To the Multi-Accounters : some thoughts before this upcoming Sunday

[Kyle Flynn]

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here's my brilliant idea to crack down on multiaccounting/cheating in general. Have stars offer a monetary reward for successfully reporting/identifying cheaters. my idea would to make the reward X% of the money confiscated, similar to the IRS's system for helping with tax evaders. since people like Jeff think there is some kind of value to not reporting their friends for cheating, pay then to come out with some names.

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Brilliant

[Double Ice]

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I don't see how you can't understand that no one wants to rat out their friends.

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That's easy. I would not be friends with someone that I know is cheating me and others out of equity.

An analogy. You, Jeff, and I are out for drinks in Vegas and we are all very good friends. I am pretty drunk, and somehow express that I have "5 or 10k" in my jacket pocket. I go off to the bathroom and leave my jacket, and you observe Jeff wink at you and take $1k out of my jacket pocket. Do you look the other way and then post a vague threat on a bulletin board or do you confront the guy?

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No, but what Jeff basically did in OP is akin to me saying "give it back, or I'll tell" in that hypothetical.

Now say that you, your brother, and I were in the scenario you described, and I left. *hypothetically* your brother takes $1k. You tell him to give it back, or you will tell. He gives it back and you never tell me about it. Is that okay? I think so. And thats what people want to do: make things better, without conflict. It's also what I meant by "... rat out friends"; why do you need to tell me about your brother, if I am not going to be harmed in the future because of his action? You don't.

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This is not what Jeff is doing. He is saying, "stop it or someone else might rat you out." He was pretty explicit that this is the end of his action in relation to this issue. He will not be naming any names to anyone.

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Okay, I'll be the first to say I really don't give a [censored] what Jeff's friends do or what Jeff wants to do/not do about it. Yes I understand that they reduce other people's equities (including possibly mine) in the tournament. But as I said in another diatribe post, things will be the way they will be. If no one wants to rat out their buddy, then I'm not going to lose sleep over lost equity in a tournament.

Firstly, if no one wants to speak up, then nothing is going to happen. Also, these first two paragraphs don't imply that I somehow "command them" or will shun them if they don't speak up. It's completely up to them if they want to speak up or not. Just like if they are professional thieves, it is not my business to command them to start playing by the rules, even if they could steal from me and it would be in my interest for them to not steal from me. Of course I want the weekly tournaments to have a higher % of fish playing. But if I don't know who they are, and no one wants to speak up (profit/friendship motivation); OR it is "within the rules" (which idiot-staking is), then I am SOL anyways. I move on and you should too.

Even if we had a list of players that were making 0.5M+ a year from online MTTs and 100% sure they were multi-accounting right now, and we shunned them all, I don't think much-anything would happen. This practice would still continue, just on the quiet. And stars can't do anything because its impossible to enforce.

And lets not isolate this to just Jeff's friends maccounting, the way that people isolated a problem of maccounting to ZJ. I would say atleast 10% of most $100+ tourneys online are secondary accounts. By secondary account, I mean either a multi-account, or an "idiot-stakee." Of course I am talking out of my ass and have no basis to make that claim. But that is my claim.

And as I said before, people have to take a good hard look and decide on their positions on the following issues, in order of perceived threat to their equities:

1) Playing multiple accounts
2) Staking bad players to play accounts for you, and then taking over when they are deep
3) Changing your account name (but still using just one account) to get unwanted high-stakes action you would have not received under the original name.
4) Staking good players that you may see on your same table, and have a vested interest in soft-playing them (not just blatant soft-playing which is enforcable, but marginal soft-playing)
5) Breaking the 'one player to a hand' "rule" that is not a TOS rule on most/all sites

And as I said before, this will happen with time, people's opinions will get stronger. But lets face the facts. Poker is a fierce competition over taking money from fish. There are no rules or ethics. Some players, such as Barry G, or even some players (say in HSNL/HSMTT), will have a good reputation. Some will act ethically. Some won't. Is it ethical to play against a fish that thinks he has a 0% ROI but really has a -50% ROI? Who cares. It doesn't matter and will never matter on the tables.

The obscene amounts of money that people here have made (and lost) on the tables comes because (besides "entertainment players") most-everyone thinks they have an edge. Some do, some don't. It's completely another person's decision to play. You don't have to play if you think the game is crooked. You don't have to play if you think you can't beat the game straight up.

There's a well known practice called neo-cheating. It refers to cheating by culling aces while shuffling. It's possible to detect, but impossible to prove because all the "moves" happen during the shuffle and pickup. This reminds me of the situation at hand. Your playing a 5 handed game with 3 fish and a neocheater. You can't push him out of the game or call him out, because you can't prove he's not breaking the rules, even if you know he is. Your only options are to play if you think you have an edge, or leave. Worse, if you call him out during the game, the fish may get uncomfortable and leave. Just like this situation now. When ActionJeff made this public, he only served to drive out (relative?) fish (as you see from their posts ITT now.)

Again, let me make that last point clear. The only thing this thread did was to (possibly) drive some small number of fish away from popular (and fishy) games. Everything else is unchanged. As it should be, atleast for the right-now.

dice

[ianisakson]

good post D Ice, but I think you're being a bit too pessimistic about the situation. Instead of saying "there is nothing we can do about it" we need to ask ourselves what can we do about it, how can we stop multiaccounters and other cheaters without scaring off the fish? When you're playing with a live fish at a casino and the inevitable Internet poker conversation gets started up and the live fish says, "oh that online crap is rigged and people cheat" don't you want to be able to tell them they can feel safe playing online? I think the best way to save the integrity of the game is to work WITH the site's support teams in finding and reviewing possible violators without feeling like you're scaring people off.

