ANOTHER CHEATER CAUGHT

November 29th, 2007 1:40 am EST
Sorel "Imper1um" Mizzi Banned from Full Tilt Poker?


The online poker world tonight is buzzing about the revelation that there has been another cheater caught in a high profile online poker event.

Let's rewind about a month. Chris "BluffMagCV" Vaughn, an employee of Bluff Magazine, took down back to back Sunday Million tournaments. First he took down the Full Tilt $1 Million Guaranteed tournament, and then the very next week he took down the Sunday Millions tournament on Pokerstars playing as "SlippyJacks."

There were rumblings about possible shenanigans in the Full Tilt Poker tournament, but the story didn't really come to light until Soren "Kongsgaard" Kongsgaard posted that he had received an email from Full Tilt Poker stating that "BluffMagCV had been disqualified from the tournament and "Kongsgaard" would be awarded first place money.

The stated reason for the disqualification? Full Tilt Poker said that an already eliminated player had taken over "BluffMagCV"'s account late in the tournament. Apparently the player that took over the account was promised a % of the total profits in exchange for finishing out the tournament.

This player who took over the account is reportedly Sorel "Imper1um" Mizzi, and apparently he too has been banned from Full Tilt Poker.

If Mizzi did in fact participate in this scheme and he was in fact banned from Full Tilt Poker, it is obviously a huge deal, as Mizzi is one of the most popular and successful poker players online. Mizzi has been noticeably absent from Full Tilt Poker as of late, so it would certainly appear to be true.

Full Tilt has been tight-lipped on the matter. What we do know for sure is that "BluffMagCV" was 100% disqualified from that tournament and banned, and that a high profile player took over his account and was also banned. At this point, the evidence would certainly seem to point to Mizzi as the well-known player who took over the account, but we don't have 100% confirmation as of yet.

Was the "Slippyjacks" victory on Pokerstars tainted as well? Pokerstars closely scrutinizes every player who makes it to the final table of any major event on their site, so there is a good chance that they have already investigated and found nothing to be wrong with the victory on Pokerstars. The "SlippyJacks" account is currently not banned on Pokerstars.

You have to wonder how much of this stuff is going on that is never discovered. If the players who perpetrated this scam weren't so reckless, they probably never would have been caught.

This stuff is just horrible for online poker in general, and sites are going to have to come up with a better solution for dealing with this kind of cheating. I wish that the sites would band together, and if a person is caught cheating on one site, they are banned from them all.

Also, I believe that online poker sites need to stop shielding the identities of known cheaters, and start publicly naming people that have been caught cheating. Why shouldn't the public know about it? If you are caught trading stocks in the USA with insider knowledge, you are publicly named by the SEC. What's wrong with that? There has to be a stronger deterrent to cheating. Right now the reward is far greater than the risk of getting caught.

I really do agree with you there. Attaching public humiliation and shame would be a great discourager to people cheating in the future.

Awesome post.

Ok...I have a few things I suppose.

First off you will NEVER be able to stop this senario from happening. Why you ask? Well nobody knows who is sitting behind the keyboard and mouse of a computer EVER on any of these poker sites. You could have 40 people in a room and each of them taking turns. Secondly, how do they know that somebody took over their friends hand and finished the tournament?

The only way anybody will ever be able to stop this from happening is to require photo identification, and a webcam. They can match your face to your photo while your playing to make sure its you. That never will happen becuase they don't have the man power to watch every single table, that would result in to much overhang on their payroll and they wouldn't do it.

If this is true, then I want to know why his friend took over? Did the guy have to go take a crap? Go to a meeting? Why would a poker player need somebody else to finish for him?

