PokerStars Busts Collusion Ring
One of the biggest fears of online poker players is the fear of collusion. It’s easy for players to collude, and it’s hard for sites to catch colluding players. More importantly, sites are afraid of going after players without airtight evidence. A few players from the same city in the same room might look suspicious, especially if they’re taking home a lot of the winnings, but that’s not enough to prove that there’s cheating going on.
That’s why the player forums have been buzzing on 2+2 for months and some players have stopped frequenting PokerStars sit-n-go Double-or-Nothing tournaments, but accounts were only frozen for the first time last week. A user with the nickname Jane0123 showed up on 2+2 complaining about an account that was frozen. Usually, such complaints are met with sympathy and outrage. This time, the response was “Ya finally got busted huh? Well it’s about time. I sent about 25 emails complaining about you…”
While no one is certain how many people were involved, there seem to have been quite a few, mostly from the Hangzhou province of China. The group would take up half of the seats at a $52-$108 Double-or-Nothing sit-n-go and proceed to knock out the other players.
PokerStars reports that in addition to freezing accounts and seizing $85,000 from the ring, they have begun to pay back the $587,000 that they believe is owed to other players who sustained losses to the ring. Players are angry that PokerStars took so long to discover, prove, and rectify the situation, but it is hard to fault the site, since the adverse publicity of freezing even one account without adequate evidence of wrongdoing could be detrimental to the site’s overall reputation. Moreover, it looks like PokerStars is poised to lose half a million dollars in this deal. If the collusion could have been stopped earlier, it would have saved the company a large amount of money. It’s hard to imagine that PokerStars didn’t consider the monetary angle as well.
PokerStars asks any player who suspects collusion or suspects that they were affected by collusion to email them at gamesecurity@pokerstars.com.
