Hastings vs. Isildur1 Cheating?

There is an article at HighStakesNews.com that discusses the Isildur1/Hastings head up matches. It seems that Hastings, Brian Townsend, and (maybe) Cole South shared a hand history database of Isildur1's hands.

Full Tilt terms:

“Shared hand history databases and “data mining” software, including subscription services and the exchange of personal databases: The use of shared hand histories provides detailed information on opponents a player has little or no personal experience playing against, and is deemed to be an unfair advantage. Violating this policy is subject to the maximum penalties for prohibited software use.

Players are not permitted to use the hand histories for hands that they have not personally participated in. Software designed to collect hand history information from games that the player did not participate in is prohibited.”

Do you consider this cheating?

I could be wrong but I am sure Isledur studied them before playing and he came in like a bat out of hell gunning for
the pros, I think its fair play.

No difrent then 3 friends that play at the same casino and share thoughts/reads on the regs that play there imo.

highlighted in Bold is the answer to your ?.. These players have all played a considerable amount with Isildurrr so according to there Terms they did not cheat as they didnt have little or no personal experience playing with him.. They were totally within the rules

no i don't believe it is cheating, you can study all you want but you still have to go out and beat him yourself. poker is all about studying your opponent, they did a great job in my mind.

Yeah, and AK is a drawing hand. Discussing a player between friends (including thoughts and reads) is one thing. Pooling specific detailed information on ALL hands the three of them played against him is completely different. But probably no sense in arguing this since rationalization is a huge part of human tendency.

But whether or not people like the idea of sharing HH DBs or not it doesn't matter. The fact is that it is a violation of the TOS if they did it and if it is true then they should all be held accountable. Being a pro doesn't make them above the law (or in this case a sites TOS).

JD... Is my assumption of the quote from the terms and conditions from FTP correct?

Latest installment from Brian Townsends blog:


I wanted to clear up some allegations about Brian Hastings, Cole South and myself. First Brian H. Cole S and myself never colluded. Collusion is nearly impossible HU but there was always one person playing and never any ghosting occurring. In fact the only person to break the T&C of FullTilt Poker was myself. I had about 20k hands of play on Isildur and I acquired another 30k hands. This is against the T&C of FullTilt Poker and because of this violation I am going to have my red pro status suspended for one month.

Of the three I was the sole one to break the T&C of FullTilt. The three of us never shared hands where mucked hands were shown besides a few hands I posted on weaktight.org, and in fact all the information I received could be taken from watching the game. This is not saying what I did wasn't wrong as FullTilt is very clear in its T&C, rather to clear up they type of wrong doing I partook in.


As for the accusations of team play Cole Hastings and I live about 3000 miles from each other. I have never played on Brian H's or Cole S's account. As for "conglomerating hand histories," it's simply not an accurate statement. I analyzed the database I put together, and the three of us chatted about my analysis, and optimal strategy against Isildur. According to Full Tilt's T&C this is a permissible discussion as it's super common for players at all stakes to discuss strategy and certain players tendencies. Any discussion we had occured away from the table when we were not playing a session.

Here is the entire rule from the TOS:

See the bold red text I highlighted above. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks about right or wrong nor how doing it in any way can be rationalized. The TOS that every player agreed to applies and if HH were shared then they violated the TOS and should be punished.

You got me bro.. By that then yes they were. Thought i was missing something thus the reason I asked

Isn't Brian Townsend the peep who admitted to multiple accts @ FT & PS last yr?

I think its unfair...But the rumors I hear at Isildur1 is a group of European poker players switching off on one account...Isn't this considered cheating as well?

First time offense of this law (lol law) is only a warning. So to be red pro banned which is just lol is more punishment that the average player will receive but if you have sites like PTR and others that sell HH then you really cannot expect the rule to be followed too closely. That combined with just a warning as punishment and a very hard think for ftp to find out about, its not that big a deal and should not be on the TOS

Ok, he was red pro banned on ftp for 6 months for the multi account thing but the average player will not face reprimand other than having the second account deleted and the money transfered back to the first account. He did not enter both accounts into the same game so I do not have a problem with this.

@marginal, didnt Hasting also said he opend the new acount so people would know he was forced to move down in stakes?

That was Townsend and you can treat that case like someone who created an account for rakeback. The rakeback account would be closed and the money credited to the original account as long as they did not enter both into the same games.

So sharing hh's in the hand analysis forum is against full tilts rules?

No,because:
A. If you follow the forum rules u would actualy convert your hands.
B. 1 hand hardly counts as sharing a database.

