Hello,
To summarise the case again, here are some notable hands:
#2744154945: John limp/folds UTG when Matchstick raises from button
#2744296656: John starts out with a larger stack than Matchstick,
bluffs,
and ends up with an even larger one
#2744313621: Calling with king high isn't neccessarily the wrong
play.
Quite often, players who make this play are reflecting their own
mindset -
they know that they bluff a lot, and so they are more likely to
interpret
another player's bets as bluffs too. John is likely thinking that
Matchstick called a decent preflop raise, and that he's unlikely to be
betting that flop with a queen, a check-raise or slowplay makes a lot
more
sense shorthanded. He's thinking that a seven isn't likely to have
called
preflop, and the 5 then 2 on the turn and river are unlikely to have
improved Matchstick's hand. I'm not going to defend this kind of play,
nor
this kind of thinking, but it's certainly an alternate explanation.
Furthermore, everyone has made a misclick from time to time, and this
is
hardly the most suspicious situation one could occur.
#2744320340: If these two were stack balancing in the above hand, why
do
they immediately return the chips on the next?
You believe that there's a lot of money to be made colluding in the $15
SNG. This may be true, but these two have absolutely no links with
each
other, and have played one event together. They have played 40,000
hands
between them, but only 51 at the same table. There are no suspicious
hands
in the event except from a player calling down with king high. There
are
reasonable alternate explanations for his play there, that's backed up
by
his style of play in other events.
More to the point, the allegation that these two bribed us is frankly
ridiculous. They wouldn't know that they were under investigation - we
don't tell anyone unless we find suspicious hands that we want them to
comment on. Furthermore, we take the integrity of our site very
seriously,
it's a large part of why we are so successful. If we were in the
business
of taking bribes - or doing anything else to undermine the integrity of
our
site, we would not have the numbers on our site that we do today. All
it
would take would be for one person to release evidence on a poker forum
or
newspaper, and we would lose most, if not all of our players. Why
would we
want to let colluders stay on the site for a bribe when it could cost
us
our entire business?
I do agree that there's money to be made in the $15 SNG (I 8 table the
$20
SNG on other sites), but it's hardly going to compensate for the value
of
our business. Furthermore, why would professional colluders play $15
shorthanded? Why not $200 shorthanded?
In any case, as you can see from the above, I ran the same review
myself
for these two players. My results are the same. Based on the lack of
relationship between them, the small amount of play, the lack of any
truly
suspicious hands, and the presence of several exonorating hands, I
conclude
that they are not working together.
I hope that I've set your mind at ease, regarding not only the play of
these two, but also the seriousness with which we take the integrity of
our
site. If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to let
us
know.
Best regards,
Andrew
PokerStars Support Team
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AFter this email I immediatly cashed out, I dont want to play at a site that does not protect its players.
