ZeeJustin the next to get caught multi accounting Party MTTs

[DVaut1]

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I'm going to say it again because I really feel this way.

The people here who play casually and want every red flag to be raised for them are just seeking a dead end. I am amazed that you guys are so shocked that rampant cheating goes on at the highest levels where the MOST money is on the line. Maybe actually being a poker pro and having lived in Vegas for a time has tainted me that much.

You have to watch your own back, you can't expect the world to just put it out there for you every time. Having some sort of watchdog thing will be completely ineffective because a) it would be ridiculous work for lloyd or whoever b) the information would stop reaching anyone who would report it to lloyd c) the attempts at cheating are never going to cease.

For a long time my attitude whenever I have sat in any poker game anywhere is that I am being cheated until I prove otherwise. It's just that simple, there are tons of people who will do anything when the price is right.

Perrier

P.S. I am not even going to respond to people who think this post is sympathetic towards the cheaters or condones moderate cheating or anything else ridiculous that one might incorrectly extrapolate from it.

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I certainly feel stupid volunteering Lloyd or anyone at 2+2 to become the de facto monitor of all online cheating; but it seems as if there are some who knew mutli-accounting was happening, felt it was ethically wrong, and wanted someplace to air their concerns, but couldn't because of the pressure among their peers. Again, maybe I'm wrong. But I think it's valuable to find outlets for those people to express their concerns, should such people want to do so, but can't because of various pressures. I suppose gimmick accounts would work just as well, but then the skeptical among us would accuse otherwise honest accounts of cheating as mere paranoia that's the result of a bad beat, hence the need for an objective, trusted party to fill such a role.

I fully recant my proposed recommendation of alerting Lloyd or anyone at 2+2 of cheating.

[Blarg]

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I don't really get this one bit. I guess it's all about personality types, but good grief, we KNOW Justin is a world-class player, and his 'ZeeJustin' account results prove it. I mean honestly, the ZeeJustin account has had big wins on both Stars and Party. His ROI is ridiculously high, and he is making thousands of dollars a month, maybe more, playing poker, and he's what 19? 20?

If this isn't enough for him then that's really quite sad. Justin, you are prestigious, have your whole life ahead of you, are in the top 5 percentile of incomes for your age, such a bright future in poker, and you still feel the need to cheat. I think this says a lot about you.

Justin, your priorities are definitely in the wrong place. I mean, I can't say I looked up to you per se, but I was really impressed with your skills and your dedication to playing such fantastic poker so consistently. You've shown yourself to have an ego in different posts, but I would imagine I'd have an ego if I was as good as you too.

If we as poker players start caring about money more than the game, we become more than just poker players... we become a slave to the money, and I guess it makes us do things like this.

I do feel bad for those who feel that they have to cheat to get ahead in life, because it's those whose lives are actually quite empty.

Brad

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First off, ZeeJustin is not a world-class player. He's a great online player, and that by virtue of his talent in one specific area of online play (STTs and MTTs).

I agree, though, that it's a shame that the raw pursuit of money causes people to act unethically, but I think that's what it comes down to.

When the El Capitano scandal broke several months back, I felt I had to consider the nature of multi-playering and decide that either a) it's cheating or b) something i need to start doing myself.

I talked to many players about the practice of multiplayering and was quite surprised that most people didn't consider it blatant cheating, but rather some ambiguous ethical issue, where the people who were doing the multiple-accounting weren't perceived to be doing anything too wrong. For months, people told me that it's all normal, that the brave new world of online poker is one without ethics or boundaries. Although I never would try to regulate anyone else's sense of ethics, and I'd never drop a dime on anyone, I am secretly relieved that multiplayering has been clearly identified as a non-ambiguous method of cheating.

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There was never any doubt. What you are talking about was transparent self-justification.

[curtains]

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shaniac,

I only play a couple tourneys a year so it really doesn't affect me. But your refusal to out known cheaters is somewhat of a cheat by you since you know when to be leary of such a multiple presence on a table but other 2+2'ers here don't. So you benefit by that knowlege and refuse the benefit of it to them, as well as the benefit of stopping it.

Plus most importantly, your inaction is what enables those cheaters to continue cheating and damage the reputation of online poker for integrity that we all depend upon to garner a stream of newer players.

Shame on you for your cowardice.

And note that I am not condemning the practice of multiple accounts for the purpose of masking one's play from dataminers when such a person with same never attempts to login on more than one account at a time and play.

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How many people do you know that smoke pot or do any type of drugs. Doing that is actually against the law. How many of you are going to call the police and alert them to the fact that these people are doing drugs?

Many arguments can be made for snitching on these people. You can say that the usage and purchase of illegal drugs indirectly leads to the deaths of many innocent people when those drug abusers drive while under the influence or while there is a drug related shooting that harms an innocent bystander. Yet you know what, I bet everyone whom is part of this thread knows at least one person who does something against the actual law of whatever country they are living in, and yet sits by and does nothing about it. (by no means am I suggesting that you should actually do this, just an example)

btw I personally would turn someone in if I knew they were still cheating. If I knew that they maybe did this multiaccounting thing one or two times and realized that they were wrong, and made no serious profit while doing so, then I probably wouldn't say anything, as long as I was under the belief that they wouldn't do it in the future.

This is not a black and white issue and everyone who is making it sound like it was, is really closed minded IMO.

Also everyone keeps implying that I have known about ZJ for a long period of time. I haven't. It's been a very short period of time, yet it was before this thread became public.

[shaniac]

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Pretty much the only difference is that I knew I was taking it up the as$s, because of people doing this, or figured I was, and you didn't.

