"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
Intro:
Collusion in
poker is a fraud that consists in 2 or more players playing in team in a way to
increase global profit playing in the same tables and with the possibility to
share cards and take an edge over their opponents with movements that clearly
benefit their team partners.
Most of the
online poker rooms don’t give an explicit definition of what collusion is so
they have the power of deciding who is a colluder or not at their sole discretion.
This way the doors to corruption are wide open and internal network frauds
since they have the power to punish or protect certain group of players
according to their will.
The network may
protect several players and in case it receives several reports from different honest
players all they have to do is answering individually saying that they
investigated and found no evidences of collusion. This is a perfect kind of
massive fraud since honest players won’t ever find enough evidences to prove
their point of view and will probably lose all their money as victims of the
network fraud that will go unnoticed.
However, there
might occur a problem when the responsible by this kind of fraud are
unqualified (or maybe they don’t even care much about hiding evidences) and
they let too many evidences of their scheme. Even then for a honest player it
would be very hard to prove a fraud like this despite many may have strong
suspicious that they are being victims of a scheme.
The networks,
operators and affiliates of the online poker always try to justify that
networks wouldn’t defraud their players because the rake generated in the
tables is more than enough to get rich and they wouldn’t risk their brand
image. As it is obvious to get rich you have to be ambitious so that argument
is not valid, the money stole from frauds isn’t negligible at all resulting
many times in millions of Euros and normally this money goes to a strict group
of people. This wouldn’t happen if they would share that wealth among affiliates,
operators and networks. That way each would only have a small part and proof of
that is that online poker has been a great target for big fraudsters as you
might see on this link: http://pokercollusion.blogspot.com/p/poker-frauds.html
Ongame fraud (At
least since 2009 and it still goes on)
In the day
06-09-2009 a professional Double or Nothing player: “Normal Player” (true
nickname can’t be revealed for security reasons) began to detect certain
patterns and suspicious players in the poker room bwin of the Ongame network.
Furious with so many defeats most of the time due to same kind of movements
from different players he started to investigate the situation by his own since
Ongame always asked for more hands of the players involved and according to
their investigations there was no collusion.
Certain that
there were schemes at the tables he started to contact several friends about
this and he even made a bet with another professional player “The Better”: In
case he could prove in two years that the network was acting in a dishonest way
(fixing the game, protecting several players and neglecting collusion and/or
investigations) he would receive 5000€ otherwise he would have to pay 1000€ to “The
Better”.
“The Better”
knew several persons at Ongame and he was sure that it was a safe network since
Ongame is owned by bwin and has powerful brands associated such as: BestPoker, Betfair, Betsafe, Betsson, bwin, CasinoEuro, CoralPoker, EuroBetPoker, EuroPoker, EuroSportBet, GalaPoker,
GoalWin, GuruPlay, Heypoker, HollywoodPoker, PAF, Poker.gr, PokerIdol, PokerLoco, PokerRoom, RedKings, ScandicBookmakers, SmartLivePoker, Whitebet)
and even if there was any fraud it would be impossible to explicitly prove it.
This way “The Bettter” could keep a clean image of the network by such a confident
bet with very good odds for “Normal Player”.
After
this bet “Normal Player” thought in the most efficient way to investigate and
expose the fraud that was taking place at Ongame. To avoid the typical answers
from Ongame that always denied any collusion in the hands and denied the occurrence
of more reports about the same players and the conclusion that the reported
players were never colluders it would be necessary to have several accounts
that played in the same tables and make several reports on the colluders
movements so that Ongame couldn’t deny the reports. They could only ignore them
as they did after a certain number of reports.
This
way the Poker Guardians movement was born. “Normal Player” asked a friend to register
the websites Poker Guardians.com and Poker Guardians.net that would be used by Poker
Guardians to expose all frauds that occur in the online poker. It will be the
first website about online poker that instead of trying to deceive players as
an affiliate and defend online poker even when it is a tool to defraud their
players by any means, it will be used to expose frauds by the networks and
protect the common poker player that doesn’t have anyone from “the inside” to
protect him. The main goal is an impartial and incorruptible regulation as an opposite
to the current “regulation” that only demands a fee from time to time and does
nothing for the safety of online poker.