[Double Ice]

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1) Playing multiple accounts
2) Staking bad players to play accounts for you, and then taking over when they are deep
3) Changing your account name (but still using just one account) to get unwanted high-stakes action you would have not received under the original name.
4) Staking good players that you may see on your same table, and have a vested interest in soft-playing them (not just blatant soft-playing which is enforcable, but marginal soft-playing)
5) Breaking the 'one player to a hand' "rule" that is not a TOS rule on most/all sites


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Also, let me introduce the following scale of 'ethical':

A - you'd let everyone you knew, know about it
B - you'd let only your friends and acquaintances know about it
C - you'd let only your friends know about it
D - you'd let only your closest friends about it
E - you'd let at most one person know about it
F - you'd never tell anyone, ever.

Right now in the poker world, (1) is like a D, (2) is like a C, (3) is like a B, (4) is like an A, (5) is like an A.

But as a threat to other peoples' equities, (1), (2), and (3) are all roughly equal $-wise, when employed in real life. (4) and (5) are also quite substantial, $-wise. Something to point out.

[Double Ice]

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good post D Ice, but I think you're being a bit too pessimistic about the situation. Instead of saying "there is nothing we can do about it" we need to ask ourselves what can we do about it, how can we stop multiaccounters and other cheaters without scaring off the fish? When you're playing with a live fish at a casino and the inevitable Internet poker conversation gets started up and the live fish says, "oh that online crap is rigged and people cheat" don't you want to be able to tell them they can feel safe playing online? I think the best way to save the integrity of the game is to work WITH the site's support teams in finding and reviewing possible violators without feeling like you're scaring people off.

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Oh cmon, this is BS. The <u>truth</u> is that there is nothing Stars can do about maccounting, because there is practically no difference between that and the "lawful" activity of idiot-staking. Noone is cheating here. They just want to play a tournament multiple times. And it can never be stopped because there is no difference between you playing a tournament 5 times, and 5 different people playing a tournament who play just like you.

Online games on major sites in general will be safe regarding the handling of money always. The best way to not scare fish off is to never discuss this issue in this context. This issue is isolated, because only the very top players will ever want to consider maccounting, and by the nature of poker tournaments, only the top &lt; 1% of players or so can ever be "top players" (not everyone can have huge ROIs.)

The best solution, as I said, is for "business as usual." No discussion here can change the landscape of online poker, regarding maccounting. No one is motivated to stop, and no one can be caught.

[BrookTrout]

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Again, let me make that last point clear. The only thing this thread did was to (possibly) drive some small number of fish away from popular (and fishy) games. Everything else is unchanged. As it should be, atleast for the right-now.

dice

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Just thought I'd register to agree with this statement. As a fish of the first degree, any Sunday entries I luckbox my way into via satellites will be taken as T$'s - I'd much rather lose my money to fellow donks at a $10 SnG than a cabal of high-stakes poker players/cheaters.

This might be viewed as uneducated or knee-jerk reaction... but hey, that's why I'm a fish.

[adanthar]

btw to un-derail this thread a little more, I don't think anyone out there really 'stakes idiots' the way that this thread is throwing that term around, if only because there are plenty of good players with terrible BR management around to stake instead (and besides, who wants to micromanage 16 horses and their annoying "do I 3 bet 88 here" questions in one sunday anyway?)

now, AIM chat is another story. everyone chats on AIM (or skype/teamspeak/poker house). some of us do it 10 seconds after a hand instead of immediately during, but in the end, there probably isn't much of a difference because for most people, even well intentioned, good advice just makes decisions harder to make. (also, a bunch of it just doesn't work. nath telling me to call or fold on some street is dependent on his own table image as opposed to mine, so you can imagine the ranges involved are a little different.)

[Rekwob]

agree with adanthar, like how there were rumours going round that zeejustin eats babies at pca, theres a little bit too much scaremongering from people who've not been in this situation at all

multiaccounters arent going to stop and suddenly the sunday million is going to struggle to break its guarantee

[uclabruinz]

I do not understand this "there's nothing we can do about multiaccounters so get over it" mentality at all, unless the people who are advocating this position are multiaccounters themselves. It's quite clear something could be done about it. Jeff is aware of some real names, and their account names. He could give this information to Stars and they could take the appropriate action.

It's not that nothing can be done, it's that people like Jeff are not ethical enough to do the right thing. He values his friendship with people he knows are thieving cheaters over doing what is obviously right to protect honest players and the integrity of the game.

[A_Junglen]

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I do not understand this "there's nothing we can do about multiaccounters so get over it" mentality at all, unless the people who are advocating this position are multiaccounters themselves. It's quite clear something could be done about it. Jeff is aware of some real names, and their account names. He could give this information to Stars and they could take the appropriate action.

It's not that nothing can be done, it's that people like Jeff are not ethical enough to do the right thing. He values his friendship with people he knows are thieving cheaters over doing what is obviously right to protect honest players and the integrity of the game.

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UCLA,

Multiaccounters have been outed before. What's stopping them from creating more accounts?

Nothing.

Stop making it sound like Jeff's a bad guy. He could name some multiaccounters right now and within a week they'd be back in action