chinamaniac

The year was around 2006 and I was working as a sous chef in a high end restaurant. At the time I was heavily involved in sports gambling and was playing poker at least 20 hours a week. I would play a lot in local live 1-2 nl games and play some 5-10 and 10-20 limit at Foxwoods as well. And I had been dabbling in online poker as well since 2004. I never really played over 5-10 limit online accept the few times I ran my roll up in a drunken session and I busted A LOT and rarely cashed out.

But around this point in time I was starting to get better. I was reading a lot of posts on poker forums and soaking in lots of information and I was asking questions to a lot of pros about hands and figuring out what I was doing right and wrong. At this point I was also figuring out how to make extra money with rakeback and bonuses. The first stop for me was full tilt poker. I had an account there for years but never deposited as I always played on Pokerstars. I deposited like 2k on full tilt and got the max bonus and decided I was going to clear this and go to site to site and bonus whore for extra money.

I cleared the FTP bonus in less than a week and ran that 2k up to about 10 or 15 k or so and was happy. I was looking around for the next site I could do this on and that was Absolute Poker. I joined AP and I was having some success there. I believe I cleared their bonus and I was withdrawing to Netteller every day. Then it happened.

I was playing in a 25-50 limit game and this guy joined on my right. He was playing pots with everyone but from what I remember he played a lot of pots with me. I would get a big hand and we would get in a ton of bets on each street and then if I folded he would always show me the hand that had no business putting in that many bets on that many streets and he would taunt me as well. I kept saying wow this guy sucks and he would just destroy me and any time I folded he would show me a hand that always worse than what I was playing. He didn't have to show but he did to taunt me. I lost 5-10k and felt something was wrong and vowed never to play there again.

Not long after that game a scandal broke out about players being "superusers" on that network and them having the ability to see others hole cards. Am I certain I was cheated? No..... But AP never gave me my hand histories which I tried to get for years following that game.

The second instance where I felt something was wrong was on Full Tilt Poker in the summer of 2010. By this time I was an established professional limit player and I was having a lot of success online.

I was in a 10-20 game vs a guy that was super spewy and I knew I would get his chips. I challenged him to play higher and he had no problem with that even though according to tracking site PTR he had no experience playing above that. We moved to 15-30 and it went back and forth but he was really bad and I challenged him to play higher. Again he went to 30-60 with no problem and then turned into the best limit player ever. We may have played 50-100 as well but I can't remember. What I do remember is this guy who never played that high beating me for $5995.50 and turning into an absolute shark as the game went on.

Now am I sure I was cheated? NO..... Did he maybe just run hot? Most Likely..... What I do know is I wrote a blog about the frustration of this match here

http://www.donkdown.com/forum/mid-hi...og-t77081.html

and people were saying maybe he ran hot, maybe he got better as time went on etc etc etc . and gained confidence etc etc. Reggiman played him after I wrote this blog and took a little from the guy and that made me feel better. Now I was feeling like the guy just ran hot on me. But after Reggi got a little from this guy HE DISSAPEARED and never played on this account again. It doesn't mean I was cheated but I accurately predicted that I wouldn't be surprised if this guy would never be found on FTP again. And he never played another hand after his short session with Reggiman. Here is his screen name and as you can see my blog was posted on the 29th and you can see he never played a hand after that


http://www.pokertableratings.com/ful...rch/bagyadoans


Now I would guess 99.9 % of the time most donks go on a heater like this they will blow it all back. MAYBE they would cash out a lot and not play as high. But they never EVER just vanish. In this case I accurately predicted he would.

The third instance of weirdness comes with Full Tilt Poker and their inability to run the cashier department. Sometime in the fall of that year I busted what little I had on Full Tilt. I would always keep bare minimum on their for games so when I busted I would just reload and when I ran it up I would cash out. I submitted for 2 echecks and they credited me with 2 or 3k. 1 week goes by, 2 weeks go by and nothis taken from my account. I email them and they tell me "Hey Mark, don't worry, just make sure it is in there and we will get it". I am like ok no problem.

So I run up a bunch of money and I am looking to cashout and I was interested to see how they handled this. I wasn't sure if they would deduct the checks or what. I know typically if you had bad echecks on Stars or FTP in the past they would just deduct from your balance. But these weren't bad echecks. These were just never processed and I had plenty of money in my bank account to cover them.