Read this ----->>>>> Online Poker Weekend: Vaughn Wins Big Titles on Consecutive Weekends | Poker News

If you ask me this guy is a complete donk anyway. I don't think it was somebody else jumping in his seat to finish the tournament, but maybe a little more. I mean really, he goes all in with A8, hits tripps, goes all in with
K5 off and hits a straight. And this here: Several hands later, SlippyJacks made a standard raise and PerPer re-raised all in with . SlippyJacks called with , having him covered 9-to-1. The board was and the flush sent PerPer out in fourth for $66,733.50. Seriously when your playing for that kind of money, WHO calls an ALL-IN with 10 6 PREFLOP. I don't care if they look pretty because they are the same suit or not.

If he alreay has invested in the pot and has him well covered why not call? (If I`m reading this correct. The guy who called was the chip leader?)

He has outs - possibly 2 live cards, fluch draw, etc.

I might be missing something here, but simply put, how do they cheat???

gus hanson.

Me

This ^^ is what I want to know, particularly in regard to this alleged incident.

On the one hand it is comforting to know that someone was caught doing something wrong, but short of sending a FT rep to the guys place how can they know.

On the other hand, with the recent fiasco at Absolute, wouldn't all sites be on the look out for shenanigans that violate just about anything.

Which all leads to the paranoia about any site planting a cheat to be caught just so they could look good.

Of course they wouldn't know if they were playing on the same computer. More likely, one signed out, IM'd the other guy, and he signed in on his own computer. It is very easy to track IP addresses. If this story is true, then that is probably what happened.

btw, here is the link to the original source. I (obviously) have no problem with posting an article, but at least credit the original author.

It wouldn't be difficult to trace, and I'd hazard a guess that it happens surprisingly regularly in the big online tourneys, unfortunately.

Random donk goes deep in tourney ---> random donk exchanges part of his winnings to a more experienced, 'better' player who will finish the tourney for him. They both win, given the right deal (unless they get banned lolol).

Anyway, all FT has to do is track the two players IPs. If randodonk is playing, then suddenly with two tables left he logs off and someone logs on from another IP, coincidentally the IP of the 'better' player, then it already looks suspicious.

When after the tournament randodonk attempts to transfer $x thousand to the 'better' player, it pretty much seals the deal.

Yes, all this can be circumvented by dynamic IPs and transferring the agreed funds on other sites/neteller/whatever, but (a) you'd be surprised how stupid most cheats are, and (b) FT and other sites probably have more advanced detection methods in place.

That's obviously the case. In the fourth paragraph it says that the player that took over was already eliminated. I doubt they were neighbours. If they were playing at the same location, I'm sure that would have been mentioned.

That would be the ONLY way that this guy could have been caught. Agian on the flip side, say he signed out for 10-20 minutes, then signed back in. He could have had an internet connection issue and went to his buddies house to finish the tournament.

Maybe they don't want to pay out the funds??? That could be it lol...

they bumped everyone else in the relevant tourney up a pay spot, so the "they didn't want to pay out" argument (which is questionable at the best of time) doesn't hold true at all here.

On PS though you can get someone else to play for you if you have disconnection problems.

Greg Raymer had to do this during the WCOOP event he won this year.

Read this article before rushing off to work. Was quicker to copy and post, then try and find link again. Sorry about that Mr. Genius, and pokerking.com

I was a big fan of "Bluff" magazine, but I guess I have to point out that when one of your columnists is Justin Bonomo (proven online cheat, whose contributions to the magazine, imo, are a waste of space) I suppose you can't expect much from the editors either...

PS no doubt was consulted/informed of this situation in advance, since Raymer plays on their dime.

How could PS be informed in advance that your internet connection could go down

Anyway, here is what Greg Raymer had to say on his website.

