Mr. Gatorade’s Lies cost me over 70k at Full Tilt

[teddyFBI]

Sean, I am not weighing in on how I feel about the principal players in this drama, but I'm going to give you a quick historical anecdote about being "absolutely certain" about bots, which comes from your biggest rivals, PokerStars. You might not have been around to witness this drama but in short, it involved PokerStars closing my mother's account under the ERRONEOUS belief that she was running a bot. They later recanted and apologized profusely both privately to her and publicly on this forum.

But the point I'm trying to make is one about humility and 'certainty' -- I went through my email client and dug up the emails that Stars sent to my mom that discuss how *certain* they were that she was using a bot. Here's a selection.
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From the Stars security manager Jeff:

" There are several other factors in your logs and regarding your account that are also suspicious -- it isn't just your level and frequency of play. Unfortunately, I cannot detail for you exactly what it is we look for to make this determination. We have no desire to educate bot authors and operators in what needs to be done to avoid detection. Suffice to say that our judgement that you're operating a bot comes from multiple vectors. The decision was reviewed by two experienced "bot hunters" and the judgement was unanimous in deciding this.

Another one from Jeff

I really hate to say this point blank, but your claim that you're not terribly technically savvy does not hold much water, given what we see in your account history. As I said, I'm not going to go into detail as to what we look at to make such a determination, but the things you're doing
are rather out of the ordinary, and highly indicative of non-human play. I'm afraid this decision is final. I would be happy to escalate it to someone like Lee Jones for review, but please believe me when I tell you these two things: It's just going to fall back on me, with such people trusting my judgement... and that the evidence I'd present to them is very damning.


And one from the big Kahuna, Lee Jones himself:

"Hello -
As you requested, Jeff escalated your case to me. In his email to you, Jeff said, in essence, "You're wasting your time because (1) my superiors will put the responsibility back on me, and (2) I will show them damning evidence." In almost three years at PokerStars, one thing that I have learned is that Jeff's judgment is as reliable as the tides. I could lay long odds that if Jeff says it's a bot, then it's a bot. But we didn't stop there. Jeff showed me the evidence, and it is, indeed, damning. You are using a bot, at least part of the time. I am persuaded of that beyond a reasonable doubt.
It is time to take your poker business elsewhere. I *strongly* encourage you to drop the bot and play manually all the time.
Best regards,
Lee Jones
PokerStars Poker Room Manager
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So why do I bring these up? Well, because fast-forward 2 wks after I helped draw attention to it all in these forums and both Lee and Jeff investigated further, realized an error had been made and were writing mea-culpa apology notes, both privately and publicly.
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e.g. a snippet from Jeff:

"A second apology is owed for my finding. Upon further review of your records, you are clearly not using a bot. Even I am convinced beyond any doubt of that now. I mis-read certain aspects of the evidence, notably regarding the 43 hour session of play -- I was looking for "sleep" breaks of 6 hours or more, rather than for non-stop play. I was also latching onto similarities between your playing behaviour and that of a particularly clear bot case of past (one in which the bot "plead guilty"). I failed to take into account some other, mitigating evidence as well. I made a less-than-thorough job of it. I expect a great deal better from myself, as does PokerStars. I apologize for the mishandling of the case."


And a snippet from Lee's email:

"I owe you an apology. After a thorough review, we are quite sure of what you've been sure of all along: that you're a human, not a bot. After Dan and you contacted me asking me to review Jeff's findings, I should have done a thorough investigation on my own, but I didn't. I could give you all kinds of excuses why I didn't do that, but they'd be just that - excuses. So I won't bother - I will just say "I'm sorry; I blew it." I do feel awful about this whole thing."
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What's the point of this all? It's only to remind you that *certainty* is a funny thing. In my mother's case, we had both Jeff, a highly-trained bothunting supervisor and Lee Jones swearing *beyond a reasonable doubt* that they were absolutely certain that my mom was using a bot. And guess what -- they were wrong.

Now I don't know about this BeatMe character, and what evidence you have that he's using a bot...but I only ask that you heed the lessons that readers of this forum have already seen and carefully consider any evidence to the contrary with an open mind. PokerStars Jeff's mistake was that once he latched onto the theory that my mom was a bot, he ignored any and all evidence to the contrary and only focused on the potentially damning stuff. So I urge you to do the same: I'm sure that you and BeatMe have had a colorful email exchange to this point, so if he has provided any evidence to you about why your findings might be wrong, all I ask is that you consider them with an open mind. I hate botters as much as anyone around, and am only too happy to see BeatMe lose $70K if he was indeed using a bot, but I urge you and whoever else is investiagting to be open-minded, and heed the lessons learned by the Stars bot-finding team. That is all.