A (cynical?) Look At Cheating |
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Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 11:43 am GMT by wEbMaStEr
I suppose anyone who blows the whistle on anything is always going to be looked on with disbelief?
I mean, if you're on the inside of something why would you whistleblow and thus end the benefits the scam has for you.
Also there is the fact that none of us wants to look like a mug, so it's best when someone tells us we've been taken for a mug to poo-poo their claims.
Reading this guys site tho....... i just dunno.
It's scary scary stuff.
I dunno why he would make these claims because he is blowing his own funding, plus if true he will be making dangerous enemies.
He says he has his own reasons for doing what he is doing.
Supposing he has made most or all of it up for some cynical reasons of his own, it doesn't mean that others are not doing what he claims is going on.
Anyways here's the site, be prepared tho, it will probably give you nightmares.
http://www.pokermafia.com
ermmm you're wanting to be reading "free articles"
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Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 12:11 pm GMT by wEbMaStEr
Ok having done some research on this guy "Russ Georgiev" It seems he has made thousands of posts on RGP, almost all of which are dissertations on cheating in high stakes poker.
Self deluded and paranoid or 2 phrases which pop up time and again to describe him, others respect and admire him.
Does he have some private agenda against casinos? or is he in the employ of online poker rooms?
Who knows?
Whatever the reasons, it certainly makes the theories about collusion online and poker bots seem like small potatoes in comparison.
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 12:57 pm GMT by mindgame
This plays right into what I've been saying here over and over. Cheating is going on all the time everywhere. Just reading through this guy's article "Poker 102" and you can see the damage 3 guys could do together online with the simple expedient "best hand plays."
In the Chicago area where I play I'd gotten friendly over the last few months with a fellow widely regarded as one of the toughest pros in town. One evening I sat next to him and was amazed that he was letting me see his hands--as he picked them up and looked at them--for about an hour. I just didn't get it. Obviously I was being invited into the "best hand plays" game, but I had know idea why or what he was doing. All I can tell you is that I've never played at the same table as he does again. What I need to learn to watch for, obviously, is who regularly sits next to him--so that I can learn over time who is in the pack. The regular pros are out there to make a living. They don't need each others' money because there plenty else around. So they share info. Makes sense. How the hell you crack the hand signals, though, is beyond me.
I still think the biggest danger is always going to be online. Go to the Poker Player magazine homepage and check out their forum on hold'em...read the section on "Online Cheats" (or somehting like that). It suggests that the wiz kids in college aren't just using their laptops to give them the mathmatically correct move--some of them are able to predict the actual cards coming to accuracies up to 90%.
Baby, it's a jungle out there. Play if you like--I always will--but don't put your head in the sand and deny the risks.
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:00 pm GMT by Fat Tony
i've read some of this guys posts on RGP and have come to the conclusion that he's a bit of a whacko.
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:14 pm GMT by Always_Bored
| Fat Tony wrote: | | i've read some of this guys posts on RGP and have come to the conclusion that he's a bit of a whacko. |
ill have to agree. Im not saying cheaters arent out there but this guy is a bit crazy. Even his strategies are a bit wierd.
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:48 pm GMT by mindgame
Come on, you cannot deny the fundamental logic of 2 or 3 players using the "best hand plays" strategy. He's absolutely right that it will prevent the sucker from ever getting the right odds on his bets. If they can learn a set of 17 signals to convey their down cards, then look at the advantage--it's insurmountable.
Okay he's wacky...does that mean he's wrong?
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:51 pm GMT by Geno
Cheating will never go away, that's life sadly. This guy seems to back up wot he says with no facts whatsoever which just makes him the same as any of us speculating on the ways people cheat.
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:54 pm GMT by bigddyburn
Ive read alot of his posts, if he wasnt so over the top and ignorant with a lot of his stuff he could have made a lot of valid points~ and why admit to cheating on party poker?Thats like hanging the sign in the basement window that says meth lab entrence in back!
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:33 pm GMT by Fat Tony
| mindgame wrote: | Come on, you cannot deny the fundamental logic of 2 or 3 players using the "best hand plays" strategy. He's absolutely right that it will prevent the sucker from ever getting the right odds on his bets. If they can learn a set of 17 signals to convey their down cards, then look at the advantage--it's insurmountable.
Okay he's wacky...does that mean he's wrong? |
no, and i'm not trying to deny it. but this guy posts so much that he's gotta end up being right about a few things along the way. you gotta sift thru a lot of crap in his writings to find the odd nugget that's true. he also has a very high opinion of himself.....like there's nothing going on in the poker world that he doesn't have intimate knowledge of......sorry, but that's a bit much.
