I am starting a new thread for this as the main girah threads are becoming very cumbersome and I thought it would be better to focus on this aspect seperately. Obviously if the mods don't agree or if there is already a seperate thread in another corner of 2+2 they can do what they want with this one.
The angle i want to explore further is Lock's role in the affair. Here is a summary for those who haven't followed this closely:
Lock appointed girah as a sponsored pro following the hype around him on 2+2 (which we now know was primarily generated by girah himself with the support of Haseeb and Jungleman). He immediately set about playing in the Bluff/Lock Poker Challenge which was essentially a contest to see who could make the most profit in a month. girah won the challenge. Shortly afterwards the following was posted on 2+2:
Quote:
Macedo has won the challenge earning over $104k during the month of April. I find this fascinating considering he was having a losing month according (to the article) with 2 days left. He had been largely playing no higher than 1k NL and as low as 400 NL. Then all of a sudden on the final day he goes on to play nosebleed stakes and wins enough money to be in first place.
For those that don’t know nosebleed stakes seldom if ever run on the Merge network. So what a coincidence that he was able to find a game at those stakes, on the final day, and not only win but win enough money to get into the lead.
Furthermore, the person against whom the bulk of the money was won was playing under the alias “SamChauhan”. If that is indeed Sam Chauhan of http://www.changingyou.com/, he is a mindset coach not a poker player. Never before have I heard of him playing online poker. Now he is playing against top opponents at nose bleed levels? What made him choose that particular day to all of a sudden start playing 20kNl? Another coincidence?
I believe Sam is from the US, so how did he manage to get so much money onto Merge in such a short period? A bank wire? After black friday? I had never seen him play there before and have not seen him since.
I happened to watch some of their match and it seemed that sam was playing very erratic and unconventional poker. Now I am not going to claim to even understand the thought process of high stakes players, but to me some of the hands that were played seemed very questionable.
Finally, my last coincidence involves a player named INEVERFOLDI. It is rumored that this player also lost quite a bit of money to Girah. I have never seen this player play heads up high stakes and he also happens to be from Portugal. INEVERFOLDI and Girah are the only two portuguese players I have ever seen play high stakes on Merge. Another coincidence?
For some reason the mods chose to delete the post soon afterwards (a bit of a fail as it was probably one of the most significant and insightful posts ever on the site).
In any case the cat was out of the bag and soon afterwards Lock disqualified girah (its not clear how much of a part the 2+2 post played in this). They made the following statement:
Quote:
Lock is disappointed to announce that their new LockPRO ELITE team member, Jose "Girah" Macedo has been disqualified. Runner up Michael "bigguylegend22" Drummond, who earned over $90,000 in profit during the challenge, will take the prize. In audits of all participants' accounts at the close of the competition, violations of BPC rules as well as the Merge Gaming network rules were discovered. The violations with Girah's account included computers at multiple locations logging in and playing on his account. Lock's philosophy is built on player relationship and trust; any violation of fairness by any player is taken very seriously.
"Jose is young and he has made a big mistake here. We wanted to make sure that regardless of being a LockPRO he won this fair and square. After doing an audit of his account we have found that he broke some rules and that will not be tolerated by Lock," said Jennifer Larson CEO/Owner of Lock Poker. "We pride ourselves in standing for trust, legitimacy and loyalty. The truth is sometimes hard to stand by but it is the only way we can move forward. Although José won enough money from his own IP to have legitimately won the challenge, the unfortunate fact remains that breaking the rules is strictly disallowed. The fact remains Jose is an exceptional player and I firmly believe that mistakes only lead to greatness if learned from."
"I'm deeply sorry for having broken the rules," said José, "but I truly had no intention of circumventing the rules in any way. Though it is no excuse, I want to be fully transparent at this point to let the poker world know what has happened and why. The computer in question was my backer, who logged into my account to check my balance and ended up playing some $25/$50 PLO while I was asleep and lost some money. Though on the merit of my own legitimate play I had enough winnings to win the Bluff Challenge, in light of the way things appear, I fully support and respect Lock's decision to disqualify me and hand over the challenge to the second place winner. Once again, I truly regret that all of this has happened the way it has, and I hope that I can win back the generous support and understanding of the players who have believed in me so far. I will be issuing a more comprehensive explanation of what happened on my blog. Thank you."
It has now become clear that the $100k won from the SamChauhan account was in fact just chipdumping by Haseeb. The win from the INEVERFOLDI account is also suspect. In addition, Haseeb has confirmed that he played on girah's account during the challenge (losing money playing at PLO).
The questions for Lock (which I hope their rep will come in and answer) are:
(1) Were you aware of the 2+2 claims before you DQ'd girah?
(2) Would you have done so were those claims not made/publicised?
(3) When you said in the statement "
The violations with Girah's account included computers at multiple locations logging in and playing on his account." You used the word "included" implying that this was just one of several violations. What were the others?
(4) Were you aware of the chipdumping?
(5) If not aware then why not since (a) you had conducted an audit and (b) there were specific allegations about it? Also, when did you become aware since the issue was subsequently raised again on 2+2 (after you DQ'd him)?
(6) If you were aware then why didn't you say so in your statement and why did you say that he had won enough legitimately to win the challenge on his own?
(7) Who did you connect the SamChauhan account to?
(8) Why didn't you suspend or sack girah as a pro when you knew he had cheated?
. All who were not fanboys and held ground to ultimately come up with the truth will be rewarded by Lock Poker