Not sure what private forum you allude to (I participate in none) but I am friends with a lot of people in the poker world, am trusted by a wide range of them, and don't consider it my place to police their ethics, or their practices.

Every bit of my gut told me this was wrong--and I never did it myself for this reason, or maybe it's because I, personally, am too lazy to confront the hassle of withdrawing money through Party Poker on a fake account--but I was convinced by people who are generally smarter and more adept at poker thinking than I am, that this was acceptable, not really cheating and just part of the new ehtical poker landscape that online ushered in. I'm easily influenced in that way--not to participate in the mayhem, but to accept it as reality.

In any case, I'm not going to be the one to inform on my friends, regardless of what they did or how wrong I may have determined it to be. Everyone has his own ethical boundaries to create and confront, their own morals to establish, and I would feel more disingenuous informing on people who trust me than the cheaters themselves are.

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Yeah, I understand, but I have to imagine that your friends who cheat are not only giving it to you up the ass in the short term (by unfairly using multi-accounts), but they do much to intimidate fishes like me who now question the integrity of the games they WERE gleefully pouring their money into (and which you, as one of the very skilled players, was reaping the benefits from).

Does ZJ and JJ being outed for multi-accounting mean doom and gloom for online poker? Probably not. But I suspect that continued cheating like this (if it continues) could eventually be a threat to your profession. It sounds like the allegiance you’re granting to your unethical peers by remaining silent could eventually cost much – and I can’t imagine it’s worth the price. I have absolutely no serious empirical evidence, and am relying very much on anecdotal evidence, but I think fear (that is, fear of being cheated) keeps many would-be players aware from the tables, especially online, where paranoia and innuendo already runs rampant.

But I have friends and family, and like you said, breaking their trust by outing them as cheaters is exceedingly difficult, and I wouldn't seriously expect many to do it. But I think it's probably the wrong decision in the end, borne out of our own fears of being black-listed among those whose opinions we value. So I hope this doesn't come off as grandstanding, because I assume I would behave exactly as you have if I were in a similar situation.

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I said right from the beginning of the JJP scandal that the biggest problem to result from this is that people will assume online poker is universally corrupt, an insider-y environment (like the stock market) where people feel they have to employ every available edge/scheme in order to competer on an even playing field.


We feel largely the same way about it. The difference is that I knew about it and you didn't. Other people seem to think my ethical issue is that I knew about it and didn't inform on people. Maybe they are right.

[pokerstudAA]

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Shane, if you want to start keeping track, you can add me to the list of people who don't respect you as much as they did before they learned that you know who multi-accounts while refusing to say anything.

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Ditto. Game integrity is all-important when you this is your livlihood. You, of all people Shane(Shaniac), should know and understand this.

[whiskeytown]

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And his guiding principles seem to be gems like: "Most of us are too greedy to pass up money that easy."

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My favorite is the whole "Well, I didn't start multiple accounts to cheat, so I'm merely unethical, and not a cheater when I used those accounts to cheat later"

I have a pretty strong moral compass - I consider it a basic extension of the Golden Rule - and I will admit I'm not as good a player as ZeeJustin, but I have honor and I can hold my head up high and say I've never cheated at poker -

and that's worth a lot more then the 100K they took from him and JJprodigy. It's worth over 100K to me anyways.

They just don't get it - but then if their honor and the integrity of the game is worth nothing to them, the money won't hurt too badly either, I suspect.

RB

[BluffTHIS!]

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But I'm not sure what world you live in where someone reveals a secret to you in confidence, you tell them you disagree with it, then turn around and drop a dime.

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So if someone revealed in confidence he had robbed a bank and killed someone in the process, you would just argue that was wrong but not squeal right? Or would you since violence was done but not otherwise? Or what about if he had stolen a poor lady's monthly social security check?

Are you sure it isn't cowardice or even corruption for you to be known as someone in whom cheats and crooks can confide without fear of being turned in? What a guy!

[tagteam]

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Pretty much the only difference is that I knew I was taking it up the as$s, because of people doing this, or figured I was, and you didn't.

Not sure what private forum you allude to (I participate in none) but I am friends with a lot of people in the poker world, am trusted by a wide range of them, and don't consider it my place to police their ethics, or their practices.

Every bit of my gut told me this was wrong--and I never did it myself for this reason, or maybe it's because I, personally, am too lazy to confront the hassle of withdrawing money through Party Poker on a fake account--but I was convinced by people who are generally smarter and more adept at poker thinking than I am, that this was acceptable, not really cheating and just part of the new ehtical poker landscape that online ushered in. I'm easily influenced in that way--not to participate in the mayhem, but to accept it as reality.

In any case, I'm not going to be the one to inform on my friends, regardless of what they did or how wrong I may have determined it to be. Everyone has his own ethical boundaries to create and confront, their own morals to establish, and I would feel more disingenuous informing on people who trust me than the cheaters themselves are.

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Without naming names, why don't you give some statistics on your knowledge of this? Of your contacts, how many cheat like this (%)? How many accounts do they use? What are their results?

[Lori]

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We feel largely the same way about it. The difference is that I knew about it and you didn't. Other people seem to think my ethical issue is that I knew about it and didn't inform on people. Maybe they are right.

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If you were the sort of person who was going to inform on people, you wouldn't know about any cheating because nobody would tell you about it.

To expect you to suddenly change personality is unfair.

Lori

[TomBrooks]

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btw for what its worth, if you know someone has cheated to win a signfigant amount of money, or if you know they are still cheating, I believe that it is somewhat unethical to remain silent about it, however its all really murky and in most cases wouldn't change my opinion on someone.

People have strong beliefs on snitching, and I don't feel qualified to make a blanket statement on when snitching is right and when its wrong.

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Judge not, lest ye be judged.