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

[RIIT]

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... the biggest factor for customers is ... faith and trust in the site to be operated fairly ... sites should do everything they can to prove they are treating customers fairly ...

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Josem: I completely agree. However, "prove" is a strong word. In all fairness, there are at least two things that a site cannot prove to us:

a) unbiased shuffling - (i.e. they didn't tinker with the deck)
b) information containment - (i.e. they didn't hint any player)

As players, we are forced to place faith and trust in the site and just believe they are acting honorably (what other choice do we have?). Sites do best to not draw attention to these unprovable security issues and to constantly communicate their desire to be honest and fair in order to maintain a good measure of faith in the minds and hearts of the players.

When a site confiscates $70k from a player without full-disclosure, there is an impact on the players' attitude toward that site. Such an action places an even greater burden on the already overtaxed good will of the players. If FT keeps the evidence hidden then we need to add a third line item to the list of unprovables.

c) rightful confiscation - (i.e. they didn't steal a player bankroll)

I would think that any site would be very interested in behaving in such a way so as to minimize the amount of faith and trust required from their player base.

Proof is always better than faith.

[RIIT]

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SW and Josem win this thread, those are excellent presentations of both sides of the argument,

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Yet it is so obvious that one of them is right.
A person is always innocent until proven guilty. And you can´t confiscate 70 000 dollars from someone without showing them evidence and give them a chance to prove that they are innocent.
If BeatMe1 wasn´t an american and went to court there is no way that Full Tilt could get away with this without presenting the evidence.
If we got 50 new bots playing perfectly as a result of that evidence being shown so be it.

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Well, I guess we know where your priorities lie. Couldn't disagree more. It would be ideal if an independent third party could review the evidence behind the FT ruling and rule on it independently. The closest thing we have to that is the information being presented to Gildwulf.

If you'd rather put the integrity of the entire world of online poker on the line just so somebody can present a case despite the fact that the evidence is damning according to the site itself and a third party observer, I guess that's your prerogative.

I think that's a huge mistake. SW, that was a great post.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Integrity" you say?

American Heritage Dictionary
in·teg·ri·ty
n.
1. Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
2. The state of being unimpaired; soundness.
3. The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.

FT confiscated $70k from a player without publishing the evidence and you don't see this as a threat to the integrity of online poker?

[Apanage]

No they weren´t and therefore it is right to confiscate 70 000 dollars?

This matter has bothered me a lot and it is not from a poker perspective it is from a human perspective.
I'll admit that there is a great possibility that BeatMe1 is a bot but...

It all started with that MR.Gatorade named a number of players at Full Tilt that he was accusing of being bots. Gehrig started a post about the Full tilt bots and the accusations escalated.
Following things were said about the bots:

1.They all shared a timing tell and made strange pauses when confronted with real easy decisions like calling a 3-bet preflop.
2.They didn´t play against each other but would play great HU players like The Bryce.
3.They would all open a table but never sit down when a table already was open.
4.Their stats seemed to be very much alike.
5.They are almost never using the chat.

All the evidence we have of these characteristics is what the bot hunters present for us.
And seeing the evidence presented before us makes it of course convincing that they are bots.

BUT several posters that claim that they have played against BeatME1 says that he doesn´t have a timing tell.
The Bryce that had played the bots said that in least three cases he did not believe that they were bots for several reasons.
The player stats presented were from very small samples and the four players that were accused played at different levels. Two of them had played most of their hands below 30/60 and two of them had played most of their hands above 30/60.
This also means that the fact that they don´t play against each other lose a little bit of strength.
Posters also started claiming that they had chatted with several of the accused bots and suddenly MR.Gatorade backed down and said that it was possible that the bot owners sat at the computer at the time. Very plausible indeed but why did he bring up the lack of chatting as a botspotter to begin with then?
So we can easily say that MRGatorade and Gehrig very well could be right that all of the seplayers are bots but they have definitely not presented evidence for it.Especially not in BeatMe1:s case since he didn´t have a timing tell according to several posters.

