While it sucks that lot's of these reported hands came up as false positives, lot's of things were unfortunate in this situation and worked against Simon

-having only the flop and time was deemed inefficient in using Fair Play check (this has since been modified to include Game Type, Pot Size, Positions). No one could have possibly know how the rate of false positives.
-Simon's affiliation with Zenith Poker who has had some previous controversy
-Simon's account being previously locked by PokerStars NJ in 2020.
-Simon being universally disliked by the WSOP NJ/NV and PS NJ pools for slowing down every game he is in. Sure, 10 tabling will require using timebank in many spots, but constantly timing out preflop when it folds to your SB isn't gonna give you the best rep from regs trying to get volume in. It doesn't make a great experience for the recs as well.

That being said, if PS deems Simon innocent, the process put in place worked as intended even though it was not perfect. It also forced GTOw to update their FairPlay check so false positives are less likely in the future.

Everyone is paranoid right now about being RTA'd against and rightfully so. However, Berkey reporting this on his pod with little to no information while an investigation was going on was unprofessional and irresponsible.

MJpopcorn.gif

time banking every hand because of mass tabling is slightly scummy in itself. how are you okay denaturing the experience for all of your opponents, simon?

Big+1, also plenty of people 12+ table without consistently slowing down the games

These are unfortunate for berkey, as they don’t prove cheating at all and they leave berkey liable for slander.


Can berkey prove dude was cheating? No? He should be quiet lest he gets sued and has to prove that Simon was cheating. All Simon has to do is say truth is a defense, I wasn’t cheating, prove that I was.


I remember this happening elsewhere recently

Would like to make a couple of points:

1) My account was not locked by Stars NJ in 2020. That happened several years prior and I was cleared of any wrongdoing.

2) I don't timebank "every hand". It happens occasionally. In any case nothing I'm doing is against the site TOS so how you may feel about it is just that, a feeling. I respect it but agree to disagree.

1) Thanks for clarifying this.

2) You're right, it's not against TOS. It's just a reason why other regs dislike you clogging up several games in an already small player pool, and the reason the pitchforks came out so quickly. We also might have a different definition of "occasionally"

"Occasionally" just like the entirety of this topic of the use of timebank is an arbitrary term that will vary from individual to individual.

As far as the "pitchforks" - they came from a concentrated and select group of mainly 3 regs - Thoughtriot, Pompii23 and Nbrickflair. The majority of regs in the pool don't care about this whatsoever or are in fact sympathetic to me.

Which autotimebank add on do you use and is it legal? WSOP does not have autotimebank feature as far as I known

Hi all,

As the player who first looked up a hand and essentially set this whole thing in motion, I want to chime in and say a few things. Just to get it out of the way, now that there is additional information available in the Fair Play Check, I do think that it is extremely unlikely that Simon was using GTOWizard during these hands. It is unlikely to be of much relevance, but I have followed up to the Stars Game Integrity team saying as much. I trust that their team will make the appropriate decision and hope that it's made quickly.

When I first brought this up, it was in a relatively small Discord server that has previously discussed him in terms of his recent strategic changes and excessive time bank usage. A couple other players looked up recent hands and found matches as well. With this tool being relatively new, our intuition over how likely same/similar boards were to be looked up at similar times was... very unlikely. I think given the information that was available at the time, it was absolutely worth suspicion and bringing to the attention of PokerStars to investigate. It ended up getting posted elsewhere by others which opened the floodgate. I did not intend for it to blow up in public. I absolutely did not want this getting talked about on Twitch streams and popular podcasts, although I recognize now that it was a mistake to talk about it outside of a very small group. I will note since myself, pompii and nbricflair were mentioned directly, none of us were bringing this up outside of the initial server, and none of us were approached or asked by anyone that brought the issue to a larger platform.

Talks of defamation lawsuits and all that are, though, pretty ridiculous, as that all requires malicious intent - it was completely reasonable at the time to have these suspicions and draw the conclusion that RTA was being used, even as it has now become clear that was unlikely. I agree that anyone who named him on popular platforms should set the record straight on those platforms. Hindsight is 20/20, and as this developed, it was certainly reasonable to suspect wrongdoing, and when time and money is on the line, that's going to cause emotions to flare. I agree that it largely got out of hand quickly.

This was never about any form of personal hatred or desire to get a strong reg out of the pool. The latter notion especially is quite silly. I have never interacted with Simon outside of the tables or in the chat and my only opinion of him is that I wish he'd play faster. Ultimately, I hope he gets his account unlocked in quick order, and we can move on from this particular situation. All that aside, I think that there are positive outcomes to all of this, as the additional information being added to the Fair Play Check absolutely makes it less likely that false assumptions will be made in the future, while also making it easier to catch actual users.

