It might just have been that the "winner" tried to insta-transfer the bulk of his winnings (a huge amount of cash) to the "boss" that was actually ghosting him. If he also had Teamviewer or similar running at the same time, it would look more than a little suspicious.
I was surprised the "investigation" was completed so quickly (apparently an 'open and shut' case), so I'd guess the system had already detected there was something 'dodgy' about the accounts in question.

So if you play a tighter style in the beginning of a MTT and close to the FT you choose to play looser/ more aggressive cuz people are scared of ICM/payjumps you should 100% be banned for ghosting ? lol.

not saying that this guy wasn't ghosting tho.

Ya nope, no one said that. The tweet was an a vague example of the multitude of comparisons Stars can make that may aid them in determining someone clearly not playing on their own.

It seems in this case that there was something fairly damning that stars found that goes way beyond analysing their playing style.

Agree, Stars would not act solely on the play style, maybe not at all based on the actual play for the reasons/concerns mentioned above.

So much random speculation here.

To start with sometimes after a big score stars will restict player xfers until they have verified it is the player who is doing the xfer.
I know as I had it happen to me back in 2012 after a big score and I tired to xfer money to my backer at the time.

So it might not even be this player that the funds are being redistributed for.

That he negotiated hard or something is also random and pretty baseless. Again when I had a big score despite being a semi rec at the time I negotiated really hard for about a hour because the other players at the table were low stakes guys.

I watched about half the reply of the FT so far and stopped because it doesn't look like he was ghosted by some sicko.

He sun ran pretty hard just having hands the few times people 3 bet or 4b light. In fact he picked up big hands really often at the FT in the early stages.

He had a chip lead going into the FT anyway but it got huge because of this. Then started opening every pot basically because everyone was playing so tight (which was really obvious)

He didn't pick any 3b spots or do anything that looked atypical for a low abi guy. Just opened and c bet every flop nothing spophticated about it.

ofc he could have been ghosted it's possible but I really don't see how anyone could see that from the hands I saw or how anyone could have enough proof he was to ban him/take his winnings or w/e.

I don't see how u could ever clearly establish someone was not playing on their own really anyway.

2nd half is where you should see most sicko plays if there was any.
But as mentioned it unlikely that only playing style was considered during investigation.

But yes, it fair to say there lot speculations in this thread.

It's super hard to prove misbehaviour to a standard required to confiscate money from a customer. The accused have rights here too.

PokerStars is in a really tough situation here, there are no easy solutions. They're working hard from a difficult starting point.

The second half is going to be more of the same he had a huge chip lead and everyone was playing very weak tight. I doubt he did anything different but I will check for completeness.

That he has even been investigated is speculation in itself nobody even knows if he has for sure (am sure stars don't release details normally)

If there is an investigation I don't see what else you could even consider outside of playing style.

There is close to 0 way to prove that the guy was or wasn't on a phone call/Skype call getting ghosted. Even if you could even prove he was on a Skype call or something you could not ascertain the contents.

Certainly you would not be able to conclusively prove that in 3 days since the FT occurred anyway.

So all this talk of there must be other things being considered seems very unlikely.

This thread is comical. Wtf are you going to do to prevent ghosting? Nothing. Move along. It happens and play mtts where you have an edge accordingly.

I have no love for Stars after the last few years but here I agree and they should be cut some slack.

It's very hard to prove to a level where a company can can confiscate funds from a customer.
i
It has to be in some ways to ensure customers don't get scammed (not saying stars would). There have been more than a few disreputable companies over the years who would try and steal customers funds (not just in the poker world).

It's tough. But PokerStars are very proud of their security team, so that's probably a question to put to them.

When I used to serve as a Senior Manager in the department responsible for investigating multi-accounting, there were some really good staff there doing good work.

Hopefully they've invested in improving their defences against this sort of problem over the last couple of years. I can't speak to that, as I don't know.

Egption was literally afraid of playing aq kk ak kq 88 etc against a player opening atc
it doesnt take a genius to abuse that.Egption played horrically and didnt want to win

if this guy was being ghosted he wouldnt chop with Egption,who would??he would fold everything but aces and kings.this discussion is dumb. impossible to police anyway. also its not against any rule,theres no one player to a hand rule, aslong as the acct holder presses the buttons its allowed

But it is tho..

Originally on a break they brought up the Stars "new" deal making software to look at a deal when stacks were a bit more even. It looked as if the account in question was willing to accept the original ICM 110/107/104 deal presented in the software with 110 going to them but Egption was asking for an even deal at that point. The other guy said he would give the 3K to Egption and that is when they cancelled the deal, resumed play after break, and had to wait for the mod.

After play resumed while waiting for the mod the account in question gained a larger chip lead over the other two stacks and going into the next deal discussion with the mod it was clear the 3rd player involved really wanted a deal to go through and was willing to give up money so not really much to say about that situation; they just took their apparent advantage there.

I had a fairly similar take on my experience watching the final table.
Overall it was just a great situation for them. They had a large chip lead going into the final table with the next two biggest stacks on their right and a bunch of a middle/short stacks on their left with everybody playing much tighter than on a normal final table. They just took advantage of that situation very well.

