[Apanage]

If in case you´re not a Full Tilt employee or a experienced poster who wants to call people names undercover I have retrieved TeddyFBI Mom:s e-mail to his son made after she was FALSELY accused of being a bot.

Maybe even you and your fellow companions can see the light when reading that mail.

"VERY LASTLY, AND ALTHOUGH THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ISSUE AT HAND, I THOUGHT I WOULD POST A SUBSEQUENT EMAIL SHE WROTE TO ME PERSONALLY, WHICH IF NOTHING ELSE IS ELOQUENTLY WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATES WHERE HER HEAD'S AT NOW:

It is possible that Jeff wrote Lee's last email to me. Some of the words and language are the same, and there is no "independent interest" taken by Lee. As you say, why should he care? He just gave the impression of caring, which lured me in to spending more time explaining.

Here is what concerns me now the most. I have seen the dark side of the highhandedness and control exercised by the "best-reputed" poker site, outside the boundaries of any country law or recourse for complaint (no board of directors, no public shareholders, not even a telephone number to make human contact). They can confiscate your funds at will. I have actually become concerned for you about this. I urge you not to keep large amounts of money on any site. It is disturbing if your livelihood depends on faith in faceless internet communications. Even if you continue to make money at a decent rate, you should not build a career on this. I went along assuming "they are a big company, they would always act reasonably." Now I have discovered that the president of the "best-reputed" poker site turns out not to be concerned about fundamental issues of integrity. He was impervious to the most blatant evidence that his security guy probably overstepped his enthusiasm on this one. Of course 5 cent players aren't important to the company, but what should have been important to Lee was building knowledge about the strengths and fallibilities of his security systems. The power he has left in Jeff's hands to be arbitrary and pig-headed should be frightening to anyone who thinks, "if I follow the rules, then I can always work things out." Even moreso should you be concerned about their ability to push a button and poof your funds are gone. This is not just PokerStars but any of the sites.

Another angle I have on this is corporate governance breaches like Enron, etc.. There is an alarming discovery that "hey the big guys can't always be trusted." Fortunately, corporate governance principles and laws have rushed in to control their arrogant mismanagement of shareholder funds. Having just been through a course on corporate governance, I have become educated about the huge gap between our assumptions that people will act reasonably, and the facts of human nature when left unbridled by law. Without being subjected to any corporate governance, companies like PokerStars make their customers vulnerable to all the risks of manager fallibilities.

Bottom line: I am not telling you to give up Poker. But I do encourage you not to assume anything about the integrity and reasonableness of people you don't know and can't talk to. Keep the money moving out. As you have already observed, Netteller is a step up because of their public listing. Also, if Poker is going to be any part of your career, build your career on your ability to exercise leadership and intellectual strength, not on confidence in someone else's "systems" that seem to be reliable from experience. Past reliability and trustworthiness of systems does not guarantee they will be that way tomorrow or in crisis, just as surely as yesterday's huge gains in the the electronic stock market provide no guarantee of what will happen tomorrow.

That is the best learning from this Twilight Zone experience with PokerStars that I can pass on to you. Don't mind--it's my job as a mum. Lots of luv."

Or as TeddyFBI says:



The real issue, of course, is not a 55-year old mom's ultimate vindication and ability to continue playing very low limit hold'em games. But rather it's the implications for serious players like myself who play high stakes poker at Stars, and those who post on the 2+2 boards, many of whom even make their living from online poker. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it scares us that one day we may find ourselves on the receiving end of a security investigation without having done anything wrong, and have a poker site act as judge, jury, and executioner, the only reason for which being an investigations team who has misinterpreted data and steadfastly refuses to re-examine it. In short, it's not this issue in isolation that calls for a response, but rather the broader implications for us, your loyal player base.