I am NBRicFlair btw, and I agree with everything thoughtriot said. At this point, I do not believe you were using GTOw in real time based on the updated Fair Play tool.

If these changes were in place on Sunday none of this would have ever happened.

I accept your apology and thank you for contacting Stars NJ. There is no bad blood between us from here onwards.

I'm however having a very hard time understanding why Berkey of SolveForWhy has not responded to me. I have contacted him via facebook DM, email and now in his discord server. The only thing left to set right here is him providing me the same platform he used to slander my name. I have no ill intentions towards him either. I simply want his help with clearing my name which has only been sullied due to his actions.

Joe Ingram has made him aware of my request in person as well.

pompii23 here, i echo everything that thoughtriot and nbricflair have said in this thread

Malicious intent- That’s only if the party suing is a public person. In this case, afaik, dude is just a poker player a bunch of people don’t like. You might want to double check your legal stuff before posting. I could be wrong of course but I doubt it as I figured you were wrong initially and Google confirmed.



Here are the requirements for Nevada


To prove a defamation cause of action in Nevada, you must establish four elements:

That the defendant made false statements of “fact” about you;
That the defendant made an unprivileged publication of the statement(s) to a third party;
That the defendant acted negligently, recklessly or intentionally; and
That as a result of the statements, your reputation was damaged.


I think paying him $10k and everyone apologizes is fair

Another problem with the fair play checker, especially when it comes to nosebleed players, is that observers could easily check up hands players like Linus plays.
So now someone like Linus may have hundreds or thousands of hands with exactly matching time, boards, positions, stacks, etc.

Or what if I try to get an opponent banned from a site by observing his tables and looking up hands he plays at gtow and then reporting him to the site?

So you need extra info: like ID of GTOW user, IP address, overall stats/frequencies, patterns, etc.

There's reasons why that sort of information shouldn't be available to the public, but I'm sure it is connected to the hand ID which GTOW instructs you to email to your site's integrity team. I believe the chance of a player facing consequences due to a framing attempt like that is effectively nil.

RunLikeDiva here. Have no opinion on whether he was cheating or not and have not been involved in that discussion.

What I do think needs to be addressed is the slow play issue. Simon used the word "occasionally" to describe how often he times out, which to any other reg is utterly ridiculous. He is clearly the slowest player in the pool, the only one who regularly times out preflop which in itself is pretty amazing. Comparing him to other regs in my pool in my db, he costs the table at least 4 hands/hour compared to the next slowest reg, and compared to the average reg that number jumps up into the 6+ hands range.

I think a little self awareness would help here. This didn't blow up because of 3 regs with a vendetta. This blew up because of how unpopular you are based on nothing more than your table ethics and the fact that you literally cost other regs money by slowing the game down, and making recs upset. My guess would be that if you were more well liked by your peers, this would not have gotten to the level that it got to.

Whether Simon is liked or not has no barring on his guilt or innocence. Surely you aren't saying he got what was coming to him ?

The following is not an accusation of cheating.

I've played a lot of hands with UrNightmare and can confirm that he time banks essentially every decision. Something trivial like x-f the flop HU in a SRP will be a time bank for him. If he plays a hand that goes all the way to the river you can expect it to take 5 minutes as he'll almost time out pre flop, then he'll time bank each decision point on every post flop street.

In conclusion, it's evident that Simon was wrongly accused by some individuals. It's only fair that those who made these accusations owe him at least an apology.

Fortunately, he has now been cleared of any wrongdoing.

As for the account issue, let's hope PokerStars NJ quickly unfreezes his account.

Regarding timebanking, while I certainly understand it can be frustrating, it's important to note that it's not against the tos.
If it's causing issues, suggesting shorter time banks to the site might be a more productive way to address it.

I appreciate the accuser coming forward, showing understanding, and writing an apology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImU71e274rQ

It's not a very strong apology, but JW and Berkey discuss this whole saga in this episode, and Berkey says he's a bit regretful, and it's acknowledged by both JW and Berkey that most of the hands found on Simon were false positives.

Good. Glad to see it. But it's kind of crazy how much influence Berkey had here. Seems like he provoked both the beginning and end of the suspension.

that's not a gto wiz issue... that's a user issue.

I'm glad to hear Stars made the right call and want to reiterate my apology for initially bringing this up and your name eventually being dragged through the mud on a large platform.