BBC Investigating the Chinese Collusion Ring at PokerStars
After the TwoPlusTwo forum highlighted the issue of the Chinese Collusion ring at PokerStars, the story became a topic of much interest in the gaming industry. The issue was reported by several online poker new sites and even featured on air by the British Broadcasting Company’s radio.
All this exposure, led Tom Broadbent, a poker player from the U. K. to conduct an investigation on the matter. Broadbent is currently pushing the issue with law enforcement officials in China.
5 Live Investigates, the BBC Radio program hosted by Adrian Goldberg covered the story on the Chinese collusion ring, which involved a group of Chinese poker players who would gather at the high limit Double or Nothing sit and go tables and cheat. As a result of this collusion, PokerStars ended up paying compensation fees to more than 25,000 players. Michael Josem, the Game Security Specialist at PokerStars stated, “We wanted to be fair and reasonable to those players who had been a victim of the collusion ring.”
On his show, Goldberg discussed the collusion ring with Mike Wendling, a BBC correspondent, who investigated the issue. Wendling claimed that collusion could be done with ease by using instant messenger software such as MSN Messenger, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, the telephone or even by soft playing with companions as the ring had done. “Legitimate sites have protection, but the growth of online gaming has caused problems,” he stated.
Wendling’s investigation revealed that while many online poker sites have secure software that alerts them when cheating is happening. Wendling also discussed his findings after interviewing an ex PokerStars employee, who claimed that the security team had been known to have a “difficult time keeping up with complaints.” The employee also claimed that volume of the games and player traffic made it difficult for the site to monitor security, which had opted to shut off auto alerts.
