Absolutely blatant

dinnalook good, what did the raiser raise with pre and call with2river?

Initial limper who dumped his chips into the big blind folds on the river to the 200 bet, so we shall never know, but the raise of half stack from the big blind pre, with 3 5 off, is about as blatant as it gets.

The two of them were playing at the same tables together until 2 a.m, then both resurfaced at noon today in the same games.Only ever play in games where the other is playing from the info on Sharkscope, they are even daft enough to have similar usernames. To be honest I had them pegged as cheats even before the hand above.

Very low level collusion, but collusion nonetheless, and actually a very straightforward case for Ongame to deal with. Ban players, refund those they played against. Lets see if it happens, without them pulling the thread.

i hadnt noticed the pass onriver.
if u didnt have the other info they could agrue the raiser was on the diamonddraw and missed.

but with all the ither infou have itcertainly lookslike collusion.

and no i dont want 250/1 u get a proper refund.

Next time , please use Vill1 and Vill2 for clarity...

this hand does not imply collusion at all

the rest of the info does

Maybe they are twins and like playing together...

the whole playing together thing and info from sharkscope implies collision
this hand just adds to the speculation.
good find, I hope you get refunded 1000 gold coins

Help us out chip, put their names up. Ive done this in the past ( outrageous collusion )

All I will say Ghostbusters, is look at the stack sizes. The guy in the big blind has 900 chips after  putting his blind in, and raises by 300, with 3-5 off, knowing he is pricing the other guy who has 3400 into calling, and has minimal fold equity left for the flop.

I dont see any advantages to raising by 300 with 3-5 off there, unless you are planning a stop and go by shoving any flop, and in that case why not just raise to 400, leaving you more fold equity for when you shove.

Okay the big blind flops the nuts, but there's plenty of ways for him to get outdrawn both on the flop and river, but he puts tiny bets in. Im sorry but nobody in their right mind isnt shoving his last 400 in on the turn.

I accept that one hand in isolation proves nothing,but if anything, their bubble play was even more blatant.

I don't want to name them because I don't want to give Ongames fraud department the same get out of jail free card they have had in the past i.e. "as soon as they were outed on the forum they vanished so we couldn't really prove anything or freeze their accounts"

The bottom line is that they have played further games together after I sent my email in asking for it to be escalated to Fraud, and I'm happy for that to be the case.

What ??

I always raise from any where with 34 3 5 or 7 2 off !!
I have a return off 54% on stars
won the Big $162 the other week and busted someone on final table raising 45 off he calls flop 45K   i push all in he goes into time bank 50 sec and calls with AK goodbye
I hold

I love taking your money see ya off for somemore bye fish
would drain you on Betfair but its such a shittte site

its like your after timing on the footie forum page I'm afraid :

[x] Better bait needed.

There was a lot of this earlier in the year on the 10 seat DONs. Here's one I reported:


TEXAS_HOLDEM, NO_LIMIT, T5-145261643-25
played at "Table #1" for USD TC from 2011-05-21 19:20 until 2011-05-21 19:21

Seat 1: lucky-benny (1,275 in chips)
Seat 2: TrabAntal (1,290 in chips)  &
Seat 4: vasssiliy17 (2,490 in chips)
Seat 6: CHEREAUUU (3,480 in chips)
Seat 8: -XBV- (2,210 in chips)
Seat 9: vlajko30 (2,885 in chips)
Seat 10: Steve10K (1,370 in chips)

ANTES/BLINDS
vlajko30 posts ante (40), Steve10K posts ante (40), lucky-benny posts ante (40), TrabAntal posts ante (40), vasssiliy17 posts ante (40), CHEREAUUU posts ante (40), -XBV- posts ante (40), vlajko30 posts small blind (200), Steve10K posts big blind (400),

PRE-FLOP
lucky-benny folds, TrabAntal calls 400, vasssiliy17 folds, CHEREAUUU raises to 800, -XBV- folds, vlajko30 folds, Steve10K folds, TrabAntal raises to 1,250 and is all-in, CHEREAUUU folds.

SHOWDOWN
TrabAntal wins 2,480.

SUMMARY
Dealer: -XBV-
Pot: 2,480
lucky-benny, loses 40
TrabAntal, bets 840, collects 2,480, net 1,640
vasssiliy17, loses 40
CHEREAUUU, loses 840
-XBV-, loses 40
vlajko30, loses 240
Steve10K, loses 440


It's important that players report this kind of thing, as fat chance that ongame are going to police the site.

Hi Chip,

To be fair the only part of your scenario that points me too collusion is that you always notice them playing together.  Collusion could be a factor (not denying that), I am just saying that I have made the same type of play on multiple occasions. 

Like I've said before, not a wining player personally, all though it's starting too make sense :).  For the record I still dislike Ongame and BetFair Poker, just giving a voice to other side.

I would refund you anyways because being that you post I assume you are living breathing human.

Good luck CHIP

1.01 GUBBED !!!!

We are writing to inform you that following investigations into recent poker activity on Betfair’s T5-199505821 tournament, we discovered a number of players colluding as you correctly observed. As a result, you were also correct to state you were adversely affected by these players financially due to their activity.

The players colluding have had funds debited following this investigation and we have credited you with the amount of $22.00 due to your unwitting involvement with the tournament concerned.

The players concerned have been permanently suspended and will not be able to play on the poker tables with Betfair again.

If you have any further questions regarding the above please contact us on the below e-mail address.

Kind Regards,

Investigations Team

Bans and refunds within 24 hours !!!! Christ on a bike !!!!

Well done to investigations and well done Chipfire.

Now lets get some more of these cheating bastards out of the game.