They played an extremely high raise first in but nothing sick or out of line really from them preflop. The only thing I'd say that was a bit unexpected was that they did have great understanding of how their wide opening range played postflop. Alot of times from more inexperience lower abi players you'd expect more of the same postflop with them just trying to just run over people on the flop with aggressiveness but this player was much more controlled in that regard. They understood that they were quite often up against much stronger ranges when opponents actually did VPIP against them preflop, especially if someone flatted them from behind, and they controlled those pots a bit better than expected from a player with that low of an abi/experience.

This was clear as day, glad to hear they did something about it... wonder what solid evidence they had though.

Where is the outrage for the way IrEgption acted like a complete baby during the FT? His parents should be ashamed. Bencb should no longer sponsor this guy. People should not be coming to his aid, but see this for what it was. An immature kid who was salty that winning 100k wasn't good enough for him.

He turned down a deal for 104k because he said (verbatim) in chat "I feel like I deserve more..." And then when he saw it wasn't going his way crawled back to the deal making scenario and said "I want 100k." and proceeded to call the guy "greedy," for asking for 1.2k more, when he did the same thing! He was lucky that Alin76(sp?) was generous to take $ out of his own pocket to give to him. I guarantee you that if it wasn't going to lock in the extra 15k or so for him, then he wouldn't have done that. Why is nobody talking about this? Go watch the replay for yourself if you think im wrong.

As well as the suggestions on stopping this that have already been mentioned why don't Stars forbid remote access programs like Teamviewer being used/open while playing? Seems a good place to start.

That's just negotiating - used to happen any time any deal was made which was probably why the new system was put in place to protect the recs (although not being able to type during the negotiating is wtf), I did think it was a bit rich him calling the Brazilian greedy but if Patrick thinks he has an edge which he surely did have then you can't blame him for pushing for a little more. But you're saying this is as bad as getting your coach to play in your place on the FT?

yea this guys the nut low. i was watchin his twitch stream and he pulled a scumbag move, someone shoved 3bb on a ft bubble or something and he types in chat "HE HAS THREE BIG BLINDS". big blind was a whale and he was angling to get a call. that was the last i watched of him.

You should clip that and send it to Pokerstars security since that is collusion and should get his account banned.

yea maybe someone else saw it too. was like 3 weeks ago i think. his whole chat called him scum. dont remember what pokersite it was.

Sorry, but what he was doing was not negotiating. It was a butchered ridicule of what is supposed to be negotiating. First of all, he was in 3rd place and was in no position to ask for more than ICM. Even if he thinks he has an edge it's ridiculous to do that, because card distribution/flips/coolers will happen with 3 ppl playing short stacked. He should've gladly taken 104k and he would've ended with more than 4k than he got. And he wouldn't have had to come crawling back and beg to get 100k.

Secondly, the way he went about it was atrocious. When they first got to the FT he jokingly said "everyone down for a 9 way chop.." and proceeded to troll everyone, which is fine, kinda funny. But the fact is he was adamant about not taking a chop, in the chat. Said he had his eye on first place (I would too). But then as the game devolved in a manner that wasn't suitably for little Patrick, he was quick to realize locking up some money would be in his best interest. And he went about saying he "deserves" more. Nobody deserves anything in poker. You went on a GodRun to place 2nd in the milly. Be happy with that and lock up +ev by taking the deal from last place position.

If the guy was ghosted then that is certainly wrong. Let's get some evidence first. I'm not ruling it out, but the way this kid acted certainly doesn't have me rooting for him.

Wouldn't surprise me this guy did that.

Patrick addressed this in his PG&C thread and admitted it was OOL, I think it was just a spur of the moment thing which he regretted instantly because he didn't respond to people talking about it straight after. He certainly wouldn't want to get into the habit of doing it though..

yehyeh sure buddy, PokerStars are working really hard here, as always doing their best to protect the players. Like when they banned bots from cash games and distributed small refunds and stole the rest of the money at will.

rofl... Got a little payment to post that drivel?

and Portugal. and Israel.

it's absolutely pathetic because I've been seeing it for years even down as low as $11 tourneys on WPN and Ignition. How many times can a weak reg/bot that's afraid to 3bet more than 3% suddenly turn into a world class MTT player.

I bet with just a few days of digging around and investigative work, we could easily uncover who is actually ghosting some of these accounts and start putting public pressure on other networks to start acting too, at least in the obvious instances.

again, I am not a hardliner in this aspect or fear mongering. Lets be real, it's near impossible to stop friends from talking about hands while watching one another grind. Hell I was made aware years ago of large group(s) of REPUTABLE grinders who shared HH databases and notes as well as literally team playing against regs who werent part of their skype group(you know who you are).

But literally having financial arrangements where numerous weaker player/bots put in the days/weeks/months of legwork, grinding away in the variance filled lands of MTTs. Then when they finally get in spot where they have good equity in a large prizepool...here comes the MTT sicko that we know will literally be stealing the most from the inexperienced, amateur types and weaker regs; which are the lifeblood of MTT player pools.

it's rampant. I'm telling you guys there's also bots setup in MTT for the same purpose on both Ignition and WPN.

From people who actually watched the table sounds like this guy was just opening atc vs nits who wanted to fold into a higher finish. Egyptian played like a scared nit, got all salty and whined, his twitch followers raised the pitchforks, and Jokerstars stole money from another large mtt winner. Why anyone that's not already an established high stakes pro would want to play in their large guarantees is beyond me. Stars just takes that money.