Poker
Guardians detected more than 62 colluder accounts in their investigation.
Please check the list here:
The Poker Guardians that
contributed in this investigation for more than one year and a half were the
following:
p1nupd0nk (profit: 246€)
randompl4y
(profit: 1137€)
_Kahnawake_
(profit: 619€)
Pitboy.
(profit: 696€)
HeinzStein
(profit: -769€)
I Want 1 KK (profit: 138€)
tankiu
(profit: -416€)
oh_isabel
(profit: -309€)
XONPOL
(profit: -108€)
muckitdonk
(profit: 783€)
M4g1c V4g1n4 (profit: -509€)
HolyShove (profit: -1121€)
AKtchim (profit: 1046€)
PreetBharara (profit: -74€)
Vaseline4u
(profit: -672€)
blackwitecat (profit: -599€)
iiiiiioooooo
(profit: 53€)
BigPotPlayer (profit: 2091€)
Total Profit: 2152€
Total Games: 12532
Average Profit: 0,17€/game Locked Money: Around 3000€
All
this accounts are now blocked by collusion according to Ongame. The true motivation
of these detectives was never of defrauding any honest player neither of
getting a profit as you may see by the average profit per game. The main goal
is to prove the complicity of Ongame with a network of hardcore colluders. This
way in case you are not sure if you were injured you can contact us directly
and we will offer a service to detect all games you were injured by the blocked
players at Ongame as well as assistance in all process.
Please read more at:
Please read more at:
Given
the fat that Poker Guardians are professional players an average profit per
game of 0,17€/game proves that the collusion is almost not existent since it is
such a low value for good players.
Out
of curiosity we will highlight 3 regular
players linked to collusion between them and all the network of protected
players with the confirmation of Ongame:
LFT.14 (profit: 30 200€)
GEMERY (profit: -5572€)
nana AA
(profit: -7522€)
Total Profit: 17 106€
Total Games: 37565
Average Profit: 0,455€/game Locked Money: 0
These
players were warned and forbidden to play together when the collusion between
them were more than obvious. No aggressiveness between them, the same style of
play and the typical movements of raise-fold to chipdump. It is also known that
player LFT.14 is linked to many BestPoker players by money transfers and
despite the relationship with the rest of the colluder network is not totally
clear it is obvious that the collusion is not limited to those 3 players since
an average profit of 2,06€ at an average stake of 36€ mostly at DONs turbo is
clearly far superior of any professional player. For example, the professional
player Jayzens has an average profit of -1,68€ per game in 2695 games. What is pretty
expectable taking in consideration the speed and the high hardcore collusion in
all games.
It
is interesting why the player Luiz Fernando Torres (LFT.14) isn’t blocked along
with his accounts GEMERY and nana AA and they still keep playing money from
rakeraces and rakeback that is not allowed by Ongame. It seems that at Ongame
there is place for many exceptions according to their convenience. (please note
that even after being forbidden of playing together they arrived at the same
time at the tables and left at the same hour entering one at a time all day
long, what is obviously not viable for a professional player unless he also
plays with other accounts which is highly likely).
The Poker
Guardians sent and received more than 70 e-mails related to reports. Please
read more at:
Please
note that many information prior to 23-03-2011 mysteriously disappeared by some
naivety of the Poker Guardians that didn’t took the necessary safety measures
to protect their information given the nature of the case.
Resume
of Ongame’s attitude along all the investigation:
- Poker
Guardians detected the colluders since mid 2010 but given to the complexity of
the network of colluders and lack of cooperation from Ongame it was very hard
to establish an initial base of colluders to facilitate in the detection of new
colluders prematurely.
