Stars catches a bot and it's........my mom

[pudley4]

[ QUOTE ]
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I think Teddy is beyond reproach here. I mean, seriously, what would he have to gain from making this up? Nothing comes to mind. What would he have to lose? A hell of a lot of respect that he has built up amongst the better-informed posters at 2+2. The fact no-one at pokerstars is giving HH or any info about this alleged 43-hour marathon session, I'm on Teddy's side.

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You are discounting 2 things. First the high probability this is all an elaborate joke. And the second that ZJ was highly regarded here as well before his ignominious fall from grace.

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The difference is that teddy voluntarily came here to give us information that NO ONE HERE WOULD HAVE EVER FOUND OUT! If Stars had come here and said "We closed the account of teddy's mom because she was using a bot", and then teddy came back with this story, it's much much more likely that there was a bot involved. But because he came here and put out information that would have remained private indefinitely, it's much more likely that he's telling the truth.

Also, if he was testing a bot, and "his mom's" PS account got closed, what would posting here do for him? No one here would have ever known that he even had another account, much less that he was testing a bot and got caught. What does he gain by doing this? If PS reopens the account, they're sure to watch it more closely, so he'll be less likely to be able to test his bot on it. If all he needed was a dummy account, it's trivially easy to just create another one.

Honestly it's appalling to see the lack of logic many people are showing here. Although it's encouraging that even among the smarter part of the population there are so many who are still clueless.

[mayday4379]

As far as people suggesting its a bot created by someone else, if someone was smart enough to hack into the mom's account, log in and play for 43 straight hours, i don't think they'd use a bot at micro limit.

They'd either chip dump or play at the higher limits.

I'm confused on how people can quickly take the side of stars when we have no idea what type of due diligence they have done on their end.

Some analyist could've told "jeff" that they account was used for 43 straight hours, jeff took his word, then shut down the account. Lee took jeff's word about it being a bot and they moved on with their lives.

[Guthrie]

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As far as people suggesting its a bot created by someone else, if someone was smart enough to hack into the mom's account, log in and play for 43 straight hours, i don't think they'd use a bot at micro limit.

They'd either chip dump or play at the higher limits.

I'm confused on how people can quickly take the side of stars when we have no idea what type of due diligence they have done on their end.

Some analyist could've told "jeff" that they account was used for 43 straight hours, jeff took his word, then shut down the account. Lee took jeff's word about it being a bot and they moved on with their lives.

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From my own personal experience with Stars, I'm inclined to believe this is the case. I think it's very likely that Stars screwed up, and now everyone up the chain of command is defending their subordinates to the death, at the expense of an innocent woman.

The important thing to all of us, if this is the case, is that we could be next.

As long as Stars refuses to show evidence and defend their actions, I choose to believe Teddy's mom, and I no longer feel secure playing at Stars.

[Buzz-cp]

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i) incredulity that this could happen to the least culpable person I know, to ii) regret that I posted about it here at all because of the personal attacks I had to initially endure, to iii) vindication that people seem to actually believe me to some extent, to iv) some sense of injustice and anger with Jeff because of the emails that I have read, which steadfastly refuse to re-examine the issue. As I wrote above, I now strongly believe a Stars interpretive error is to blame.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hope you see that my poll was simply a muse to contribute to the soap opera. Indeed, there is an aspect of this that is trivial--she was playing at the nanos, and they gave her the money back. Nobody was significantly damaged by this. As far as suspending judgement, that all I can do. I also think most posts comments pro/con are to be taken with a grain of salt. Both your and Pokerstar's story seem perfectly valid, and cannot be superimposed, based on the evidence we have. The evidence needed is those hand histories, and if pokerstars cannot produce them, then I would be very disappointed. Though trivial at the nanos, it makes me doubtful about playing higher limits there.

[TimsterToo]

I think it's starting to become time for Lee Jones to respond to this.

[O Doyle Rules]

Teddy: Is your mom anywhere near Toronto? I could go over and take a look at her computer.

You should post a pic of your mom.

After reading this thread my only solid opinion is that Teddy's mom sounds hot.

Hey, I don't like the way this is going, so I'll fess up - Teddy's mom was with me for those 43 straight hours, so I know she's not guilty.

2. Teddy's mom seems hot.

When all of this is over, could you arrange for us to meet your mom?


I am now starting to believe this was all a scam by Teddy to hook is mom up with horny 2 + 2ers that find moms in their fifties that use bots to play online poker irresistably sexy.

[Dids]

"ZJ was highly regarded here as well before his ignominious fall from grace."

Ehh... maybe for his play. Not for his strong ethics or anything.

[MicroBob]

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Nobody was significantly damaged by this.

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The rep of stars security has been damaged imo.

