Quote:
Originally Posted by jungleman
I haven’t read all the thread but happened to talk with Cole and get his side so likely I am biased. This sounds like wild injustice
So firstly, apparently the arbitrators had a previously an undisclosed relationship with Brandon. I thought it’s within the spirit of arbitration to disclose such facts?
I find it very funny that Brandon has a history of data mining, which is EXPLICITLY banned from websites, now cries that Paint did just the same but expedited version (all showdowns instead of showdowns given x% of the time).
Oh, so it was ok when Brandon broke the rules (ie, cheated?) from any viewpoint against everyone else same transgression to everyone else, but when someone does a novel transgression that was *not* explicitly stated against he cries that it’s unfair and wants a full refund ? Wild hypocrisy, and the irony is that the population that is illegally datamined from (cheating?) supports him and calls Paint a cheater. And Paint never broke an overt rule
If Paint is a cheater, Brandon is a rampant cheater likely to even the audience of this post. Shall we also arbitrate his poker winnings and demand he give all of it back?
On arbitration ruling that Paint is a liar and now all of his word can now longer be trusted, oh so who among us has not lied ever? Is that how this works? Can no one now be trusted since we are all liars? Did arbitration conveniently forget that Brandon deleted the message about him being “ok” and think that wasn’t lying?
I can’t even really say that for sure inequity was on Brandon’s side here when he condones datamining. Is it also wrong if you get a read or handhistories secretly from a friend on how a player plays? Where is the line here? Shouldn’t this all be defined if we are going to scream “cheating?” Paint can say that he didn’t break any rules, actually
Lastly the punishment does not fit the crime. As a seasoned HU player I can tell you that studying Brandon’s handhistories no where remotely guarantees a win from Paint, and I don’t think this benefit changes the outcome of the match by more than 15% of the difference of wins/losses. A punishment should fit the crime, not be wildly disproportionate to it on the basis that it was wrong only especially when acted in good faith which Paint seems to have.
Ofc I’m biased but it sounded to me that most of the EV really came from the immense preparation of strategy Paint made and I do not think it’s right that all that effort should count for nothing for what looks to not possess malintent
Fuzzy on the details, but a lot of what Cole says now doesn't align with the statement he put out here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...c022yzu9k/edit
I believe that Cole and Brandon both had to agree to the arbitrators. He never mentions that as being an issue in his statement.
From Cole:
This aside, I have no reason to believe arbitration fully understood what we had access to or how it could be used.
We certainly were not forthcoming with this information, and Brandon likely had incentive to misrepresent its usefulness.
In light of this informational gap, and
aware that I had misrepresented what I knew and when I knew it, arbitration ordered me to pay back everything I had won. From my perspective, this was not the correct ruling,
but I couldn’t fault arbitration for this conclusion in light of what they had access to. There was very little we had gained from using the database, and when it was accessed I was unaware of the ethical implications of what we were doing. I was fully aware of the ethical implications of misrepresenting what we had access to and when it was known to the arbitration panel. I have paid back nearly $70,000 to all parties affected, despite my conviction that the ruling is incorrect, and my inside knowledge that the database was fairly useless.
I do, however, appreciate the arbitration panel who worked very hard on this, and, despite ruling against me, I hold no ill-will toward them for their decision.
Moving forward, I promise to conduct myself ethically. I’m not a scammer. I’m not a cheater. I will try to make amends moving forward in any way I know how. If you have any questions, please contact me on discord.
I think the key is that they had lied about having access to the DB to begin with, so everything was tainted at that point.