Like BeatMe1 says. MRGatorade is a witch hunter and he really earns his nickname Crazy Mike. When he was confronted by BeatMe1 Crazy Mike replied that he couldn´t reveal any evidence he had of BeatMe1 being a bot, because that would compromize the fight against the robots. But at his website and in his posts he has said that the bots always takes 1.25 seconds to respond and made a lot of other detailed explanations of the characteristics of the bots.
Does not that qualify as giving important detailed information to bot owners?
Since MRGatorade is the one responsible for Full Tilt starting the investigation it is also reasonable to think that his ”evidence” has been examined by Full Tilt and that they have been influenced by them.
I`m not that convinced that Full Tilts experts have the competence to make a correct investigation in every case that they handle (again we can look at the Poker Stars example and see that the competence of handling these matters not always exists). Someone could easily put holes in their investigation if they only got a chance to argue against it.
But we will never know will we?

To end this long post I´m also amazed that bot owners are bright enough to create a bot that beats Great HU players but are dumb enough:

1. To play with several bots that perform in the same way at tables with a very small player population where this would be spotted within a couple of days.
2. To program the bots so that they have a timing tell.
3. To keep 70 000 dollars in an account that they must know could be seized any day

[RIIT]

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Do you really believe that due process is so important here that FTP should compromise this type of information and expose itself to the next wave of bots? ... I'm not willing to give the botters the keys to the gates on the remote chance that OP is falsely accused and can prove it.

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Yes I believe the truth trumps all of your objections.

Your entire position can be summed up like this:

"We must hide the truth to save online poker"

[chicagoY]

Yeah, and I just redeposited there, lol.

[chicagoY]

Yeah, and can't NL bots be beaten anyway?

[apefish]

I appreciate Gild's unbiased eye in this process.
I do however disagree with the assessment that the process of determining who is owed what is potentially a monumental one.
Someone- perhaps Gild- used the term "chain of bots".
If there is a linked chain of accounts for this it is reasonable to assume they were all caught/shut-down at a similar time.
In BeatMe's case we actually have a date for that. The first email informing that the account was closed and the funds were being redistributed to compensate the victims happened I think on May 25th (without checking to be sure.)
That means that presumably Full Tilt has been working on this part of the issue for over three weeks.
Again I will reiterate that their position has been from the beginning "case closed" with no dialogue with the account in question.
Surely there can be no good reason to claim funds without discourse and state the funds are being used to compensate victims if in fact they don't immediately start working on the redistribution from the moment of seizure.

That puts us past three weeks.
They didn't wait for Gild to clear the evidence right? No dig at Gild meant here at all, it's just that Full Tilt wasn't going to reverse their position if Gild said "I'm not sure" and 2+2 said "WE KNEW IT!!"...all hail the mighty and powerful hypnotoad notwithstanding.
So somewhere someone should have been formulating methods and running calculations this entire time on a finite number of people who may be owed some money .
I bet even Howard Lederer himself has an abacus he could loan out if they need it.

In addition- nobody is going to seriously suggest that Full Tilt has less ability to track an account's opponents than the average poker player who owns some programs like poker tracker.

What I am getting at is they shouldn't have to simply create the process for refunds now. Surely something has been in place before. Whether or not this is the first seizure of this magnitude at Full Tilt for activity of this kind they certainly must have some system set up for these eventualities.
Or they are simply winging it.

Either of which brings me in a long roundabout way to my point.
I am going to step out on a limb here and say that Full Tilt has the capacity to sort this out in an acceptable way that doesn't drag out for months.
Note: I am not saying they will... I am saying they have the capacity if they so choose.

Now would be a good time to so choose.
If "a chain of bots or bot accounts" is accurate in regards to this issue- then we are not talking about 70K- we are talking likely into the hundreds of thousands somewhere that has been seized.
That is such a non-insignificant number that Full Tilt has to do better than they would on smaller issues.
That means some combination of accuracy and timeliness that beats their month/months average on more trivial issues.