NAME AND SHAME

hope they refunded every1 affected by these two players in all their other games, not just potentailly the maximum of 4 players in that 1 game highlighted by chip.

Wow. Nice to know Investigations Team will look at these items and act.
Need to get all the cash and refund to all their opponents (may be on 8c per $1) but better than 0.

this is the first ever refund due to collusion i have heard about on betfair

now if only they would go back through their archives and refund everyone the same..........

cmon, its almost xmas folks, we can wish upon a star or two

happy chrimbo to all

Happy Xmas Nipples, erm I mean Apples

More posts deleted on this thread I see, as well as the entire thread which I put up last night about the dodgy hand history on stars.

None of which broke any rules, but that doesnt seem to make any difference.

I think we can take the "new, super efficient investiagtion team" with a gigantic pinch of salt as a result.

I posted a somewhat cynical response last night, which immediately got removed.

Yes, I noticed that, it was one of the ones I referred to.

Nothing whatsover wrong with it, no rules broken, yet some tvvat deleted it and many others. Maybe whoever it was should work in North Korea, he / she would fit in perfectly there

The 2 players were relatively new to the site, both big losers, and frankly were crap colluders. Where you have two guys playing exclusively with each other, and openly chip dumping, any half decent opponent should pick up on it fairly quickly and it should be a fairly straightforward case to conclude.

Obviously a big team of colluders, playing a massive number of games, not always playing the same opponents,blocking their Scope stats, and sharing hole cards but not obviously chip dumping are much harder to detect.

I don't think anyone was claiming there was a new, super duper, investigation team. I had done all the donkey work in this case, and my job was all the easier because the players were dumb enough to show hole cards to the table and not block their stats.

While it was the 4th or 5th set of colluders I had reported that I believe were banned, it's the first time I have ever had a refund.

I don't know what is worse, their almost total inability to do anything about collusion, or their insistence on deleting just about every post on the subject

Well done chip !!!

A gentle reminder that all suspicions of collusion should be sent to our investigations team at Betfair.
Happy for you to post details /discussions of suspected cheating on the forum so long as the names of the accused are not mentioned.
We will of course act on anything that is sent to us should they be found guilty.

investigations@betfair.com

Mr PR, the whole point why names are mentioned is so that other people can check if they come up against the same players, can you seriously not understand that?!? 

And don't give me some tripe about the Data Protection Act, that is used to protect against the misuse of a person's private and confidential information, to suggest that this would include a made up screen name on a poker site which is registered in a different country is totally laughable.

Pathetic.

Dear masked avenger

The reason why you cannot name a suspected cheater is because you would be open to prosecution.
Not only could you be prosecuted but so would we for printing it.
By all means once they have been found guilty print their names to warn others - you can even talk about their activity and ask the community if they think they are guilty but you can't publish their names.

Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. This can be also any disparaging statement made by one person about another, which is communicated or published. It is usually a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant).[1]

But again, this would involve the personal details which would lead to the identification of that individual.

Can you explain how this applies to a screen name on a poker site which is registered in another country? How does one "defame" a screen name?

A screen name / nickname is personal information.

Example:

If you were to accuse me on this forum of cheating it will affect me and potentially the people I play against online.
When I am at a table people would treat me differently which could affect my profitablity. If your accusations were not true and I was to take you to court I can accuse you of defamation of character that resulted in loss of earnings. If playing poker was my living and you accuse me of cheating I may not be able to get a game online etc. I would have to change my username all because you have accused me without proof. Your alias is your identity online it doesnt matter if it is linked to your real name.

As stated previously I am happy for you to discuss it - you can even PM each other lists of people you suspect but you cannot use this forum as a platform to name them.



(This has nothing to do with what country the site is registered)

I think there is a world of difference between publishing a hand history which looks a bit iffy and asking for other peoples viewpoints as to how it has been played, as opposed to simply naming players and branding them as cheats with no supporting evidence whatsoever.

The reason I didnt name the players in the initial hand history was precisely because I WAS ACCUSING THEM OF CHEATING, I was 99% certain they were cheating, but as I had no access to their accounts I could not know for certain they were cheating.

I followed the correct procedure and Betfair acted accordingly. If anyone particularly wanted to know who the players were then they could quite simply have accessed the information from Sharkscope.Alternatively people could have sent me a PM and got the info that way.

I know a lot on here dont much like me, but I can honestly say I have never ignored an email or a PM from anyone on the site.

The thread I put up was entitled "Is this cheating" NOT "This is cheating" - a quite important difference I'm sure you will appreciate.

The hand history looked very dodgy, a player who was chip leader min raised to 600 and then folded when the shortstack pushed for an extra 585. I pointed out that in the player chat, the person claimed to have had 72o. Which was blatantly nonsense.

The reply I had advised me to use sharkscope to see if the two players had played together. Which was fair enough.

I then replied about half an hour later stating the player who had folded had disabled his sharkscope stats, and that someone who was epxerienced enough to do that would know full well that raise / folding in this manner was nonsense.

Betfair then removed the entire thread.

Nothing was said which was defamatory to that point, unless of course it was said later this morning or afternoon. In which case why not simply remove those posts, rather than look as if you are covering things up (which many have commented has happened previously)?

Did you send the hand history onto Investigations via the Helpdesk ? I deffo would if one of them had their stats blocked.

No, because it took place on stars

They did a through investigation and found nothing between the two players in question. Which I accept completely, I have great confidence in how they operate. Maybe it was just a misclick or an error, but it certainly looked dodgy.

For what it's worth (maybe not a great deal), I think you are doing a pretty good job against overwhelming odds