Huge DoN scandal, colluders from Hangzhou China on pokerstars banned

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...player-791760/

Apparently there are/were sweat shops in China working around the clock playing DoN's on pokerstars colluding with each other. Also from the same town as a bunch of Stud cheaters.

Has any DoN grinders received any refunds yet?

"so...why didn't pokerstars catch this earilier?
they needed other regs to email them 50 times before they looked into it? so if the players never noticed it on a large scale they never would have gotten caught?"

"still a very big red flag when many chinese start overtaking these double or nothings and should not take over a year to figure out. Also 'Sishun' and 'Superxia' also both from this town were kicked off in july of last year for cheating. They also played 52, 54, and 104 don. They had won over 30k combined and started playing at the same time and only in don's together. I just wonder how big this scandal was....and how much it affected us regs.....I'm just saying that Pokerstars had every opportunity to catch this almost a year ago"

this doesn't look like a minor thing, i'm gonna finish editing this to find out how much was involved. About $555,000 in profit in don's from $5-$104......how sick pokerstars. Superxia and Sishun were turned in on June of last year and that should have started the investigation at that point. This is very disappointing....


jessica318- 30k profit, last game played 1/25/10
wudiyg- 99k profit, last game played 2/10/10
jane1023-55k profit, last game played 2/18/10
gucci53- 33k profit, last game played 2/8/10
lazzzzzzy- 15k profit, last game played 1/7/10
renhe88- 34k profit, last game 2/14/10
Xuanyu.L-16k profit, last game 3/19/10
chenxr- 42k profit, last game 2/18/10
flypretty-4.4 k profit, last game 5/4/10
nayouyi-13k profit last game 2/17/10
hzlsl-25k profit, last game 1/29/10
freetime1955- 400 profit, last game 2/5/10
xxwpk168- 21k profit, last game 2/5/10
microsoft25- 3.1k profit last game 2/8/10
wenpk15888- 8.4k last game 2/18/10
strong arm A- 2.2 k profit, last game 1/23/10
degreexia- 1.5k profit last game 11/7/2009
ellena054- 4.4 k profit, last game 5/20/2010
jinse888-15k profit, 2/5/10 last game
liuli888-1k profit, 2/5/10
rara999-3.1k profit last game 2/17/10
dcbm288- no profit, last game 2/18/10
linyin- 2.7k last game 2/10/10
yangguangze-830 profit last game 11/29/2009
pakerster-2k profit last game 2/9/2010
yutian-8.1k profit, last game 2/6/2010
wenpk15888- 8.4k profit 2/18/2010
coroinpu- 6.3k profitlast game 2/16/2010
maomao1832-9k profit last game 2/18/2010
hslj001- 1k profit last game 2/3/2010
psnyls-1k profit last game 2/14/2010
goloverez777- 11k profit, last game 5/10/2010
leaders668-4.8k profit last game 2/18/2010
guiliang- 2.0k profitlast game 1/31/2010
chijianli- 10k profit last game 2/17/10
xiawenju- 5.3k profit last game 2/1/10
147222-11k profit last game 2/17/10
wzem618800- no profit, last game 2/17/10
mnbqwe12- 4k profit last game 2/18/10
wzhongz-6.4k profit last game 2/17/10
superxia-16k profit, last game 6/29/2009
sishun-14k profit, last game 6/29/2009

Clearly looks like they got caught out.... I liked the following responce from one of the 2+2 Members,
it is in responce from jane1023, one of the cheaters
I just read on a bit further and after being asked many times for HH's jane1023 finally responds with

Now coming from a noob fish I can maybe understand that they can't find HH's, but this is from the "sharkscope" supposed wining player of the DoN.

That thread tilts me because of the bickering (though obv it's useful for the community), so I'm not going to try to finish reading it. Are these cliffs accurate or not:

1. OP claims to have been unfairly banned by PS for collusion in DONs, and is upset that no proof has been provided that she actually did collude.
2. PS apparently banned a number of players from the same town in China for collusion, and OP is one of them.
3. Refunds are being made (at least one poster indicated he'd received a refund).
4. No definitive evidence of collusion has been presented - but that's kind of a moot point in this case, as PS has already rendered judgment, and it'd be unusual for PS to demonstrate how the collusion actually occurred (that'd be dumb on a few levels).

That about sums it up!

I have a few good friends and coaches who play those - interesting.

This cheating exists everywhere. With some of the cheaters on the books. We must face this fact. I know that PS has excellent support but I am bummed to hear how long it took to catch these guys after all the emails that were sent.

Ya, one of the players had 10,000+ games, and $50,000 in profits. WTF.
Pretty sick how many people were affected, and nowhere near all the money was recovered.

Honestly there is little surprise there. DoN is the variant of poker in which it is the easiest to collude, because the ICM value of chips varies so massively with the super flat payout structure. It's also one of the variants where it would be easiest to program a bot.

This is a HUGE argument in favor of playing deep stacked cash games, which is the variant of poker that is the least in danger of these problems.

I play those DON's regularly @ Stars...I have wondered about collusion many times, but figured it was merely my bad luck to lose!

brings up an interesting point. what interest do sites like pokerstars and ftp have to ban bots, colluders, etc. they were generating huge amounts of rake for stars. someone posted pokerstars made almost $350k in rake from this group.

There's a simple fix for that: don't play don's.