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 6:23 pm GMT by Reverend SC
People cheat at poker? When did that start?
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 6:26 pm GMT by mindgame
Why reverand! Don't people go to confession and tell all at your church???
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 7:50 pm GMT by Fat Tony
apparently not . 
Posted Tue Oct 05, 2004 8:34 pm GMT by Always_Bored
| Reverend SC wrote: | | People cheat at poker? When did that start? |
yesterday i think.
Posted Wed Oct 06, 2004 5:12 am GMT by wEbMaStEr
| Reverend SC wrote: | | People cheat at poker? When did that start? |
Well according to Russ G no-one has ever been caught cheating in a high stakes poker game 
Whether the guy is a crank or not, and to do this he has got to be somewhere along the lunacy scale, some of his writing is very good and entertaining, he should give up trying to convince the world, i think you can equate him with someone trying to convince the world he was abducted by aliens, and write a screenplay. cos i would go pay* to watch a movie about the stuff he's writing.
* when i say "pay" i mean i would steal it off the internet
Posted Thu Oct 07, 2004 9:36 pm GMT by sleepless rounder
the picture of the cheap plastic chips is just classy haha.
i mean, come on!
Posted Mon Oct 11, 2004 4:01 pm GMT by JohnnyCache
You don't even need the best hand strat to cheat. You just need to get a couple people that really know how to play, and just agree to split your winnings evenly, later. Then you can play against each other just like normal - cause you're dividing it up evenly AFTER YOU LEAVE. The 2 or three of you are milking the fish together WITHOUT any exposure. It doesn't provide the edge of 'cheating' but it's the lowest risk form of collusion I can imagine. . .
Posted Mon Oct 11, 2004 5:35 pm GMT by mindgame
I don't see how that IS collusion. As long as neither one of you is changing what he's doing, it's just risk/reward sharing. The key thing, it would seem to me, for something to be cheating is that someone has to get cheated--or at least be a target for it. In other words, the outcome is skewed unfavorably and unethically toward the cheater. But in this case the "fish" aren't losing any more than they normally would, because the two playing the same bankroll are playing their normal games.
The question is, do THEY even know that they are playing "normally?" Can they really know that they would have raised or even called their partner with the hand they had when they DO know that the downside risk of losing any money to him is eliminated?
I've often wondered about this. You see husbands and wives playing together in home games, and I've just never been comfortable with it. Most pros who played their regional circuit and then took a bankroll to Vegas (and this includes Brunson) shared a bankroll at least periodically with another pro while they were on the road. This allowed them to split expenses and also protected the stake from getting evaporated during a horrible run. But had they been playing with me (like who am I kidding, right?) I would have been fundamentally suspicious about their arrangement.
Posted Mon Oct 11, 2004 7:29 pm GMT by Cyberhwk
| mindgame wrote: | | As long as neither one of you is changing what he's doing, it's just risk/reward sharing. |
But they might be. Victim is in the SB, BB raises, then their accomplice reraises to get the SB out knowing that no matter who wins or loses, you'll get a cut at the end of the day.
Also you'll have more people trying to suck out against good hands.
Posted Mon Oct 11, 2004 9:34 pm GMT by wEbMaStEr
I am not suggesting that this is in any way cheating, but, it does bear looking at, in the recent TOC event, you have Annie and Howiedown to last three players, Annie raises then Helmuth folds and Howie moves all in (77) Annie then calls his all in with 66.
Now like i said i aint suggesting cheating/collusion, but here you got a brother & sister down to the last 3 in a major prizemoney tourney, if it's only those 2 in the pot and 1 is all in, the other is gonna call for sure, either way one of them is going into heads up with a massive stack.
Look at it this way, if Helmuth had been in Howies seat and had moved all in, would Annie still have called him, putting most or all of her chips at risk with 66, knowing that if she loses she is out (or near enough) and Helmuth has a massive chipstack to play her brother with.
I use this as an example, but i have read of cases, in this years Paris WPT, it was getting down to the nitty gritty and the 2 remaining Ladbrokes players were at same table, one of them moved all in and the other called with a baby Ace or something. Later in an interview he admitted that his motives for doing so were, that at least one of them would be in a great chip position, and no, he would probably not have called if it had been another player moving all in.
is this cheating? certainly if i was against a brother/sister or husband/wife or 2 players sponsored from the same company in the last 3 of a major tournament, i would not fancy my chances.
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