If the hand is not converted then yes technically. UN's need to be changed for analysis anyway.

Sindri if there doing something that is exactly referring to doing opposite of the terms and conditions of full tilt poker how is that not cheating.. This is not intended to start trouble.. Iam asking a question.. Thats all..

I asume your refering to my first post in this thread? since the second one was me answering some one that said HA was breaking the FTP rules.

Any way i really didnt know that the FTP TOC said sharing HH with a friend was against the rules, i did know that datamining and buying HH was forbiden but didnt realize the other part until JD pointed it out.

Clearly if its against the rules of FTP they should be punished(asuming its true) but i really dont have a problem with what they (suposedly) did(or datamining or buying HH for that matter but thats a difrent subject).
I mean Isildur could have logged on to PTR or any other of the hundreds of sites that sell HH and bought every hand Hastings,Cole,Townsend,Durrrr ect had ever played and there for had a signifcant edge over them(and even if he didnt do that he still had the advantage of beeing a unknown where as he had atleast some idea as to how they all play).

The information is all out there and i personaly dont have a problem with people accesing it.
But yeah im not disagreeing with u on the fact that if the rumours a true there in violation with TOC,like JD pointed out they clearly are.
My opinon is still so i dont have a problem with what they did or with datamining/buying HH(not that if ever bought HH, dont play high enough stakes to justify it).

Im rambling but basicly yes if true they broke the rules, yes they should be punished but i think the rules are stupid .

Now I think the rumors are true after searching for some of the information.. While I understand your points sindri (and there valid) I think the issue lies within the fact that it wasnt one person trying to gain a edge from previous hands played by one player.. It was 3.. Thats truly unfair as there all great players with great abilities to take this information and basically form a unbeatable strategy against Isildurrr. I think if Isildurrr can somehow prove this (which i dont know if he can) then he is entitled to some sort of repayment by FTP...

Iam a little bit shocked in the fact that one of the 3 accused players would be so naive and careless to let this sort of information leak out..

That is a result of how ridiculous the rules are.

Do you have a formal source for the first offense being only a warning? All I have to go by is what FTP has published that every player agreed to abide by:



^ this. Hand analysis does not violate their TOS because it is one hand or a few hands, not a DB as sindri points out. Additionally looking at it in HA is not "using" it. There could be an argument made for some gray area if people ran around pulling HH from HA posts and trying to load them into HEM or PT. But even doing that would be worthless because the number of hands would be insignificant.

Though we don't have a rule requiring hands be converted, though I think it is pretty highly encouraged (and because many regulars either won't reply or they will give the unconverted HH poster grief over it).

^^^ I could concur with this. My wife doesn't like the seatbelt law, but she wears her seatbelt because she'll get a ticket if caught not wearing it.

So your stance is that if you don't like a rule that you agreed to, then you're within your rights to simply ignore it and violate it? So all the idiots that multi-account are okay with you? I'll assume you don't mind collusion either then since I'm sure there are some people out there that would like to work together and choose to ignore the rule about collusion because they don't like that one.

Its not a formal source but I know some guys who have been could datamining (do not ask me how they got caught, seems like it is near impossible to get caught) but they only got a warning and that the second offense would result in some sort of ban.

LOL I love how you completely misunderstood what I said, I said the rule was ridiculous but obviously I'm going to abide by it. Now colluding is a totally different offense that is actually cheating in my book and multi accounting without the intension of playing multiple accounts in the same game is cheating but multi-accounting to stay anonymous is not. Patrik Antonius, David Benyamine have both had a ton of accounts on ftp yet they were allowed to do so why was that any different?

In the light of day....

the Judge (FTP) says: Violating this policy is subject to the maximum penalties for prohibited software use.

Townsend (the violator) says: because of this violation I am going to have my red pro status suspended for one month..

Wouldn't we all like to go to Traffic Court and specify our own fines and penalties after pleading guilty?

OK, it's not a 'criminal trial'... but in a civil case can we envision the self-admitted offender deciding the penalty to be imposed against themselves?

One month of NO RedPro status .... geez... there's Xmas week, then there's the New Year week... how big a penalty is it when you decide you will be penalized during a period that likely would not have been very active anyway??

Also might I add, if you have sites like PTR who sell HH that the majority of the poker world know about? How are you to expect people to not datamine. If they do not make an attempt to shut the sites down then what is to be expected.

It's possible that I did misunderstand what you meant. I basically had to draw a conclusion going by the two comments quoted above. But you'll also notice that in my post that the first sentence is a question not a direct statement about you which is probably why you figured I misunderstood you. And I think you've answered the question.