If they claim they lack capacity, I worry still about their processes.
If they simply didn't get started until they realized it was going to be a big public deal they don't deserve a walk under the guise of "gee this is really tough and honestly it hasn't happened before but we'll see what we can do".
They said in the late May email that seizure was for compensation of victims.
Now is not the time to let them off the hook just because people are more convinced they got this one right.

[NFuego20]

If my post is ignorant your post is basically 50x more ignorant for basically stating that you'd rather have 50 bots stealing money from people at the tables than deal with this situation as it has been dealt with. Your tone is that this guy is a victim, which I think is an absolute joke. There is no perfect solution, but I really think you fail to weigh the consequences one way or another. It all appears quite black and white to you. Maybe because bots haven't reached a level of sophistication yet to take your money, you don't see the other side of the issue quite as well. If the sites took your approach though, you'd certainly start to see this happen within a few years if not less time.

When this uproar started and people got upset, Full Tilt's representative suggested presenting the evidence to a respected mod, and everybody jumped at that and told him to do it. They go through that process, we hear from the mod, and it's still not good enough. This is not a court of law. Full Tilt has a right to manage this situation to the best of their ability. The fact that there is not a gaming commission available to handle this case similar to what you might see in Nevada is a result of the current landscape of online poker, and ultimately a reason why it needs to be better regulated.

However, when we put our money onto these sites we are agreeing to their rules under the expectation that the site owners adhere to a strict set of standards and take these actions only in extreme circumstances. Last time I checked, there hasn't been one poker playing acquaintance of mine who has had his or her money seized for no reason. I don't expect that to change. Proof exists that the player in question violated the TOC. That's all Full Tilt needs. They don't need to present that information to me, you, and definitely not the people who would like to find workarounds to avoid detection the next time.

[mbpoker]

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1. We found the bot running on your computer. [And we will not discuss how we bypassed the expensive commercial security software we both know you are running. It's a good product and you should keep using it.]

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FTP can say this to beatme1 and to 2p2. I don't see how this is going to help beatme1 to create better bots.


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2. We have a database of betting patterns for over 1000 good players. The six of you are almost exactly alike in 35 different points of comparison. No one else is even remotely similar.

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If FTP just says this without decribing these 35 points, then again it's not something new for bot writers that sites are analyzing their games.

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3. All six of you always time out and fold when you river a straight flush.

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So beatme1 will fix this bug. Not a big deal really, and will not cause any more bots running freely.

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4. All six of you "good Americans" who "don't know each other" use SpeedyPayments online wallet and regularly access their web site from the same IP address in Kazakhstan. [We swear Speedy didn't snitch on you!]


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That may just point that these 6 players know each other, doesn't mean they are bots.



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5. One night after we suspected you we sabotaged your system's window manager. You kept playing flawless poker for 15 minutes even though you couldn't possibly see the table.

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This one is interesting, especially if all six behave the same way. But it can simply be that FTP has their sabotage hack not working on some hadware/software combination.

Note that all of the above, and much more, could be verified if FTP had accepted beatme1 offer to come to their headquarters and play there.

[RIIT]

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you'd rather have 50 bots stealing money from people at the tables than deal with this situation as it has been dealt with ...

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Please provide the link or quote that states

"I want to be robbed while I play online"

Your characterization of the opposing view is igorant at best, malignant at worst, as evidenced by your usage of the word steal:

American Heritage Dictionary
steal
v. tr.
To take (the property of another) without right or permission.

Nobody wants to be robbed and furthermore it's not possible for one player to rob another in a hand of poker if the game mechanics at the site are fair and honest (regardless of who or what is playing). A robot player does not somehow gain some magical power over the game whereby it can just reach into your stack and take chips.

I understand that you don't want to play against bot players (and you're not alone here), but when you demonize the issue with words like "steal" then you're drawing attention toward a false notion and more importantly you're drawing attention away from the entity that really does have the power to take our property without permission - namely the site itself.

A robot player must play poker with me to get access to my stack. Depending on our skill levels the bot may or may not have edge against me (in most cases I will have edge on the bot so I'm not worried), but either way, it's not theft.

In contrast to this, a site can rob an entire account at will with but a single mouse click.