsider their decision and reinstate heads up tables in some way or the other? There was plenty of action at the tables and the format seemed very healthy (of course discounting the hours kidopham was playing) and plenty of people miss it.