I agree with the first part obv, but I don't think I understand your stance on the second one. In the second case, let's say that you and I play heads-up and we gather 20k hands on each other. Then I run off, violate the TOS and create another account. Now I come back and get to start playing HU with you. You don't know it's me and have no hands on me, yet I have 20k hands on you. Is that not a significant advantage on my part? Should I not be punished to some degree for violating the TOS irrespective of the reason why?



I don't know anything about this, tbh so I can't comment.

Well to some extent we do allow that as a society; it's called plea bargaining and is done is typically done in conjunction with pleading guilty (though sometimes such as in class action suits the plea bargain is allowed without having to admit guilt).

Having access doesn't make it right. People buy drugs all the time, but it's illegal. Some people purchase illegal weapons, but they still do it. I guess for me it just boils down not trying to add gray areas to places where there is none. If a rule says do not do "x" and I agree to that, then if I do "x" for any reason then I'm violating the rule.

Yea but you have police trying to prevent people from doing it. If no one is going to try and take the site down well you are not going to stop it. But I agree with you, there should be no grey areas and they did violate the rules.

My last post, do you think its a good rule in regards to datamining?

I get what your saying but IRL the police go after drug and arms dealers but FTP does nothing to stop these sites from mining and selling hands.
Surely if they felt so strongly against this they would simply change there software to make it impossible to datamine?

I think were missing a pretty obvious point here in regards to the OP.

I understand what marginal, sindri and JD are saying about regural everyday players data-mining.

BUT and a big BUT at this:

Brian Townsend is a Red Pro! He is the the face of full tilt poker just as much as ivey, antonius, durrrr etc. And for him to delibaretly break TOS, knowing full well what he is doing, i think he has got away far too lightly. The 3 of them used unfair methods to break a guy because of how well he was doing. IMO what they done was out of order, and the punishment brian was given is far too light, as for the other 2 not even recieving punishment after admitting to it, just as Brian did, is dispicable.

If he got to keep the winnings, I don't really see where he was punished to the fullest. He can take the time off to spend some. Most likely to play in some big stake casino games.

Yep, I thought about that as well, but my guess is that FTP simply doesn't dedicate the resources to it on large scale because they feel their results would be proportional to what the polices' results are. They do go after drug and arms dealers and do catch some here and there, but by and large they are no where near doing away with the problem and never will be imo. I'm sure proactive enforcement against HH sales would ultimately be useless due to the nature of the internet. Like drugs and guns, HH will always be available to those determined to get them.

I think they've taken large steps in combating this as much as they could while still trying to balance the needs of the individual player. They've closed the loop on simple datamining by only allowing saved HH for those sitting at the table. But I'm not sure where the real balancing point is either. They have to still deal the cards to the table for the players to see. There will always be a way for violators to mass datamine (be it by screen scrape, code, whatever) They would have to make every table of every game 100% limited to just those actually sitting at the table and then only allowed those actually sitting in at the table to be able to save HH. But even with that in place it isn't possible to stop sharing of personal HH. There are just too many technology issues that can't be resolved or made unbeatable. Make a better mousetrap...

My personal opinion is that no mass datamining should be allowed by external sites/groups for any reason. I also don't think individuals should be allowed to mass datamine on tables they aren't sitting at (though I could see more discussion on this possibly swaying me...idk). I have no issues at all with collecting HH on tables someone plays at. So I guess my personal opinion falls pretty much in line with the poker sites. In my mind it's about fairness of the game.

Sindri mentioned earlier that sharing DBs was a kin to discussing a casino player live with a friend. But I don't think that's a fair corallary. Discussing a person live is the same as discussing a person online. So if marginal and I talk on MSN and he tells me about Sindri and his general playing style so I have an idea how to approach playing him, then that's okay in my book because these are your personal thoughts and observations as you preceive them. However, if you turn around and hand me 30k HEM hands on Sindri, this is no longer simple discussion of opinion and observation but instead is cold hard fact and data on his detailed play. It's no longer about him liking to raise first in a lot in late position and that he likes to steal blinds. Instead I can see that (hypothetically) that he raises first in from the CO 80% and Btn 85% and steals 62% from the button and 3-bets UTG 21% in an open limped pot and 93% of the time likes long walks on the beach but only on the weekend with nice weather...ok, that last one probably isn't in HEM. But those kinds of statistics that are in HEM or PT3 go way beyond simple discussion of a playing. Sorry for the waffling; just trying to explain a bit why I feel the way I do about this. Plus, you asked.