Teddy's mom says it best regarding how unsafe these sites are and that one shouldn't be keeping too much money in any of their accounts since these places can AND WILL be judge, jury and executioner against you....potentially even if you have done nothing wrong.



I think Lee, Jeff, or someone else from Stars support needs to respond.
There are 2 members of Stars support who are semi-regular 2+2 posters (Ro-me-ro and Sciolist) and obviously Lee has posted around here on occasion as well.

I can't imagine they don't know this thread is here.


Stars - this is something that is happening at your site that is VERY troubling to me. You guys are being accused of something here and an explanation in these forums would be appreciated.
If some random player can be incorrectly found to be doing something wrong then how can I trust you won't make the same mistake with my play?? (can I at least consider myself safe if I don't multi the nano-limit games?? thanks)

[BrianChina]

If your mom has activated the 'save instant hand histories' you should get her to send you all the files in the directory. Obviously the 43 hour session will be in one of the files.

Even if she hasn't, hopefully those other log files still exist. I was just looking at my own PokerStars.log.1 file and there is a clear record, date and time stamped, for every hand played. Below, is the last hand from a tournament I played yesterday which I've compared to my PT playback. If you can take a look at this log that PS seemed so interested in and compare the starting date time stamp and the date time stamp at the end, you may be able to identify when this mysterious 43 hour session actually took place. It may turn out to be another contributing piece to solve this puzzle.

Some things to help you. CardFactory::newFace looks to be my cards and the community cards. My last hand hole cards were Kh and 10d and so it looks like the log codes it is such that 13h = King of hearts. I've seen this type of nomenclature in some casino games (not poker). 14 therefore = A, 12 = Q, J = 11.


[2006/04/18 21:43:28]
OnAnimAddPot 6
hideAllChipsMoveDown()
deleteAllChipsMove()
hideAllPotUp 0
deleteAllPot 0
CardFactory::newFace( 13h )
CardFactory::newFace( 10d )

[teddyFBI]

UPDATE: I had been all set to sit down and post a detailed recap of everything I learned last night via a one hour long 2:30am phone conversation with my mom, and the full array of emails that she forwarded to me (why she felt them unimportant to send at first I'm not quite sure), when I received the following email:

__________________________________________________ __
<font color="blue">Hi –
The issue involving your mother’s account (“xyz”) has been escalated to the top management at PokerStars. We are doing a complete and detailed review of the case. Once it’s completed, one of the directors of the company will be in touch with your mother. This may take a day or two and we appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Best regards,
Lee Jones
PokerStars Poker Room Manager
_________________________________
</font>


As such (and sorry to disappoint soap opera fans), I will not be making any more substantive posts in this thread until they complete their investigation. In fact, I had already been worrying that by "outing" this whole chain of events, I would have made it hard for anybody from Stars to actually admit that a mistake had been made. I did not want to make a huge production out of this -- I would have rather kept everything on the D/L, but became very frustrated with their unwillingness to even CONSIDER that a mistake had been made. At every turn, I have tried to make clear that I have always held Stars out to be the most reputable poker site out there (although that accolade looks more and more akin to being the tallest midget in the circus). Mom even emailed me this morning to suggest that given Jeff's role as security supervisor, and his steadfast insistence that something improper happened, he might even have an incentive to forge evidence if he now had to explain himself to the highest possible honcho's. I tried to assure her that I wouldn't be too concerned (and even if I were concerned, what really could either of us do about it?).

Having heard what I have now heard, my confidence interval, following a format that others hear have used, is something like {98% Stars error, 2% trojan/virus}. But at the end of the day, my mother's long-winded yet eloquent post to me earlier in this thread sums everything up best. This isn't about some 55-year old's right to play the nano-limits (by the way, one of Jeff's other emails alluded to this and he said that one of the "damning" pieces of evidence was that no one at Stars could possibly understand why anyone would play so many hours <font color="red">(quoting directly from his email) "in games where even a phenomenal win rate at each and every one of the eight tables wouldn't be worth a human's time." </font> To be fair, he also claims there was other damning evidence but the judgmental nature of that language stunned me -- it's essentially saying 'you must be a bot because no one who values life would spend that much time playing the nanolimits.' Granted that opinion is still based on his assumption that she had SEVERAL 43-hour sessions (yes, his email said she had done it SEVERAL times) this month alone. It is those alleged 43-hour sessions that I did my best to direct Lee's attention to, and hopefully what they are reviewing as we speak.

But I digress: the most cogent advice given in this thread was probably my mom's email that I copied that simply gave (from a relative novice's point of view) an eloquent dissertation on the dangers we all face as online poker players. So I now wait with baited breath. This is the stage I have been trying to reach for the last 48 hours, and here we are.