ZeeJustin the next to get caught multi accounting Party MTTs

[jaydub]

raisins,

Because in crime X the government is stealing not the "criminal"

J

[The Time]

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TO EVERYONE WHO KEEPS BIG MONEY $30,000+ ON ANY OF THE ONLINE SITES MOVE IT TO NETELLER OR YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. YOU ARE JUST ASKING FOR THEM TO TAKE YOUR MONEY AT WILL. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO SUE THEM???

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Uh, $30,000 isn't even a bankroll for most of the games that ZJ and other higher limit people play.

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Why would you keep your BR on a gaming site?? Keep a little bit and if you lose that deposit more.

[KaneKungFu123]

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raisins,

Because in crime X the government is stealing not the "criminal"

J

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[applejuicekid]

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So why condemn someone for not snitching out perpetrator of crime X when giving a pass to the guy who does crime Y is OK?

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Because while it is debatable that drugs may harm people, it is a fact that a pro entering multiple accounts into the same tournament is unfairly hurting people.

When you have to bring up indirect causes of drug use to find the the "harm" it causes, the wrong doing is not as clear cut. Not to mention there is a difference between what is illegal, and what you would turn in your friends for doing.

I wouldn't turn in a friend if he drove home drunk, but if he killed someone on the way home I probably would.

[Howling]

Baretta

[Caldarooni]

All,

I missed the last 500 posts and now have had some drinks.

What has happened? What's new? Have any new dramas unfolded?

Cool.

[DK47]

"Used to be a pimp, now he's just a ho."

On a side note, who the hell is this clown?

[TheBagMan]

[excession]

'despite the fact that his actions never affected them in any way and the never-will-bes don't really understand the effects of ZJ's actions.'

Unfortunately your post reveals the same 'you're either a 'name playa' or nothing' atttitude that fuelled ZJ's success at all costs cheating.

Most folks here even amongst the lower stake players have at least taken a shot at the big MTT's - how on earth are we supposed to know that ZJ and similar multi-tabling cheats' actions have 'never affected us in any way'?

And unless you are part of ZJ's multi-tabling/AIM/VOIP etc cheaters gang how can you say for sure that you 'really understand' the extent or the effects of his actions?

I'm a 40 yr old partner in a corporate law firm - I'm not happy this punk got busted because I'm jealous of his 'skillz' or money - I'm happy he got caught because he's a whining cheating punk..

Did you have to be a world class sprinter to condemn Ben Johnson for taking drugs?

That said - of coursethere is a huge amount of schadenfreude going on here and that is natural - playing out like the oldest of stories - the greek tragedy- ate, hubris, nemesis - the bigger a cheater builds himself up, the farther he has to fall when found out..

The other paragraphs of your post were well thought out and a fair summary btw.

[betadecay]

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For those just tuning in, here's your summary. For those who've been following, there's significant original content after the summary.

-ZeeJustin (ZJ) has 6 accounts on PartyPoker. He played high limit sitngos anonymously on all and also entered multiple accounts in the same MTTs, including situations where two accounts were at the same table.
-ZJ claims that in the instances where two accounts were at the same table, he did not collude, but also did not sit one out, which he now realizes would have been the correct action
-Someone complained to Party about ZJ's actions, and Party responded by suspending all accounts, seizing his money, telling him not to play there anymore, and cancelling their affiliate/rakeback deal with him.
-ZJ is likely to be banned from playing and having funds seized on multiple other sites.
-ZJ's responses have shown arrogance, youth, an attitude that he is above the law, and a severe lack of perspective. I'm guessing he's in a bit of a shock... he put great importance on his image. His 'plan' seemed to be to make himself a name and try to get big sponsorship dollars, and he actually backed it up with effort on his blog.
-Many folks whom I respect, including myself, find ZJ to be a good guy at heart who has made a mistake and is compounding it by making himself very hard to defend.
-Dozens if not hundreds of never-will-bes have crawled out of the woodwork to express their jealousy-fueled happiness that ZJ 'got what he deserved', despite the fact that his actions never affected them in any way and the never-will-bes don't really understand the effects of ZJ's actions.
-There are even a few posts that offer perspective and good advice to ZJ, generally recognizing that he's handling things poorly at the moment.


And, oh yeah... gotmilk made a few posts that almost everyone ignored. Except his posts shouldn't be ignored, they should be discussed in much greater detail. So, here we go, the attempted redirection of the thread.


Disclaimer: I'm not defending ZJ's actions. I just think that if people are going to get all riled up about them, they should understand how his actions really affected other players. Because it's become very clear that if something doesn't affect their rake, the sites only care it if people raise a big hubbub on a forum. And you're all raising a hubbub about the molehill sitting atop the mountain. Let's identify the molehill and attack the mountain, shall we?

1) Having multiple accounts in tournaments over 1000 players is very unlikely to result in extra EV above what you would get from entering the two accounts in separate tournaments. If your accounts don't end up on the same table, you might as well just be playing two different tournaments. The likelihood of this happening is very small. I happen to believe ZJ that he never colluded with himself or got any benefit from this in any way. I'm not defending it...certainly he's not justified in breaking the rules and assigning himself a penalty that he deems to be sufficiently equalizing. I'm just saying that I don't think that any of his accounts had a higher EV entering a tournament with the other accounts than they would if ZeeJustin were playing them as his sole ID in a tournament. Because ZJ is a proven winning MTT player, his entering six IDs DOES hurt the EV of other participants, but no more so than if five other additional unrelated players of additional ability were to enter the tournament.

