Pokerstars will check it out

Ok so last night I was playing on Pokerstars and 2 players at the table were speaking dutch, I asked them to speak english only which one of them said sorry the other decided to be an idiot and say "shut the F up". I ignored it and continued to play then about 20 minutes later they started speaking dutch again so I called the Mod, after the mod had left the idiot told the other one his MSN name and asked for his in which the other responded. Now I'm starting to think these two could be cheating. So I emailed support and let them know so they could check it out. the following emails are what I received back from PS. I took out the players names since they dont feel they were cheating.


Thank you for your report.

The integrity of our games is of utmost importance to PokerStars, and we
employ a large team of Poker Specialists who investigate all collusion
reports received from our players.

We have forwarded your email to a Poker Specialist for review. They will
undertake an extensive investigation into any relationship and past play
between these players. Please allow them some time to research this issue as
it may take several days if the case is particularly complex.

You will receive a response with the results of our investigation as soon as
possible.

Please let us know if we can assist you further, and thanks for playing at
PokerStars!

Regards,

Giuseppe G
PokerStars Support Team

__________________________________________________ ______________________

Thank you for your mail.

Based on a preliminary review of the situation you reported, a complete review of the players involved has been initiated. This will include checking on relationships, location and play.

Depending on our findings, the players may be contacted and asked to explain relationships and/or play. The entire process generally takes up to 2 weeks, but can be delayed if we don't receive prompt responses.

The poker specialist handling this review will contact you directly when the review is complete or if there are unusual delays. Thank you for your patience while we complete this process.


Regards,

PokerStars Support Team
__________________________________________________ __________________

Thank you for your report.

Although we do monitor the games for collusion, we always appreciate it when
players report any strange or unusual play to us for review.

One of the advantages of online poker over brick and mortar poker venues is
that every hand is recorded, including each player's hole cards and how they
are played. If any play is considered suspicious we can then review the
hands with all cards and play showing. As a result, cooperating players are
immediately obvious.

When reviewing tournament play for possible collusion we check for the
following:

1) Best hand play - where colluding players play only the better of their
two hands.

2) Soft play - where colluding players refuse to play aggressively against
each other. For example they may check or fold against each other where they
would normally bet or raise against a stranger.

3) Chip dumping/Stack balancing - where the large stack folds to the small
stack to balance their chips. The idea is to improve the chances of both
players finishing in money positions in a tournament.

Following your report, we have completed an investigation into the accounts
of the players 'XXXX' and 'YYYY'.

One of the most obvious ways to determine a relationship is location. In
this case one of the players lives in Porto Alegre and the other Campo
Grande. Despite this I can tell you that location alone is generally not a
good indicator as to whether cooperative play is occurring. With
communication technology these days two players can be on opposite sides of
the world and still be cooperating. Instead we prefer to use a number of
technological tools to assist us in finding relationships between players.

We also look at how often players play with each other to see if they are
playing together more often than might be expected from strangers. As you
may understand, cooperating players would certainly prefer to play with each
other. On a site the size of PokerStars however, it might be considered a
little unusual if two players played together frequently.

I can tell you that after reviewing the account and playing history of these
players, I can find no reason to believe that they are related or seeking
each other out at our tables.

Of course the only way to know for certain if players are working together
as a team is to review their actual play. In this case no suspicious play
could be found.

In conclusion, given the lack of any relationship between their accounts,
the minimal amount of play together, and the lack of any suspiciously played
hands, there is no evidence to suggest these two players are cooperating at
our tables. I have placed notes in both player's accounts indicating this
review and your concerns, so if any future suspicious play is noted between
them there will be a record of this investigation.

Once again, thanks for your report, and best of luck at the tables!

Regards,

Teymour
Poker Specialist
PokerStars Support Team

they where dutch ??

their locations are nowhere in holland !!!

locations look more as spanish locations.

locations: Porto Alegre and Campo Grande comes from Brasil

PokerStars are currently looking for more fraud investigation staff in Europe:

http://www.pokerstars.com/about/careers/

If they were colluding they probably would already have each other MSN imo. They still shouldn't be speaking in anything but English but I doubt they were doing anything more than chatting.

I sorta like it when ppl from all over the world login to play poker. im for expanding poker, and if they cant understand English, soooo what?

I know the major sites have rules for not allowing other than english at the tables. but im for it because its expanding poker, although i dont have a clue what theyre saying. lol.

and cmon, as long as theyre not getting abusive who cares? And really, if they are getting abusive, who cares anyway? Lolol, id want em to pay more attention to the chat than whats going on at the table so I could bank on em.

So let em. And when I say abusive, I mean a lot more and just 1 example of some1 telling u to mind ur own business.

I don’t even like having the chat on anyway. Too much nonsense and theyre not taking about poker 99% of the time anyway. Better to shut the chat off anyway.

It just seems to me that u got offended for their display of what little English they knew lol. I wouldn’t sweat it, especially since ur probably playing lil kids online anyway, even at mid stakes online cash games online and sometime even higher lol.

agree with earlier posting, even lil kids wouldnt be silly enough to tell every1 theyre colluding right there in the chat box. lolo.

gl

I like this post. I have never gotten to see how they go about finding out if someone is cheating. I like that the emails tells you what they found not just a simple we didn't find anything thank you for looking out and thank you for playing. I mean they sent you a email for every step of the processes and then even told you what they found and how they go about figuring it out. I think I really am liking PS support.

Excellent info and enlightening mate...thanks for posting this. Wally

When I put into yahoo translator what they were saying it has a new feature where it detects what language it is and it said it was dutch they were speaking, maybe other languages are similar I don't know.

It wasn't that I thought they knew each other it was just strange that we had all been at the same table for over an hour and these 2 started chatting about 20 minutes in I asked that they speak english then about 20 minutes later they started speaking a different language again and one of the guys chat was xxxxxx xxx xxxx A K xxxx so I was like WTF so I called the mod then they were exchanging MSN info it seemed to me they had become friendly with each other and maybe decided to stay away from each other and talk on MSN as to what each had. But it was like 5 minutes after emailing support we all got moved.

Interesting to see what they look for. Is pokerstars one of the sites that in their "rules" restrict languages other than english at the tables unless otherwise listed on that specific table ? If so you think they would reprimand the players for breaking their rules.

To actually go as far as to report them is a bit extreme.If they were playing against you then so be it.Be the better person and still play better than them.Accept the challenge and rise to the occasion and play to the situation.If I was faced with a dilemma like that I would definitely take it as a personal challenge and try to play against it rather than just turn and complain about it.Chances are they were just chatting in their native language anyway.