Fulltilt froze my account with 47 grand in it

[runout_mick]

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But why should all of her money be confiscated if she only recently (if you believe the accusations) became a bot?

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because they specifically state if you [censored] with our TOS we will confiscate all of your monies. sillysal agreed to their policy when she played on ftp. its better that way, since there is no punishment for cheating in online poker, this is the maximum punishment, and it should be enforced.

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Say that it's found that she only recently stared playing as a bot, and only $20k needs to be refunded to cheated players. What happens to the other $27k? Party at the FT offices?

[edfurlong]

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refunded to cheated players

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lol

[Bobo Fett]

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But why should all of her money be confiscated if she only recently (if you believe the accusations) became a bot?

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because they specifically state if you [censored] with our TOS we will confiscate all of your monies. sillysal agreed to their policy when she played on ftp. its better that way, since there is no punishment for cheating in online poker, this is the maximum punishment, and it should be enforced.

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Say that it's found that she only recently stared playing as a bot, and only $20k needs to be refunded to cheated players. What happens to the other $27k? Party at the FT offices?

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I'd say chances of that are very very low. Let's say her "bot" winnings were only $5,000. This does NOT mean that only $5,000 will need to be refunded. In winning that $5,000, she will have won and lost many pots. For example, she may have lost $50,000 and won $55,000 to end up with that $5,000. Of course, FT will not be able to recover the $50,000 she lost, but they will need to pay back as much as they can of the $55,000 she won.

I have no idea what the actual ratio would be, but I'm pretty sure that most of us would find that our wins & losses to individual players in a given period would be several times our net wins (or losses). This is why when the refunds come out, players generally don't get as much back as they lost to the bot(s) in question.

[StellarWind]

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Otherwise on the topic - of course freezing account for so long is nonsense. Especially in bot detection. You either have evidence of automated play or not. You either have technical/statistical evidence of multiaccounting or not. What one needs to investigate for 20 days ?!


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One possible explanation is they used outside consultants to doublecheck their conclusions before formally announcing their findings. For example a mathematician to review the statistical significance of their comparison of player stats.

Or they decided to develop additional analysis software to look deeper into OP's hand histories. Writing software takes time.

I don't have the slightest problem with FTP taking their time. I'm sure they were virtually certain of her guilt as soon as they saw the basic stat comparison. So they froze her account and then spent three weeks triplechecking their conclusion. What would you have them do? Let the bot keep playing for another three weeks? Or skip the three weeks and just take her money immediately without making the effort to be absolutely sure?

If after three weeks they unexpectedly realize they've pulled a TeddyFBI's Mom then they apologize profusely and give her a nice bonus as compensation.

It's not perfect but all the other ways of handling the situation are worse.

[indianaV8]

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Otherwise on the topic - of course freezing account for so long is nonsense. Especially in bot detection. You either have evidence of automated play or not. You either have technical/statistical evidence of multiaccounting or not. What one needs to investigate for 20 days ?!


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One possible explanation is they used outside consultants to doublecheck their conclusions before formally announcing their findings. For example a mathematician to review the statistical significance of their comparison of player stats.

Or they decided to develop additional analysis software to look deeper into OP's hand histories. Writing software takes time.

I don't have the slightest problem with FTP taking their time. I'm sure they were virtually certain of her guilt as soon as they saw the basic stat comparison. So they froze her account and then spent three weeks triplechecking their conclusion. What would you have them do? Let the bot keep playing for another three weeks? Or skip the three weeks and just take her money immediately without making the effort to be absolutely sure?

If after three weeks they unexpectedly realize they've pulled a TeddyFBI's Mom then they apologize profusely and give her a nice bonus as compensation.

It's not perfect but all the other ways of handling the situation are worse.

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If we assume that they are developing now, or radically refining their methods with every next multiaccounting case, then it can take such long interval of time.

My point was that I don't think the mathematics behind detecting multiaccounting based on statistics is so complex, and if you have the methods for that, then you don't need weeks for that, it is basically an instant review of logs and data (it is the same for botting, simply the data there is different, and as I said, botting is no issue one should bother).

I agree that they can take time in the case when their investigation are already conclusive, and their decision is basically to close the account, but they first freeze it for few weeks just in case. I disagree (if that was ever in question) that they can take such amount of time for routine investigation, or for something that will produce false positives sometimes.