I'm not sure this is worth addressing, but... if I have two accounts entered, and take the attitude that I'm going to gambool it up on one because 'oh well if I bust I still have another account in the tournament'... this is moronic and certainly not +EV. The intelligent thing to do is to play both accounts to the best of your ability. The player with two accounts has to pay two entry fees, you know. If anyone cares to dispute this, I happily challenge you to a long series of winner take all 3-handed sitngos with ... me, you, and your '2nd account' who 'gambools it up' and goes allin every hand. Hey , if the gambooler busts, you still have your other account! You'll destroy me in the long run, you witty, crafty cheater you! Pffft.

I might as well note that ZeeJustin claims...and we have no reason to doubt... that the extra accounts didn't turn much of a profit, if any, in MTTs.

2) But wait, he won a lot of money with these accounts. Where? SITNGOS. He won the money at sitngos. But why did he use these extra accounts for sitngos? So that his opponents wouldn't know who he was. In fact, he specifically admits that he used those 'anonymous' IDs because his opponents recognized him, had identified his strategy, and had adjusted properly to it. ZJ clearly admits the obvious fact that playing at a table where you know everyone and they do not know you is advantageous. This is especially true in high-limit games where the regular winning players all know each others' IDs and styles, and anyone not 'known' is assumed to be an average donk until proven otherwise. He came in knowing who all the good players were and how they played, but they couldn't use their accumulated experience playing him to their advantage.

Poker is a game of people. This is especially true at higher levels. Good decisions always take into account the accumulated history of observed actions associated with that opponent. When you play with people, you have equal opportunity to observe each others' actions. The edge ZJ gained here was HUGE. Sure, party allows people to change their screen names once every 6 months. And you're stupid if you don't do it, it's of great benefit. But it's an ability given equally. When ZJ used multiple accounts, he got a huge advantage not available to his opponents and, as he admitted, got great financial benefit from it. In fact, all financial benefit he got from playing multiple accounts came not from entering accounts in the same tournament, but from the anonymity that came from the extra accounts.

This is a HUGE problem in online poker. I first emailed Lee Jones about it in 4/2005 as it was becoming a much bigger issue. A lot of higher limit players had experimented with new accounts and were SHOCKED by the change in their win rates. They were in some cases doubling their hourly rate. We exchanged multiple emails. His response was, summarized, that if a player emailed them to suggest two players were actually one and the same, they would investigate and close one of the accounts if they found that to be the case. Stars would not proactively look for such situations and would not punish offenders monetarily in any way. In fact, the punishment for breaking the rule was actually no punishment at all.

Later on I played a hand that I emailed Lee specifically about. I played a hand against a regular player who I knew well but was on a 2nd account. The player is craze9, a 2+2 poster, who was playing as 'XX JOKER XX'. At that point the 'JOKER' account hadn't been around long, so I treated him like a new player. He flopped trips against my big pair and I paid him off for a full $1000 stack in a 5/10 NL cash game. I would most certainly NOT have paid him off if I'd known who it was. He knew how to play the hand against me, but I could not use my experience playing against him to make the laydown at the appropriate time. Lee's team investigated and confirmed that it was indeed craze playing on his brother's account, but his response was to shrug his shoulders and say that Stars was not going to do anything. The thing is, this is just the one incident that I'm aware of because one of his friends was stupid enough to address him as 'craze' on another table. Most of the time, the victims aren't even aware. If you play by the published rules and use only one account, you're getting screwed by those who utilize anonymity, but you never know by whom or how often. I think a lot of people aren't aware of how common this is.

Stars did nothing to change their policies or policing. Last fall I played in a Bahamas double shootout. A 5/10 NL cash game player was at my first table with two accounts. These were accounts that Stars would easily have identified as being two of this player's accounts (he had three that I knew of) had they thoroughly investiaged the highstakes games. After that, I played less and less on Stars and Party now gets most of my business.

I have no idea how much money this practice has cost me or others. I know I've played against at least one of ZJ's extra accounts, so he has directly cheated me out of $. I'll never know how much I've lost...or how much others have lost... to this practice. I know that the poker sites have been aware of the issue for a long time...hell, I directly informed one of them about it. I know that as they've ignored the issue, players became more and more confident in creating multiple accounts as sites ignored it. Players took this as tacit approval. The sites have allowed the escalation of this issue. It doesn't affect their rake unless it stops others from playing, and it doesn't stop others from playing unless it's a big issue in the forums. Now that it's an issue in the forums, they're doing something -- but only about players that get reported by others.

3) Where does that leave us? Let your voice be known. Let the sites know that you are AWARE that you are being cheated by those using multiple accounts, and that you are AWARE the issue is not one that is predominantly confined to MTTs. Demand that they either take action to prevent you from being cheated or allow you the same ability to obtain anonymity to level the playing field. We have a unique opportunity while sites have some focus on the multiple-account issue to point out the depth of the problem. Don't let it pass by.

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I read half of this post then started speed reading the rest. There is so much wrong with what you say. I think you did not read the thread. I've said this before, there are several good posts that refer to how this affects other players. One smart math geek pointed out that in a span of 10 tourneys, ZJ had a 95 percent chance of ending up at the same table. This is in addition to the effects that happen to everyone's buy in value, after having to face more pro's(IE. the same pro with multiple accounts). Now consider several pro's with multiple accounts- the effect of ZJ's multiaccounting is not "small". awful logic

EDIT: I still say your first point is very flawed. I read the first paragraph of the second point and assumed you again were saying this had little effect on EV. I have reread the entire thread and appologize. I aggree with your second point.