So I hit the cashout button and within 2 days the money was in my bank account or in Usemywallet which was an Ewallet that was very convenient while they were open. I was still wondering when this would get deducted and I believe I made the deposits in September or October of 2010. November went by, then December and still nothing. I must have cashed out 30k in this time span and these echecks were still pending. I had friends who were broke degenerates echecking OVER and OVER and running up tallies but they were never getting deducted. And some of them were cashing out as they owed thousands and thousands of dollars to Full Tilt.

And then in January I was killing the games on FTP and cashing out large amounts (large amounts by my standards 5k-10k) frequently and at this point I believe the echeck cashouts were down. Then my buddy submitted a usemywallet withdrawal and I believe he told me he was waiting for 2 weeks or so. At this point I decided to just try and get the money off through Stars. There was an added bonus to this for me because Stars never charged fees for cashouts and I heard FTP was deducting $25 from your rakeback for cashouts. So every time I ran it up I would trade my buddy 5k 10k for Stars because he was getting beat up on FTP and needed money there so it worked out for both of us.

Little did I know at the time they would be getting shut down on April 15th and feel bad for my buddy cause he has 100k + stuck there now but I think he will be seeing that soon. One other thing to note on how foolish FTP deposit limits were a very good friend of mine used to play anything from 3-6 to 25-50 PLO and he noticed they had a little button on the cashier page that said "increase deposit limit". Well he clicked that every day , or every few days or every week (whatever they allowed) and eventually he saw his deposit limit go like this 2k granted, 4k yupppppppp, 10k yuppppppppp , 15k yupppppppp 25k yupppppppppppppp 50k yuppppppppppppp and I believe he told me they finally cut him off @ 100k. he never used it to go this high as far as I know but he could have. And I believe they gave another guy we know like a 150-200k limit and he shot that off and he still owes them but there is nothing they can do about this.

The 4th instance came this past fall when I was playing on merge. I was playing a 6-12 or 10-20 LHE HU match when a player named "shadowmode" joined me. He played weird where he wasn't spewy but he did stupid things but they were all correct and I felt something wasn't right so I quit and began chatting with him.

Then my buddy commented to me through skype that I was quitting a huge fish. My buddy sent me a link and I opened it and it was this guys PTR page. I noticed he was a micro player and logged in 500 hands at about every micro limit in August and he lost about 20 BB 100 per limit played. Granted it was a small sample but it was consistent with every game.

I felt something was odd so I asked the guy how long he had been playing on merge and he said he told me this account was BRAND NEW and this was his 1st or second day playing. But his PTR said otherwise. It had hands tracked for a 2 month stretch in the summer. WEIRD HUH?

So I emailed merge and told them that I felt I may have been cheated. And told them to look at the chat where he says he is brand new and that he had hands logged in here before. Their reply was "oh players say diff things all the time etc.." and refused to look into the chat. But again what would be the motive for him to lie to me? Anyhow I put this one in the past and then about 3 weeks ago I started talking to a Merge reg on Skype.

Merge reg asks me this exact question after talking for a while

"Have you ever played Shadowmode?" I say yes I have and he follows it up with "did you think anything was strange about when u played him" I say yes and tell him my story and why I quit. He says he thought he was a superuser and told me his story. Shadowmode joined my buddys table and beat him out of 6k in 30-60 and was playing "very odd" but everything worked. Keep in mind my buddy is a world class heads up player. Not that world class players can't lose but he told me the guy was doing the most odd things yet the guy beat him for a decent sum. Since that match vs. my buddy Shadowmode has never played a hand on Merge.

http://www.pokertableratings.com/mer...rch/shadowmode

Were we cheated? I don't know. Were their odd things about these matches ? Certainly. Not only did some random guy who comes in and takes on the best HU players win BUT HE QUIT and left and was never heard from again. When most guys whether it be donks or pros win on a new account they usually don't just bail and never play again. They usually stay and try and win more. Also SOMEONE whether it was shadow mode or someone else played micros in August and got destroyed yet he told me the acc was brand new. And when he started playing on acc in fall when he played me and my firsnd he payed no micros. It was all 4-8 to 50-100.

-chinamaniac

http://www.venompoker.com/content.ph...g-Wasn-t-Right