"Cheaters Caught in the Most Recent Pokerstars Millions"

Articles From: PokerKingBlog.com | Article: 1 and 2

"Cheaters Caught in the Most Recent Pokerstars Millions

With all of the recent talk about strong players taking over accounts for other players late in a tournament, we found it interesting that Pokerstars has busted an account for doing exactly this (account takeover late in a major tournament.) The exact identity of the account is not known as of yet, but it was one of these nine accounts that final tabled the 8/12 Pokerstars Millions tournament:

1. IG0tDibs
2. downosaur
3. Roberta114
4. roosterfish
5. flyndra
6. EirikS
7. PokerSkill
8. bobbybagpipe
9. barbar31

Pokerstars sent an email a player who finished on the final table bubble, saying that an account that had finished in front of him had been disqualified, and he was receiving a bump-up in pay, as per Pokerstars policy.

Pokerstars also noted that the disqualified account wasn't colluding, but instead that another person had taken over the account late in the tournament.

This is happening all the time and really has to stop. As soon as we find out the identity of the disqualified account, we'll post it here. We'd also be interested to know who took over the account, but that will be much harder to find out."

"Petition to Pokerstars - Change Your Policy Regarding Cheaters

As you may or may not know, there was a cheater at the Final Table of the 8/12 Sunday Millions on Pokerstars. We were obviously curious as to the identity of the cheater, who apparently like someone else take over the account late in the tournament. When we emailed Pokerstars to ask them the account name that was found guilty of having cheated, we were told that for privacy reasons, they would not be able to tell us the User ID or why they were disqualified.

In my opinion, this is terrible. Why are we protecting the identity of someone who has cheated and has been subsequently thrown off the site? Doesn't Pokerstars have an obligation to tell us who has been caught cheating, so we can keep an eye out for them on any other sites that they may frequent?

In my opinion, poker sites should operate like the SEC operates when it comes to the stock market in the US. If you are found guilty of something, a public notice should be made identifying at least the User ID of the account that was banned, and why they were banned. Public shame is a pretty effective means of dissuading potential cheaters. Pokerstars should have a public searchable database with all known cheater identities and the reasons why they were banned from the site or suspended.

Many other industries publish the names of people found guilty of fraudulent activity and the reasons why they were punished. Why should online poker be any different? Why does a cheater have a right to privacy?"