-
Before 23-03-2011 Poker Guardians started to report the most scandalous colluders
(outrageous raise-fold to chipdump with very high big blinds, scandalous
protection in the bubble risking losing with one account to save the other,
constant steals on their mates blinds in any position and so on. Many times
their moves were intercepted and it was clear judging by their normal behavior
that they were helping each other as hard as they could no matter what hands
they had. Please note that all these colluders were very profitable, good
players and probably the same persons since their moves were so similar. They
also showed themselves very comfortable while doing this having absolutely no
problem in folding for any amount of chips and saying that they had 2,6 or 2,7).
- A
big contribution to Poker Guardians investigation was the disclosure of all
nicknames that were in the rake race of BestPoker without hiding their
nicknames with ****. (After this scandal BestPoker already opted to hide the
nicknames with *** for example LFT.14 would be ***.14 This way it is much
harder for a honest player to google and investigate on his own. The nicknames
won’t apper on the search engines). This way Poker Guardians managed to confirm
most of the colluders that were related to the BR team and easily identify new existing
colluders effectively as well as all accounts that were (and are) being created
on a daily basis.
- 15-05-2011
_Kahnawake_ stops to play the BestPoker rake race after the confirmation by
Hannes that there were really 20 reported accounts associated to collusion and
have just been warned. The collusion was intolerable and a honest and lonely
player would lose all their money in a couple of games without even knowing why
all players were playing in a strange way.
- 16-05-2011 and 17-05-2011
Vaseline4u reports _pianista_ crispin_5 _love_stars_ _clarinha_ filedoboi69 and
kabelo dp.
Explaining the collusion and
showing some hands. These players were all colluders without any doubt and they
had no problem in doing hardcore collusion (this means they would do anything
to win: folding for 1 chip if needed)
- 17-05-2011 Hannes says that the
players have been warned and in case it happens again they will be blocked. In
the same day Vaseline4u reports again because the players continued to collude.
- 17-05-2011 Ongame says that they
have investigated and found no collusion so they would take no action against
those players. Please note that Vaseline4u sent a very clear hand between _pianista_
and crispin_5 of a chipdumping in a DON.
Later Ongame will say to _Kahnawake_ that they were colluders after all but
unfortunately had cashed out almost everything. Please also note that there was
taking place a rake race of BestPoker in May and they had to lock them after
the end of May so they could also cash some money from the race. And so they
did.
- 29-05-2011 _Kahnawake_ continues to add nicknames, hands and
behaviors and send it to Ongame through BestPoker.
- 30-05-2011 Ongame sends another
warning to the protected colluders.
- 30-05-2011 A Ongame guarantees that they keep an “eye” on every
table.
- 01-06-2011 (after the rake race)
Hannes says that the following 6 accounts were locked: "crispin_5" ,
"_pianista_" , "mon_cmr" , "filedoboi69" ,
"kabelo dp" , "_love_stars_" and that other 2 accounts had
been found colluding and would be warned: "_sarinha_" and
"_mary_jane"
- 02-06-2011 _Kahnawake_
reports more accounts that are beeing created and other older accounts. Also he
insists in being compensated for the money he lost against the colluders and
highlight that a “thank you” is not rewarding enough for all his hard work. In
fact he was doing Ongame work against the will of the network and without any
cooperation from the network.
- 09-06-2011 Hannes compensates _Kahnawake_
in 715,54$ due to the collusion of the 8 players mentioned on 01-06-2011 and
says that unfortunately most of the money has been already cashed out. Out of
curiosity _mary_jane account still shows activity at least until 17-10-2011 and
is also involved in several chipdumping in Heads Up tournaments after
01-06-2011. Even with more than 2 weeks Ongame manages to “let escape” most of
the money of the colluder accounts (don’t forget that they also received money
from rake races so if they paid on day 1 how could they withdrew everything?)
So how a honest player knows if
Ongame is doing their job? How do you know if the accounts were in fact locked?
