So, plzd0nate, you agree that, technically, Ivey did not cheat. But, in your opinion, he did cheat.

Variance?

Antonius has been up about as much as Ivey has been down since BF. From the few live hands I've seen them play on live television it doesn't seem that Antonius crushes Ivey.

didnt he win most of that 19M against one rich guy from texas or smg? That guy should ask for HH.

"shows what kind of character he has"

...are you serious? Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Do you even know what casinos do? They exploit people by funneling alcohol down their throats, and then offering up games that are statistically at a house advantage, always.

How does taking advantage of a business that thrives on exploiting people through alcohol coercion and addiction constitute a bad character?

On the cheating note, I don't think he was cheating. Have you even played the games pre black Fri? They were a complete joke. There's not a doubt in my mind that Ivey, being as good a live player as he is, was able to single handedly reap 20mil playing those ridiculously soft games.

...and concerning his downswing. Isn't it obvious? He hasn't kept up with the online play, and the games have become exponentially more difficult. 25/50 back then plays like 1/2 now. If he was cheating pre black fri, why would he voluntarily loose 5mil in present time playing online when he would know damn well he can't keep up?

Use your god damned heads. You're supposed to be logical thinkers.

First off I cannot find edge sorting as cheating. I do see the regulation bodies make unclear regulations so they can screw the players. The casino knew what they were doing. They were basically free rolling Ivey on the grounds that he loses it's ok. However if he wins it is cheating. You cannot have it both ways. These casinos have destroyed communities and when someone pulls one over on them they cry foul. Anything that is built on a license to steal is not a good business.

What if you are working in association with a group that has people inside the manufacturer that tell you which casinos will be receiving these "marked" decks and when? Because that is what happened. You think Ivey hung out with this shady older Chinese woman (with a history of being banned in casinos for cheating) in various casinos night after night because he needed or liked her company?

She told him this is the scam and this is the casino that will be using these marked cards and this is what you need to do to gain your advantage and this is what you will get for doing so because we need your degen big gambler image as a front and no respectable wealthy gambler would associate with us in this fraud.

Seriously, if you believe anything else you are beyond naive.

Dear Trolls,

Players are a lot better now, at all games, except Gus.

Best Wishes,

Variance

Edge sorting isn't cheating. If you believe anything else you are beyond naive.

If what he did was cheating then there would be criminal charges. All he did was beat the casino at their own game.

I disagree with your second conclusion. For a professional gambler to spot a possible scenario where he can gain an edge at the terms that his opponents(the casinos) set and dictate and then exploit that scenario, doesn't make it more likely that he will go out of his way to create/take advantage of any alleged back door on fulltilt to cheat players. That's exactly what gamblers do. They agree to terms and then gamble and try to exploit their opponents within the established rules. The casino just didn't do a good enough job of securing their game.

That being said I also believe that casinos that offer games that can be exploited legally(no matter how many hoops the gamblers need to jump through) deserve to get hurt and lose a ton of money. In fact the more hoops they jump through the more obvious it should be to them that they need to fix their game.

The Chinese woman was used because she was able to communicate with the dealers in Mandarin to instruct them which cards to turn. I have a purple gemco deck that I just so happened to have from a 2012 trip to vegas from a major strip casino. When this story broke I took it out and was immediately able to orient the deck and turn the aces. After shuffling I picked them out through many runs through the deck. This wasn't a scam with marked cards. It was just a very well engineered play.

good because there aren't trillions, in quantum physics it suggests that there are probably infinite universes with equations showing every possibility (action/decision/reaction) happening simultaneously in all of them. so in one universe i'm the equivalent of phil ivey... or better yet mark cuban... i ran bad in this one

200nl today plays the same as 5knl 5 years ago?!! How did the games get so ridiculously tough in such a short space of time?

Why would you assume the second one? Why not assume universes in which there's a god or gods, and they have no interest in penning a book (or narrating) in which he/she/it/they appear more human (vengeful, petty, egotistical, prone to favoritism, etc. etc.) than godlike? With all those universes you postulate, I'm more inclined to believe in a bunch of Dumbledors out there than a biblical god.

edge sorting a casino is good karma. not even the same ballpark as cheating at the table. especially a game where they add almost half a deck so they can hit on seventeen because some people bad at mathz.

I always wondered if maybe unbeknownst to him he did have some advantage. Like someone flipped his boom switch because they thought having him kill online as well as live would be good marketing for the site.

Just a thought with no proof obviously but when you combine it with all the other shady things plus Benyamine losing after coming back (as someone else mentioned) and Matusow constantly saying he has proof that online poker is rigged, even specifically mentioning FTP (yeah I know crazy but even a broken clock...) it makes you think.

Obviously Stars never found where the doom switch is and haven't been able to switch it off for Hansen.

Is it plausible that Ivey had access to his opponents hole cards handhistory on FTP?

A) if you were making money when you won, you wouldn't have lost your passion. or at least, your motivation.

B) he didn't find an FTP exploit, he was one of the owners and probably had superuser abilities. Since he was the only FTP pro ever with insane results, it's likely only he and Jesus (a programmer who wrote the initial code) knew about it. That would explain word never getting out. And it would make him confident nobody else could see his cards like he could see theirs.

That would make for an interesting HU match though. Two superusers making 6 hi calls on each other.

Books coaches & trainingsite's?
Money dried up aswell, country's banned/splitted pokersites
Scammers/romours (like the ub one)
Black friday
Rake

The games were not "ridiculously soft" pre-Black Friday. They had already been getting much harder since like 2009. In 2010 people were making the same "10/20 in 2006 played like $0.50/1 today" comparisons you made.

And Ivey didn't win his money playing $25/50, he played $200/400 $300/600 and $500/1000. There was nothing soft about those games. There were fish games were built around, just like today, but you were still playing against the best in the world. Many of the regs were the same as they are today. Only they are still winning, and now Ivey is the whale.

Here is some pretty stupid question from a guy who doesn't follow online poker very much:

- Isn't Ivey maybe the most railed player in the history of rail? For instance, if he cheated on the reg wouldn't there be some flags along the way?

- Wouldn't some of his victims speak up during this relatively long period of time (the golden era of FT)? If there was a pattern of blatant cheating I'd like to think that someone would grow suspicious.

Say you play live against some guy whose voice (unbeknownst to him) cracks whenever he's bluffing so you ask him questions to get him to talk every time you face a large bet from him and he obliges. Wouldn't this situation be similar to the edge sorting fiasco? If so, how is this immoral or shady?

Maybe he's the best cheater of all time and is so good at cheating that no one notices, but think about it rationally.

Ivey is playing in games online against pretty much the absolute best players in the world. Very intelligent people, who pay a lot of attention to the games. If there was even the smallest hint of cheating, I think we would have heard rumors at the very minimum if not someone making official accusations.

Take your logic and reasoning somewhere else, this is NVG! Grab a pitchfork and join the fun.

Intellipoker..lol