One of the more interesting (a rather mild word for how I was feeling) points in the tournament happened starting with hand #593. We were down to the final 12 players, and I had been stealing almost at will, having a substantial chip lead at my table, holding over 1.6M chips with nobody else over 1M. Then, I lost my internet connection. Nothing wrong on my part, and nothing I could do. I’m pretty sure it was a problem caused by Time Warner Cable, my local cable provider. It was almost 3:30 in the morning at this time, and I knew that PokerStars rules allowed you to get somebody else to log in and play for you in cases such as this. So, I was trying to figure out who I could call at this time of day, without waking them up, who could competently play my chips for me. It was too early in the morning to call anybody in Europe, and too late at night to call anybody in the U.S. I then realized that it must be about late afternoon in Australia, so I called Joe Hachem. As it would happen, Joe did answer his phone, but he wasn’t at home in Melbourne, but in Hong Kong on business, and not able to get to a computer or have the time to play for me. I asked him if he had any friends in that part of the world who might be able to play for me, such as his brother Tony, and he said he would make some phone calls. While waiting to hear from him, I remembered that I had gotten an email of support earlier from Dan Goldman, a former PokerStars employee. Dan and Sharon are a lovely couple, who really liked working for PokerStars, but who didn’t like having to live on the Isle of Man (where PokerStars is headquartered, and where all their executives live and work). As such, Dan had retired from the company, and they had moved back to California. I knew Dan and Sharon were both night-owls, so I figured he would still be awake. So, I called his cell, and he answered, immediately commenting on my disconnect problem, and offering to help. He got Sharon’s computer, logged on as me, and started to tell me my cards so I could tell him what to do. This is obviously WAY better than being disconnected, but also far inferior to being able to SEE the action on your screen. Luckily, I only had to do this for a few hands before I regained my connection, and took over the wheel for myself again. It seemed like an eternity that I was gone, but it turns out I missed only hands 593-604, or 12 hands.

Three possible differences:

- FT and Stars rules on the matter may differ.

- The guy who took over for Greg had not already entered the tournament under another account.

- Greg clearly had connection problems (this should be verifiable from Stars end) and wasn't selling a percentage of his action to the other guy to close the tournament for him (even if the connection problems aren't verifiable it makes zero sense that Greg would broker a deal for a lesser player to take over from him anyway).

I still don`t understand how simply handing over the control of the game is going to be that much of an advantage.

The only two things I can see that will massivley help will be

1. You get to the same table as your friend and the two of you keep winning pots against each other, driving the other players out, or in effect handing over your big chip stack to your friend who also has a large chip stack.
2. You get to the same table and you tell your friend what hole cards you have - more information.

What am I missing here guys???

You got me Ronaldadio. It might be a slight advantage, but who would actually do it? You bought in and got that far, but now you're going to hand it over? bah. The first post characterizes the cheating as a "scheme", so I would have to believe there's more players to the story or something else we're not a aware of here, (a.k.a. this guy hacking the program to see whole cards allowing him to play close to perfection) that would cause anyone to believe he cheated, not to mention actually pull out a win.

Since I posted this article, I haven’t heard or read much more about what may have taken place. In order for Full-Tilt to disqualify the winner of a million dollar tourney, along with banning a couple of players, you would think the violation was rather serious.

If Full-Tilt was competent enough to catch a couple of cheaters, why not brag to the world. Would certainly help their business, especially with the black eyes, online poker has recently taken. I know I would naturally feel a little safer playing there. Maybe their cheating defenses are getting more attention?

I’m thinking maybe the problem was much more then this article implies, and allot of thinking and planning is being put into the formal explanation.

they could figure out if a different player is playing the same account just by checking IP addresses...am I wrong??

This is a complete speculation, but since we're guessing anyway...

IP-1 loses (dumps) entire stack to IP-2

IP-2 logs off their username, IP-1 logs in as IP-2's name and continues with the new large stack.

AND, if there were others involved...

IP-1, IP-2, IP-3, IP-4... all "lose" to the taller of the stacks, then the tallest stack logs off of their IP and someone else's IP logs in as the new tall stack's username.

Make sense?

makes sense but the chances of these 2 players being at the same table is very unlikely, unless it wasnt planned until then.

I did not know letting other players play for you was wrong. There have been times that my friend had to be somwhere so I would finish their SNG, and I used to do it all the time in play money and freerolls.

i guess i should be banned?

I thought this was the case for every site until I read about Raymer in the thread. Maybe these guys didn't read the rules, and it was an honest mistake. Taking down the win makes me question it either way though.