Is it a big coincidence that they were so active and had no money at the time
of the “block”? You simply don’t know but after this we hope that you never
trust an online poker network again. Specially Ongame.
Please read more about chipdumping
at the chipdumping section:
- Let’s take a look at more
curiosities. Vaseline4u that correctly reported these players on 16-05-2011 and
17-05-2011 didn’t receive any e-mail saying that after all he was right.
Neither did he receive any compensation from Ongame. Fortunately he was part of
Poker Guardians and this way we now all know how Ongame operates.
- Meanwhile _ Kahnawake _ continues
to report accounts that are created on a daily basis and also the old list of
colluders that hasn’t been blocked with the exception of those 7 nicknames that
at least didn’t play anymore. From this date forward Ongame simply ignored all
reports from _Kahnawake_
- The "Normal Player" bets 2000€ against "The Better" that Poker Guardians will be blocked first than the "Protected Colluders" despite all the reports and evidences. "The Better" accepts it but only pays 2000€ in case he loses the bet since he already know that 5000€ are lost in the first bet.
- 08-07-2011 randompl4y initiates a
wave of reports against the same list of colluders and Ongame ignores all the
reports leaving Victor Arias totaly “speechless” by his own words because he
thought he would have an answer from Ongame and never got one. He even says it
is ridiculous and he doesn’t have any idea what Ongame is doing.
- 17-07-2011 Hannes says that
Ongame blocked some accounts reported by _Kahnawake_ and warned a bunch of
players. No nicknames of blocked players were revealed, no money was returned
to any account of Poker Guardians and collusion levels were still very high. In practical terms nothing happened.
- 25-08-2011 Thiago of BestPoker support
(under suspect by Poker Guardians of beeing involved in the Ongame’s fraud) starts
to make more specific questions about the colluders to _Kahnawake_ in the live
chat and asks for nicknames and types of movements. He asks if _Kahnawake_
still sees those nicknames and moves. He also requests _Kahnawake_ to send the
reports to his personal e-mail: thiago@bestpoker.com
with an explanation of every hand instead of sending to support@bestpoker.com. (This behavior
is unique since all other skins always request to send it to support@skin.com . Except PokerLoco that is
such a small poker room that it is believed that Victor Arias plays every role
of PokerLoco himself).
Please note that the detailed
report to Thiago had no answer from Ongame neither from him.
- In October 2011 _Kahnawake_and
other Poker Guardians are blocked without any warning by e-mail or
justification. In this case Ongame started to answer to e-mails saying that
they blocked the accounts due to suspect of collusion and were now
investigating (trying to justify their lock since there was almost no collusion
at all. Especially when compared to the previous BR team and the other hardcore
colluders believed to have the cooperation of Ongame).
In this case Ongame took the
initiative of locking and then investigating by their own. No need to show many
hands, table IDs and so on. They took some ridiculous example hands and IPs.
Poker Guardians never hide devices neither IPs so if that was the problem why
they let Poker Guardians play for more than one year and a half? As to the
hands obviously they won’t find much because Poker Guardians always tried not
to injure any player except the colluders, proof of that is the global profit
that is approximately zero.
Please note that Ongame still
ignored many e-mails when confronted with facts that showed that they treated
players differently, especially when Poker Guardians sent more than 40 hands of
the protected colluder group and compared to hands that Ongame accused Poker
Guardians.
- There were also some threats at
liberty of expression when randompl4y and _Kahnawake_ talked about this case in
the chat. Also one affiliate was target of extorsion and threats by PokerLoco
that blocked his account by their own will saying that if finds collusion intolerable
even after knowing everything that is going on so they are considered
accomplicies of Ongame mega fraud.
- PokerLoco/Ongame not only lied and
ignored Poker Guardians several times but also forged evidences saying that a
player was compensated for the collusion of the Poker Guardians.
Please read more at: http://pokercollusion.blogspot.com/p/forged-evidences.html
- "The Better" lost all the bets for unwisely trusting Ongame Network.
