Poker rooms should not be judge, jury, and executioner.

[ColdCaller]

(This is more or less a repost of a comment I said in NVG, but I feel that it warrants a new thread here.)

Many people call for a pound of flesh in addition to falsified (and fairly won while multiaccounting) tournament winnings when punishing players like ZeeJustin, JJProdigy, etc, etc. This is not an emotionally difficult viewpoint to understand - they cheated, they deserve to have all of their money seized, they deserve the worst, etc. I understand this, and actually agree with it to a significant degree.

However, what is or is not "fair" in the eyes of the public is unfortunately not what the poker sites should when making policy. It is what is most fair while being enforceable within generally accepted bounds of regulation.

People bitch about PokerStars not seizing excess money from the cheaters, but in reality, setting such a precedent is both dangerous and would not be acceptable in any other society. If you were to advocate the side of seizing all the money based on evidence that a poker room may or may not have, without being hypocritical, you would also simultaneously have to agree with a country's policy that allows them to based their decisions off evidence that they are free to interpret however they wish, without a jury of the accused peers to provide insight as well. This means you are advocating that PartyPoker and other sites are justified in making sweeping decisions about players based on what they believe is or is not true about a player's habits and possible attempts to cheat without review from a third-party. That is directly analogous to removing jury nullification, the appeals process, and even trial by jury from American law, and allowing a single judge to hand out decisions based on his "reasoning." If this makes you feel safer, then Benajmin Franklin's words should hopefully make you reconsider:

"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

Regardless, let it be known that punitive money HAS been seized by Stars on multiple occasions when it comes to multi-account bot usage, as I (and many others) know of several cases where this happened. That said, Stars (and all other poker rooms that do not have a shoot first policy) is doing the best they can with the resources they have available. The problem is that there is no official regulatory or lawmaking body to report the cheaters' actions to, where they can suffer more legal damage and be the target of a class-action lawsuit by the end users.

When Internet gambling is finally legalized and controlled, such actions will be possible. Until then, the right thing to do in the interim is not give the poker rooms the power to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Giving one body a gross excess of power does not fix the problem of unenforceable policies and lack of adequate punishment. What many of you suggest is vigilanteism, which hopefully I don't need to explain to you is a bad thing.

Thanks for reading. I hope we can all think critically about this issue, rather than legislating from the emotional side of operations.

EDIT: It is worth noting that Internet casinos have the same problem, but is much more advanced. Many casinos that utilize Real Time Gaming (RTG) software are "rogue," and refuse to pay cashouts if their players win on the sites, often citing them for "bonus abuse". There is no one that has meaningful legislation over them whatsoever and can help stop this type of abuse. Internet casinos are quickly getting a bad name because of this. They have anti-"bonus whoring" clauses in their T&C, but the bonuses are the reasons that people play on those sites in the first place. Because of this, it is impractical to crack down on people who are merely taking +EV situations on casinos, as it is impossible to distinguish the "advantage player" from the random guy who wants to play some blackjack for a few hours then cash out his winnings.

[Easy E]

So, what exactly is your proposed replacement? Can you outline the makeup of this 3rd party body?

[ColdCaller]

[ QUOTE ]
So, what exactly is your proposed replacement? Can you outline the makeup of this 3rd party body?

[/ QUOTE ]

It seems unlikely that all poker rooms will adopt a universal third-party body to regulate and provide arbitration for players and operators alike, and even if they did, without the weight of a credible and powerful government (the EU, the United States, and Australia all come to mind), most players would think they are getting an unfair deal anyway.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission (which "regulates" PokerStars) and the Interactive Gaming Council are both shill operations that do nothing besides provide dubious legal ground to operate their servers on. This is fairly well-known.

I think that Internet gambling needs to be authorized and regulated by a significant world power, preferably by the United States, but seeing as how that is unlikely in the near future, the UK is taking significantly advanced steps to reaching that plateau. Arbitrage can be arranged through their courts and opinions can be reviewed by their government officials as well for dissemination over electronic media, since most US citizens will not fly to the UK for a poker site review.

[RoyalLance]

[ QUOTE ]
I think that Internet gambling needs to be authorized and regulated by a significant world power, preferably by the United States, but seeing as how that is unlikely in the near future, the UK is taking significantly advanced steps to reaching that plateau.

[/ QUOTE ]

That would be cool if a government would regulate online poker. But after what happened at the Stars $1000 Buy-in it will be much harder for any government to force themselves to legalize online poker, let alone regulate it.

Take a look at this in the eyes of a person who has a counrtry to look after. If you saw how people like Boyd and Noah cheat their ways into thousands and thousands of dollars from innocent people and roll away without punishment, would you want to put tax dollars into an industry in which you thought thieves thrive? If you saw sponsored links to websites that provide tools for players to cheat and guarantees customers a five digit payday... posted on friggin' Amazon and Google, will you be convinced that online poker is safe?

If a government were to study these blunders along with the other overwhelming, unignorable sings of corruption in online poker before deciding whetert to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to regulate an industry in which a good percentage of it's "consumers" seem to be crooks anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if their answer were HELL EFFIN' NO!!!!!!!!!!