Seriously. Would you take part in the CBS show "Survivor" is for all you knew the other participants could all be friends of each other before joining the game? What would you expect your chances of getting voted off would be? DON's add a minor element of luck to it, but in essence it's a game of survivor, and collusion is so profitable at that game that you have to expect it will happen repeatedly.

By the way, FTP has repeatedly refused to add DoN's to their SNG offer. I'm pretty sure the reason for it is that they don't feel capable of monitoring those for collusion in any satisfactory way.

Running a successful poker room is not strictly about generating a lot of rake.

In the poker economy, fishes deposit and that money goes partly to winning regs and partly to the rooms through rake. Both provide a service to the fish (room provide the tables, regs the playmates) and therefore it's fair they should get paid.

Good poker rooms choose the rake percentage and VIP rewards appropriately to ensure the economy remains sustainable: the fishes can play long enough to feel they got their money's worth, the regs can earn enough to justify spending time keeping the games going, and the room earns enough to cover it's expenses and get money to their shareholders.

Colluders break that fine balance. They earn more than their share of the fish's money and they make the games less enjoyable for these net depositors. So it makes a lot of economic sense for the rooms to go after them.

I've won the majority of the DON's I've played @ Stars...but thanks for the info!

I know pokerstars try to pay back to the affected players, but what about other sites? Does FT for instance pay back players subject to colluders?

I believe they run very close to the same policy. They confiscate the accounts and distribute whatever funds are available in them. You receive an email from their security dept that anonymous was caught cheating, etc. In the case of one of the accounts I think the guy made $50k, but only $10k was available to be distributed. They don't pay out of pocket.

They do. But since they don't offer DoNs, they have a lot less colluders to worry about in the first place.

Me too, although I've just recently started playing them. I'm 16/18 at the moment, and they just seem too easy not to play them. Of course it looks like these guys are probably playing higher limits ($50+) while I've only played up to the $20 ones, and to be honest I've not noticed many Chinese players. Still, I'll probably keep playing them until (a) my streak dies, and/or (b) I get a sense of consistent collusion going on.

People need to read this:

http://daleroxxu.blogspot.com/2010/0...candal-on.html

Interesting link, BS Actually I think it makes sense to reward people that take the time and trouble to provide you with a detailed analysis of how certain players have colluded against then, presumably they could potentially be quite useful to your business.

Also if people receive an unexpected credit, shouldn't they be grateful?

Cheating in DoN have been one of pokerstars biggest problems they have with cheaters. Stars has elude to this when people ask for bigger DoN. Strangely even with all the cheaters in these the regs(non-cheating ones) still find them profitable.

Yikes, this is turning out to be a big deal.

Don't let an obvious hot streak go to your head. Even at the lower levels there's no way anyone's even touching 75%.

LDO, I know it's not sustainable. But as long as I'm running hot I'm not quitting either.

Cross-posting from 2+2, because it allows me to show off my knowledge of game theory...

Actually, OP does have a point here. Regulars playing DoNs are essentially playing iterated prisonner's dilemna between each others, in an evolutionnary setup where good strategies means you profit and are able to stay in the games or move up, and bad strategies will make you busto.

Game theory pretty clearly shows that this kind of setup will favor the emergence of "tit for tat" like strategies that are nice, retaliating, forgiving and non-envious. In other words, even if you don't collude explicitely, implicit collusion strategies (between games) will emerge naturally.

This is a very obvious flaw of the payout structure of DoNs which should lead Pokerstars to discontinue de games, because no amount of policing will ever prevent the emergence of implicit collusion between regulars.

That's presumably why they disabled chat in DoN games, too.

The most interesting point in this whole 'article' is that it would appear that no poker site actively looks for cheats, which is understandable when you consider the volume of players. How many 'watchers' would they need to follow 50,000 players? Pretty much blows up the claims of 'safe and secure' coming from any poker site.

It doesn't seem far fetched to have a program in place to catch anomalies that will red flag certain accounts. Higher then normal winrates, players playing in the same games many, many times over and that also happen to be from the same city in china.... Then you have specialists looking into the few cases to see if any wrongdoing has occurred.

But really, these DONs are ripe for cheating/collusion. Plus what Belgo said a couple posts above makes perfect sense. If you knock someone out on the bubblewith a loose call cause you have a big stack then they might spite call you on the bubble in later games. Its almost as if unspoken collusion is a good strategy for the game. So get rid of them. Easy for me to say thought cause I never play them.

Did you guys hear the interview on 2+2 pokercast, with that colluder catching expert?

Doubtful Stars will refund the rake, so they keep that and get the better rep for discovering and refunding.

if you have to cheat to win what does it say about your morality, Trust,etc.,,Nobody should cheat, no matter what, anyone who cheats shoult be banned from ALL Sites, if thats possible, i Hate a Cheater, there the SCUM of the earth,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,buck

There's no way they will give back the rake, and they are not refunding everyone the amounts they lost. Only the player who instigated the investigation got all his money back. I don't see why they come out with a 'good rep' either, they did not discover the collusion. Like every other cheating event at a poker site, it was discovered by the players, so why PS should come out smelling of roses I don't know.

Pothole, did you read the posts above? PS does not come out smelling like roses on this in this thread, nor in other places I've seen this topic discussed.

Whilst I agree with you wholeheartedly, Buck, it is an unpleasant facet of human nature that people will always try to cheat the system. They are usually uncovered when they start to become too greedy, or start to think that they are invincible, or both.

Yes I can read, my response was to DJ's post.