[El_Hombre_Grande]

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Silly Sal has been playing for about 2 years. Just recently she was accused of being a bot. All account monies are confiscated. Shouldn't they just confiscate the money since she became a bot, since with their sophisticated software system they will know exactly when this began.

I'm not saying she is innocent or guilty--I really don't care. But why should all of her money be confiscated if she only recently (if you believe the accusations) became a bot?

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They may have flubbed up the process here, but once they find a bot user I think we can all agree that the enire account should be seized. The bulk should be used to compensate defrauded players. If there is an excess (and I think this will be unusual) I have no problem with FT using this to defray the costs of implementing bot detection software and defraying the costs of providing a legitimate and fundementally sound fact finding process.

[Johny Poker]

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BTW, I am 99 percent certain pokergirl is actually a guy. He might have his girlfriend post here, but the owner of the account is definately male.

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I know who Sillysal is and I can assure you she is not a guy. I spoke to her by phone soon after this happened and my impression was that she was likely innocent, perhaps I was fooled. I only say that because of the info that has since come out, I still remain unconvinced because they posted some stats that are close to other players stats. I want more evidence to feel confident. Don't bother asking me who she is because I will never tell, her identity was given and will remain confidential with me. If she is innocent as she claims I feel sincerely sorry for her. I believe that having a site be able to decide this without oversite is not acceptable and I have quit FTP (full disclosure, I also quit cause they won't give me rakeback). I feel much better now playing at Stars.

Also, what if there was no botting involved but instead just multiple accounts? I have heard that a ton of people get their wives to sign up to get RB, so if 1 person plays 2 accounts, won't the stats be real close? She did not tell me anything like this, I am just wondering based on the posts saying the accounts are the same person. Is multi accounting reason to confiscate 47K? If so they could probably confiscate half the $$ on the site, yes?

[Bobo Fett]

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I want more evidence to feel confident.

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Meh...I think we all would, but it's really not incumbent on FT to provide us with evidence. It's their obligation to provide OP with some sort of evidence and an opportunity to argue her side of it. If they can't do that, and they don't want her playing on their site, they should close down her account and return her money, IMO.

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Also, what if there was no botting involved but instead just multiple accounts? I have heard that a ton of people get their wives to sign up to get RB, so if 1 person plays 2 accounts, won't the stats be real close? She did not tell me anything like this, I am just wondering based on the posts saying the accounts are the same person. Is multi accounting reason to confiscate 47K? If so they could probably confiscate half the $$ on the site, yes?

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I believe some of the accounts they are accusing her of having similar stats to are previously "convicted" bots, like BeatMe1. FT has never said this was about multi-accounting, I think it's pretty clear that botting is their charge.

[StellarWind]

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Also, what if there was no botting involved but instead just multiple accounts? I have heard that a ton of people get their wives to sign up to get RB, so if 1 person plays 2 accounts, won't the stats be real close? She did not tell me anything like this, I am just wondering based on the posts saying the accounts are the same person.

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People who get a new account for rakeback generally don't keep playing thousands of hands on both the new and old accounts. As a high-limit HU specialist, multiaccounting to disguise her identity from the fish is a much more realistic explanation.

But why wouldn't she have confessed to multiaccounting by now? They would never keep her money for that and probably she wouldn't even be banned from the site.

[Dan Druff]

Time for me to chime in a bit on this one. I think I may be able to clear some things up.

First off, I know who sillysal is. She's approximately 40 years old, white, and lives in the greater Los Angeles area (I think Toluca Lake). I have never seen her at Commerce or any of the other area poker rooms. She seems to play exclusively heads-up Limit Hold 'Em, and has done so for several years. She represented "Team Poker Room" at the WSOP by winning a seat on pokerroom.com in 2006. You can see a picture of her by going to the following URL:

http://www.pokerroom.com/newsroom/ph...es/photos.html

Click on WSOP 2006 Part I, and then go to pictures 51-53. I think there are a few others in there of her, as well.

She played on Pokerroom as "Jonesen" and "pokergirl z". She may have had a few other names, but those are the two I remember. There were no suspicions of her being a bot at the time.

