You may or may not be familiar with a young internet poker professional called ZeeJustin, but since you’re about to read what I have to say about the situation he has caused, I think its best if I bring you up to speed:

ZeeJustin has recently - as in a few days ago - caused a fairly major outcry in the online poker community, because it was discovered that he had six accounts entered into the same tournament. This was confirmed by PartyPoker, who also claims to have confiscated his bankroll on their site (it doesn’t really say if it was all of it or not, but it could be as much as several hundred thousands of dollars) and banning him permanently. Furthermore, this discovery lead to PokerStars initiating their own investigation into ZeeJustin, and found that he had had several accounts entered in some of their tournaments as well, leading them to confiscate $5k of his money on their site, and letting him cash out the rest before banning him permanently.

ZeeJustin had multiple accounts on several sites, and used them both to enter several times into tournaments, and as a way to play anonymously - most of the high stakes online tournament players know who ZeeJustin is (and may have hefty reads on him) but some of his alter egos may be completely new to them. In a game that revolves so heavily around reads, this is a big edge. That’s the deal. This is the situation that has caused a huge controversy.

Why the controversy?

Well, this has all the ingredients of the finest internet drama:

- A well known individual is at the center of it.
- There is cheating involved.
- There is a half-hearted attempt of an apology (a non-apology, really) that the known individual released.

Here’s my take:

That he cheated - the actual creation of multiple accounts, and even entering them into tournaments, is not a big deal. It’s bad in itself, but it’s not a big deal in the larger scheme of things. Some people were of course directly affected by this, but focusing on ZeeJustin in this matter is the equivalence of focusing only on Ben Johnson and the fact that he used doping. That was also bad - and shame on Ben Johnson - but we should be more concerned with the effects of what has happened, not that it has happened to begin with.

Of the two major wormholes that this will open up, the lesser is the fact that this was possible at all. In fact, because it was possible - and it seemingly has been possible for quite awhile - it’s likely to think that the practise could have been fairly widespread. Hundreds of players could have been doing this for a long time. The fact that it happened to be a high profile player that was caught only propelled the issue to the surface. And I want to make this clear: This phenomenon is bigger than ZeeJustin; it has to do with security online. And this, dear friends, is the greater problem at hand: Trust in online poker has been compromised. A lot of people have been paranoid about their online poker experience, and although the accusations have mostly been of the “online poker is rigged” kind, the current scandal will likely not make anyone feel happier about playing online.

What this outrage will lead to is not certain. Some people speculate in the risk of lawmakers in the US harping on this and legislating harshly against online poker, using the development of this situation as an argument in the debate. That sort of development could certainly be feasible; there are plenty of politicians who condemn gambling, and I could see them welcoming the opportunity to do something about it. And while such a legislation would not explicitly affect players outside the US, the secondary effect is of course devastating to the rest of the online poker world as well; the majority of online players are American. If you remove them, most of the online poker rooms will have serious problems making their ends meet anymore. And this will affect all of us.

As a sidenote, there have also been very harsh words aimed at PokerStars, for not confiscating all of ZeeJustins funds (they apparently only kept $5k that he was deemed to have won in events that he had cheated in), the implication being that Stars are keeping their silk gloves on when it comes to cheaters. This criticism may be fair. In fact, it surprised me that they wouldn’t immediately lock all of his funds.

But this is where we are at. And I want to encourage you to look at the bigger picture, not at the person who is symptomatic of it - focus on the future of online poker, not on ZeeJustin. That is all.