Chinese cheating reported at Pokerstars

07/10/2010

Discussions on the popular poker message board 2plus2 reveal that a large scale collusion ring involving several dozen Chinese players, who profited by as much as $750 000 on the PokerStars.com website, has been uncovered.

Initial reports indicate that PokerStars moved quickly to deal the cheaters out, and has already agreed to reimburse players impacted by the fraud to the tune of $587 000.

The ring apparently operated on $108 Double or Nothing sit and go tournaments, starting last summer but being unmasked as early as February this year.

One of the fraudsters, using the nickname Jane0123 brought the issue into the limelight when he whined on the 2+2 forum that his PokerStars account containing winnings of $10 000 had been frozen by the operator.

In the storm of responses that followed it was alleged that the poster had been a member of the ring who had been reported by other players to PokerStars, and that relevant Sharkscope data showed that Jane0123 had played 11,766 Double or Nothing tourneys with an average stake of $87 and had achieved a profit of $56,300.

Other big players from the Double or Nothing leaderboard at PokerStars were also accused, including one ‘Wudiya’ who made around $96 000 on the DoN games last year.

2+2 revelations include the claim that often half of the players in any given game have been part of the ring, most of them coming from the Chinese town of Hangzhou.

The cheaters may have generated up to $600,000 as rake to PokerStars, some posters claim. While users on 2+2 admit that DoN's are an easy target for colluders and such collusion can be difficult to detect, others say that the cheating happened on such a scale and duration that PokerStars' security should have put their sensors up much sooner.

Investigations continue, but many suspect that so is the cheating, this time possibly by another group of Chinese players who recently joined from the Wenzhou area in China.

Any player suspecting that they have been affected by collusion should contact PokerStars at email address gamesecurity@pokerstars.com.

Read the full story at http://www.coinflip.com/news/collusion-scandal-pokerstars-don-sit-gos.html