However, one interesting (and perhaps suspicious) coincidence is that redgar3 was also a player on Pokerroom. redgar3 was the same person as BeatMe1 on Full Tilt (this has been verified). The similarities don't end there. When BeatMe1 got shut down for botting, the owner of that account showed up on 2+2 and claimed to be a woman named "Lisa". That makes two female heads up specialists, both of whom played at Pokerroom, both of whom got shut down on Full Tilt for allegedly using bots.

I have been around the Limit Hold 'Em high limit scene for over 5 years now. There are very few female heads-up specialists. I'm not saying that there aren't any, because that would be inaccurate. However, they are few and far between. Yet both of these suspected botters are female and originated from Pokerroom. In addition, neither has ever been seen playing Limit Hold 'Em in live card rooms.

Now, it might seem from the above that I am leaning towards the belief that sillysal was guilty of botting. However, while I am still undecided on the issue, I must also point out the following in her favor:

1) I have played with her before on several sites, as have a number of my friends. All of us have observed her to be an emotional player who is tilt-prone. That is not consistent with the play of a bot.

2) While her play on Full Tilt was better (and less tilty) than her play on Pokerroom and elsewhere, we observed a similar style of play in all cases. This would speak against a switch to botting at some point, as her style would noticeably change.

3) She would almost always chat if you attempted to talk to her. Again, this speaks against a bot, unless she happened to be at the keyboard every time it played.


Now, I suppose it's very possible she was using some sort of helper software -- or what I like to call a semi-bot. That is, she may have had a tool telling her what to do, but leaving the ultimate decisions and control up to her. I find it unlikely that she had a fully automated bot running the show, though I suppose anything is possible. It is also quite possible that she was not using ANY helper software, and that Full Tilt is completely full of crap.

One other factor that could possibly point to sillysal's usage of a bot/semi-bot involves her playstyle itself. I noticed that her biggest leak was her inability to make laydowns. For example, it was just about impossible to bet her off ace high or any low pair, no matter how terrible the board was for such a hand. It was also rather difficult to bet her off king high. This did make her frustrating to play against to some degree, as it was quite difficult to bluff her, and you would essentially have to check/call or check/fold when failing to make a pair. However, it would allow you to get good value out of your mediocre hands. This is a characteristic I have observed in bot opponents (such as the Poki Poker software) I have played against. They tend to stubbornly refuse to fold when most humans would.

sillysal would also tend to quit if running bad. This is good practice if you're human (i.e. avoiding tilt), but pointless if you're a bot. This is yet another reason why I believe that -- at the very least -- a human was at the physical controls the entire time.

My conclusions:

1) Sillysal is a real female who has been playing heads-up Limit Hold 'Em online for at least a few years.

2) I find it unlikely that a bot was playing on the pokergirl z account unattended.

3) I find it possible, but not conclusive or even likely, that BeatMe1 and Sillysal/pokergirl are associated. However, I don't believe them to be the same person. If they are indeed associated in some way, the chance of Sillysal's guilt is extremely high.

4) From what I know of Sillysal, she is not highly technically competent and is unlikely to be datamining. I do not believe her and Tetrahedron to be the same person. Furthermore, if she did use bots/semi-bots, I do not believe she has the ability to program them herself.

5) The fact that someone from the Los Angeles area has never (to my knowledge) been seen at the live Commerce games makes the likelihood of botting higher. In addition, she will not play any other game than heads up -- a form of poker proven to be favored by bots. However, I know several longtime online pros from L.A. and Vegas who have also never played live.

6) There are two possibilities on how Full Tilt judged her to be guilty. The first involves taking user complaints about her and compiling circumstantial evidence against her that would appear to incriminate her, but in reality produces highly erroneous false positives. The second involves using means that would potentially be considered privacy violations, but can give a much more accurate picture as to what was really going on. For example, Full Tilt's software could monitor other processes running or take occasional screen shots. Either of these could provide the smoking-gun proof of botting, but they would be hesitant to cite such specific evidence, as a separate scandal involving privacy violation would arise. In either case, it is to Full Tilt's advantage to simply shut down the account and refuse to release details. This, unfortunately, gives us little insight as to how guilty Sillysal and other alleged bots actually were. Barring further information, we will never know the truth.

Bottom line: I am leaning toward her innocence, but I still believe it could go either way on this one.