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On February 12th, 2006, a player known online as
JJProdigy, ranked at the time on PocketFives.com as one
of the top five players on the internet, won the $500k
Guaranteed tournament on PartyPoker. He won it playing
on a different account than usual, an account called
“ABlackCar.” This wouldn’t normally be a big deal, as
players often switch names online to maintain anonymity.
The problem was that the JJProdigy account was also entered in the
tournament, and it had finished around 2,000th place.
Since the very beginning, the same concerns about online poker
have constantly resurfaced and they can generally be summed up with
a simple question: Is this safe?
While the old myth that online poker is “rigged” will never quite disappear
for good, many of the safety concerns people have are legitimate
issues that constantly need to be addressed by the gaming sites.
Various forms of cheating have surfaced from time to time in
online poker. In order to stop any unfair activity by a player, a site
must, first, become aware of it, then devise a solution to the problem
and follow through on it. Recently, PartyPoker became the
first site to take action against perpetrators of a form of cheating
that had previously not been addressed, at least publicly: multiaccounting.
The idea of multi-accounting is simple. A player enters a multitable
tournament with more than one account (either on the same
computer or multiple computers), and thereby has multiple chances
to win that tournament. It seems that a number of top players had
been doing this in the biggest
tournaments, although evidence shows that multi-accounting was
occasionally seen in some of the smaller fields as well. The intention
of the multi-account player is, obviously, to have more chances to win
the big prize, but the threat exists that two accounts, operated
by the same player, could be seated at the same
table. In this instance, one player would
be aware of two different sets of hole cards
at that table and could potentially dump
chips from one of their accounts to another.
JJProdigy was “outed” by a friend of his
on the PocketFives.com forum. The exposure
was unintentional – he and his friend did not
realize what an enormous storm this would
cause in the world of online poker. The friend simply
wanted to congratulate him on winning the tournament,
which paid a first prize of $140k. It was, in fact, known and accepted
among many of the top players that multi-accounting was common;
and many of them had no problem with it.
Others had a big problem with it, however, and many made their
voices heard. David Cossio and Brett Jungblut were two who stood out.
Jungblut, known online as “Gank,” is a World Series of Poker bracelet
winner, former member of “The Crew,” and a Bluff columnist. As a
highly respected voice in the online poker community, he made his
feelings clear on this issue – that these players were ruining the game.
They were selfishly giving themselves a higher chance of a big score,
while hurting the chances of the many low limit players and their
dreams of winning a big tournament.
Cossio, known online as “sirio11,” is another highly regarded player
in both online and live tournaments. His was, perhaps, the loudest
voice of dissent. He warned that multi-accounting had the potential
to completely ruin online tournament poker. The likelihood
that a player could be seated at one table with two or more
accounts was too great. The practice, he said, had to stop.
A few days after JJProdigy’s win, PartyPoker announced
that they were seizing all funds in both of his accounts.
The $140k was to be redistributed to the players that
had competed in the tournament, moving each
player up one spot in the money. His other
money on PartyPoker was seized, too –
about $40k. Both accounts, JJProdigy and
ABlackCar, were terminated.
The other poker sites did not waste
any time, and soon, JJProdigy’s
accounts on Full Tilt, UltimateBet,
and PokerStars had also been
closed. He had gone, in one week’s
time, from being one of the
biggest stars in the game to being
banished from the online community.
It was clear that the gaming
sites were making a point: If you
give yourself any sort of unfair
advantage in our game, you will be
punished severely.
Just as the controversy was dying
down, it was pushed back into the spotlight
on February 24th. Another player had been caught, and this time, he was not carelessly exposed in a
forum; he had been tracked down by a PartyPoker audit. And it
was an even bigger name than JJProdigy.
Justin Bonomo, known online as “ZeeJustin,” posted an email
he had received from PartyPoker, along with his own statement
about what was going on. The email stated that PartyPoker had
discovered that Bonomo was using six different accounts in the
same tournament on a regular basis. They had seized all of his
funds from the six accounts, which totaled nearly $100k.
PokerStars also closed his account.
Bonomo, a popular blogger and the fourth place finisher in a
European Poker Tour event in 2005, admitted in his statement
that he had done some unethical things. He confessed that he
had been at the same table as himself, and implied that it had
happened on several occasions. He wanted to make it clear that
he never chip-dumped between his accounts, and the evidence
seemed to corroborate this. He also said that he had attempted to
negate his edge by opening several more sit-n-go tournaments in
the instances where he had multiple accounts at the same table,
so that he would not be able to focus as much on the table where
he had the two accounts.
Despite his efforts to “negate his edge,” it’s hard to argue
against the fact that some edge will still exist. If nothing else,
there is the situation where both accounts have a legitimate
hand, and end up playing their hands against each other. If the
action is any different than it would be between two players who
don’t know each other’s cards (and I don’t see how it couldn’t
be), then the integrity of the game has been compromised. It’s
clear that while Justin may have been attempting to be as ethical
as he could in these situations, entering a tournament
under two or more accounts is a problem in itself, and a player
having two different accounts at the same table is just one
of the problems it leads to.
Both JJProdigy and ZeeJustin have more or less been
ousted from the online community, and their support
bases have diminished significantly since
the start of the controversy. Early on, there
were a lot of people who spoke out in their
defense, using a number of justifications,
such as the ones below, for
what had been done:
A lot of players do this – This
is an easy one to put down. The fact that a practice
is prevalent does not make
it ethical. In fact, this case just
showed that it was an even
bigger problem than people
initially thought.
Players were only
doing it in huge tournaments
(with thousands
of players),
where it was very
unlikely that they’d
end up with two
accounts at the same table – First off, this wasn’t true. ZeeJustin
claimed to only multi-account in tournaments with over 1,000
players, but JJProdigy was shown to have done it in smaller tournaments,
too. It is yet to be determined how often this was happening
and in what size tournaments. Also, ZeeJustin admitted to
being at the same table with another of his accounts.
Multi-accounting does not give players an edge – This is
technically true as long as they aren’t at the same table with
multiple accounts. A player is simply paying twice to have two
chances to win a tournament. The player still has to be a winning
player to make this a profitable thing to do. However, this doesn’t
make the practice any more ethical, and while it doesn’t usually
give the player a huge edge, it does make it even harder for
the smaller players to have a chance to win. As I’m sure you can
imagine, having six accounts in play for every superstar would
make the field drastically tougher for everyone else.
Both players have now been removed from their listing as top
players on PocketFives.com, which we hope makes the point
that there is an ethical component to “greatness.” While there is
little doubt that JJProdigy and ZeeJustin possess extreme talent
at the poker table, their actions posed a major threat to the game
we all love, and they needed to be stopped.
The poker sites made a big stride in February
towards assuring their customers of the
“safe and secure” environment that
they often tout in commercials.
Multi-accounting has likely been
completely stopped, or at least
slowed to the point where its
effects are negligible; and players
are now aware that PartyPoker
and other sites are continually
hunting out and punishing those
who break the rules. When
other forms of cheating arise,
we can all count on the
sites’ dedication to
weeding them out,
thus maintaining a
level playing field
where we can all
enjoy a fair game
from the comfort
of our homes.
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