Confessions of an Online Poker Pro

[chane]

This is making headlines everywhere.

http://www.zeejustin.com/journal.php?journal_id=81

Has anyone else been reading about this or the JJprodigy incident?

I just read somewhere that JJprodigy is a 16 year old kid. This is all very intriguing. I hope online poker rooms start really coming down on cheaters.

These guys will probably be banned from all online sites for life...not to mention labeled "cheaters" the rest of their life...big mistake.

The story even made headlines at Fox Sports.

http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/5408790

[Dierks]

Wow! Hadn't heard of this or even considered it. I can see the thought behind it, but it is still cheating and sounds like it is being punished accordingly.

[nikekix18]

wow this is absurd...nice article... These guys should be punished for this....i wonder if i have ever played against someone with more than one account.

[TenMostWanted]

Really makes you wonder about a lot of things. Just remember, if he was entering multi tourneys 6 times...and the tourneys had say 1000 entries, he really was getting 6 equal shots at the same thing we had, it is almost impossible to collude in a field that size. Also, imagine paying the buy-in 6 times....that would get crazy. I am not sticking up for this kid, just saying that I am not sure it would even be worth it.

I am far more afraid of card identifying software than collusion. Collusion is an over-rated problem online, in my opinion. I am just afraid of software ruining the legitimacy.

[chane]

If my calculations are correct, and there are 1000 entries that gives him about a 1/167 chance of winning. Everyone else who enters has a 1/1000 chance of winning.

I think it could give a great player like him a very big advantage. Let's say you take 3 of the 6 accounts pretty far into the tournament and 1 or 2 of them gets busted from a bad beat...you still have a shot or 2.

Everybody else gets 1 shot. If you take a bad beat from some donk in a tournament...too bad you're out! Well, not with him...he gets 5 more chances.

I definitely don't think the problem was him dumping chips to his other accounts. The chances of him being able to do that successfully are not very high and colluding doesn't always work anyway.

Morals aside, I think what he did was smart...until his ego and greed got in the way. He got reckless, as most cheaters do, and now his reputation is scarred for life and he's pretty much blacklisted as far as online poker goes.

[Zophar]

After reading the zeejustin link, I was impressed by his seemingly honest show of remorse. Granted, what he did was unethical, but it would be interesting for PP and PS to seriously review his activity to truly get a proper perspective on how far he took it. In a larger field tourney where the possiblity of playing on 2 tables is small, how far removed is this ethically from a player in a Tourney staking several other players in a tourney?

[TenMostWanted]

Stay tuned, as I have an interview with Justin "ZeeJustin" Bonomo scheduled for this week.

[stinkee]

This kid is amazing -- super smart -- I can't believe he's only 16! He is so articulate I think he should run for office - he certainly has the intellect and morals for it!!

[Fooz4Booz]

I was just looking around a little for more info on this, and found this interview with Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi on Pokerlizard.com..........

PL: Speaking of online poker, did you hear about those two players who had their accounts seized for playing multiple entries in one tournament?

MIZRACHI: Yes, they decided to take their tournament winnings away and divide it up between the other players. I played multiple accounts in a tournament before and I didn't even know it was against the rules and they never said anything; but I don't really think it's fair. It's pretty much a normal thing and a lot of players do it; playing two or three entries in a tournament, they're basically trying to give themselves 2 or 3 chances to win the tournament. As long as they're not at the same table, it doesn't really matter. I tried playing a few entries at once but didn't play very well; I can concentrate a lot better with just one. Now I just play the way they want with one account.

When you have a PRO saying he doesn't see anything wrong with playing multi accts, of course you're going to have others doing it.

[butterfly_kzz]

amazing what people do when they r greedy... no matter hw good u r wrong is wrong...