What happened last Sunday isn't proof that online poker should be regulated by the government. It's proof that it should be banned.

It pains me to say this since I play online myself, but if the online poker industry doesn't clean up its act soon, within the next ten years the sponsored T-shirts the online qualifiers wear to the WSOP might as well be considered gang colors.

[ColdCaller]

[ QUOTE ]
That would be cool if a government would regulate online poker. But after what happened at the Stars $1000 Buy-in it will be much harder for any government to force themselves to legalize online poker, let alone regulate it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I agree.

[ QUOTE ]
Take a look at this in the eyes of a person who has a counrtry to look after. If you saw how people like Boyd and Noah cheat their ways into thousands and thousands of dollars from innocent people and roll away without punishment, would you want to put tax dollars into an industry in which you thought thieves thrive? If you saw sponsored links to websites that provide tools for players to cheat and guarantees customers a five digit payday... posted on friggin' Amazon and Google, will you be convinced that online poker is safe?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is really due to the misunderstanding of gambling and technology, not anything to do with Internet poker rooms in general.

[ QUOTE ]
If a government were to study these blunders along with the other overwhelming, unignorable sings of corruption in online poker before deciding whetert to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to regulate an industry in which a good percentage of it's "consumers" seem to be crooks anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if their answer were HELL EFFIN' NO!!!!!!!!!!

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree as well.

[ QUOTE ]
What happened last Sunday isn't proof that online poker should be regulated by the government. It's proof that it should be banned.

[/ QUOTE ]

And here's where you take a gigantic logical leap out of the blue. How exactly is showing that one action taken by a user who might have violated the site's policies and might have violated some people's theories on ethics proof positive that online poker should be banned? Just because a system has holes in it does not mean that it should be entirely removed.

[ QUOTE ]
It pains me to say this since I play online myself, but if the online poker industry doesn't clean up its act soon, within the next ten years the sponsored T-shirts the online qualifiers wear to the WSOP might as well be considered gang colors.

[/ QUOTE ]

Gang colors is a pretty absurd comparison, and I think you know that. However, yes, online poker needs to do something to push the legitimacy of their business to the masses. Unfortunately, artifical intelligence will progress to such a level that most forms of limit poker will be completely unplayable. You can bet on it.

[RoyalLance]

I went a bit too extreme with some of my words, didn't I? However, there are a few more things I want to say.

I know that that guy was able to get a first place finish with a second account because of a hole in the terms & conditions. A member of government, on the other hand, may look at this same situation and see the situation and think (or spin it as), "Somebody cheated hundreds of players out of $300K online and hosts did nothing. End of story." If we were to put this oversimplification of the truth on a widely known news medium which is viewed by mmillons whom may not know a single thing about online poker, we would get a lot of millions to support any anti-internet gambling law that is thrown at them.

All the anti-gambling lobbyists need is to put that little spin on whatever crooked act they can find and the have enough "evidence" to keep the image of online poker toilet dirty.

It took many years for B&M poker to be as clean from cheating as it is today. I'm not sure if any government will spend that time and resources to to go through same process with online poker.

[UATrewqaz]

Having a reputable group of poker people create some sort of online poker site sanctioning body would be a good step.

Sites would advertise that they have the "So & So Seal of Approval"

This seal of approval would guarantee

1. Fair Shuffling
2. That the site has good accounting practices (keeps players funds seperate from company funds)
3. Treats customers fairly

Players could file grievances with this body, etc.

It's a good idea, wonder if it will ever happen.... there would have to be some sort of gain in it for the 3rd party, and then the poker sites themselves would have to get on board. Probably a pipe dream.

[ColdCaller]

[ QUOTE ]
Having a reputable group of poker people create some sort of online poker site sanctioning body would be a good step.

Sites would advertise that they have the "So & So Seal of Approval"

This seal of approval would guarantee

1. Fair Shuffling
2. That the site has good accounting practices (keeps players funds seperate from company funds)
3. Treats customers fairly

Players could file grievances with this body, etc.

It's a good idea, wonder if it will ever happen.... there would have to be some sort of gain in it for the 3rd party, and then the poker sites themselves would have to get on board. Probably a pipe dream.

[/ QUOTE ]

They have done that, but the sanctioning groups are just a bunch of shill organizations. The Kahnawahke Gaming Commission listens to the members first and the complainers second, if at all. This should be pretty obvious, since there are plenty of "regulatory" companies out there to get a seal of approval from, and for the most part, consumers do not care.

It seems that more and more the problems occur because the consumers themselves do not care to make demands on legislation, regulation, and transparency. This is unfortunate, however, like all democracies, the masses will bury themselves with apathy eventually. It's fairly sad, but in the end, these people will reap what they sow.

[Emperor]

You are absolutely correct that there should be some 3rd party oversight.

That being said, if someone is found to have blatantly broken the rules, cost other players money in the process, then only fair punishment is for the site to ban the player, confiscate all funds, RETURN SAID FUNDS TO VICTIMS, and hang the cheat from the gallows.

Death may seem severe, but imo it is barely justice. The "society" as you put it, must be protected.