Huge DoN scandal, colluders from Hangzhou China on stars banned

[NoWuckingFurries]

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.

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

 

[Pothole]

People need to read this:

http://daleroxxu.blogspot.com/2010/05/49-player-chinese-cheating-scandal-on.html

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.

 

[brank]

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.

 

[only_bridge]

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

 

[dj11]

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

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

 

[buckster436]

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

 

[Pothole]

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

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.

 

[slycbnew]

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.

 

[NoWuckingFurries]

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

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.

 

[Pothole]

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.

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

 

[santa fe slim]

Interesting post Fox. Makes you wonder what else is going on that is undiscovered/unreported/ignored??
I don't play much on Stars. This is certainly not an incentive to change that.......

 

[Makwa]

Back to the Point???

Lots of excellent thoughts on DONs and game theory etc. above, but the issue of widespread collusion coming from china and elsewhere is more central IMHO.

I play a lot of stud at stars and have tagged at least a dozen players who repeatedly show up together, engage in some suspicious moves (dumping, softplay), and usually leave tables almost together if anyone questions them. I mean lots, to the point I now look for non-chinese tables if I want a non-maniac game (yes they often donk off lots of chips chasing or bluffing, more than usual)... and yes I mean today.

Anyhoo, call it racist, nationalist, whatever... they are an identifiable crew.

Remember the Russian 'timplay' thread and forums?

Keep yr eyes open. I think as China opens up to poker we will see a tsunami of chinese communist/capitalist poker players. And as we all know, the Chinese like to be organized. Really organized. Culturally, many people see teaming up to beat the "West" as perfectly acceptable behaviour, not criminal...

Much more to be said here but don't want to say that every Chinese, Russian, Romanian etc. player is out to collude against "us" rolleyes: :listen: )... but we have seen the crews, and they will evolve.

What Stars will do over time?? They certainly want the Chinese market...

 

[slycbnew]

Have you reported the stud players? What limit are you seeing this at? Not just curiosity, I also play stud at PS, but I don't think I'm good enough at the game to be able to see collusion.

 

[Makwa]

Have you reported the stud players? What limit are you seeing this at? Not just curiosity, I also play stud at PS, but I don't think I'm good enough at the game to be able to see collusion.

Not yet, am just starting to track them formally.

Actually, I don't mind having them around sometimes, they make some terrible plays.

Limits I see them are .50-1 up to 3-6, more at higher limits. There are several from Fujian province, changiekseli and Bejing multitabling at 2-4 tables right now... I have 3 marked...