Author's Note:

This story is a combination of research, personal experience, and deduction. I do not guarantee that all the "behind the scenes" events described occurred exactly as presented. This is a re-creation of assumed events, told in story format. While I cannot guarantee 100% factual accounting of events where I wasn't present, this is my best guess based upon several factors. Enjoy!

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The year was 2009. I was showing up to a Burbank-area restaurant to have lunch with an attractive woman I met through an online poker site.

But this wasn't a date, and romance wasn't in the air.

We were meeting so she could dish the dirt on the second-biggest poker site in the world -- Full Tilt Poker, and I was supposedly about to be given a lot of exclusives about a lot of their dirty laundry.

Was this a Full Tilt insider? A hacker? An ex-lover of Tilt executive? No, no, and no. This was a former heads-up limit holdem specialst, who was quite successful on the site, and had been shut down for accused botting and multi-accounting.

She was known online as "Pokergirl z", "Mad Haddie", "Jonesen" and "Sillysal". She had consistently won over a period of several years online during the 2000s, and usually played stakes like 50-100 and 100-200 limit hold 'em.

For years, she and I didn't get along. Temperamental, prone to tilt rage, and often guilty of heads-up hit-and-running against fellow regulars, I found her infuriating. A typical battle would see her quickly up $3000 on me, then I'd put one bad beat on her to reduce my deficit to about $2500, and she'd sit out. "DONE", she'd type, and move to another table. If I tried to sit with her again, she would sit out. This would all occur inside of 10 minutes.

This was a breach of poker etiquette, so we would get into silly battles over this. If she got a good deal up on me quickly, and then quit after losing a single hand, I would follow her to the next table. I repeatedly told her, "If you don't want this to happen, sit out on me in the first place. If you leave and switch tables after a few minutes of running well, I will sit with you again."

She complained to poker site management. One site told her to stuff it and to simply stop playing me. Another told me that I was in the wrong, and that I would be banned if my behavior continued. Full Tilt oddly chose to ban my chat over this, even though this had nothing to do with chat. Eventually I did what I should have done in the first place -- I quit playing her entirely -- especially because she was good, aside from her tilting issues.

Given our less-than-friendly history, you might wonder why we were meeting at a restaurant just two years later. Everything changed for her -- and our online interactions -- when Full Tilt banned her in late 2007 for accused botting. I knew she had been multiaccounting, using accounts "Pokergirl z" and "Greggo777". However, they never sat at the same table, and Full Tilt was not clamping down particularly hard against this particular form of multiaccounting. The much more serious accusation was regarding the botting.

Pokergirl showed up to 2+2 and pled her case. However, many in the past who screamed "victim" in such a fashion turned out to be lying. Most of these people would quickly disappear upon any holes being poked in their sob stories.

However, I hadn't ever suspected Pokergirl of being a bot. I had seen her fits of rage, tilty play, and angry quitting after taking a single beat, even if way up. I watched her play degrade as she got angry. That was the opposite of soulless bot behavior. Still, the accusations made me pause. I had recalled her playstyle did have some bot-like tendencies, most notably the refusal to lay down hands with the slightest bit of showdown value, even incredibly weak ones given the board. Could she have somehow been botting all along?

I decided to post an honest, fair assessment of the situation on 2+2, completely omitting any personal issues I previously had with her. My assessment was basically neutral -- not in defense of her, but also not accusatory. I simply reported my experiences, and drew some rough conclusions from the possibilities. If you'd like to see that post, you can go here, and scroll down a bit.

My post changed everything regarding how she saw me. She responded a bit later in the thread, at first oddly acting insulted regarding my claim that she was "around 40 years old", but then attempting to address my post. She was not hostile to me at all. Rather, she felt that she might have stumbled upon the perfect potential ally in the situation, given that I was longtime member of the limit hold 'em community, and known not to be friendly with her. If she could convince me, could this possibly convince others?

Unfortunately for Pokergirl, I wasn't looking to make a new friend or ally. I simply wanted the truth. When she became evasive regarding my multiaccounting questions, I got frustrated with the situation, and dialed back my involvement in the thread. Additionally, others on 2+2 noticed the same thing, and the sympathy for her quickly eroded. Of further concern, as stated in my original post to her, there was an incredibly similar confiscation of funds just four months earlier -- and a similar amount -- from another otherwise-unknown female limit holdem heads-up specialist. I highly suspected the two were related in some way. I still wasn't convinced she was botting, but I knew she wasn't being completely honest, either. Ultimately, Full Tilt upheld all of the consfiscations.

Nearly two years later, Pokergirl hadn't given up. She was about to file suit against Full Tilt, its management team, and its subsidiary companies. Her real identity still wasn't known in public circles. I had seen her picture from a 2006 WSOP party from Pokerroom, and knew she was the person she claimed to be, but didn't know anything more about her. In fact, I erroneously believed her name to be Lisa -- the same professed name of the other person who claimed months earlier to have also been falsely accused of botting. I was very curious about her story, but we didn't have any kind of contact outside of that 2007 thread on 2+2.

Pokergirl hadn't filed the lawsuit yet, and hadn't gone public with her intent to do so. In fact, I had long stopped thinking about her and that issue she had on Full Tilt. However, one day a mutual acquaintance messaged me on the AOL Instant Messenger, with a surprising request, "Pokergirl wants to talk to you. She won't tell me what it's about. Here's her AIM screen name."

I messaged Pokergirl, assuming it had something to do with her account confiscation, but wondered why she would be contacting me almost two years later.

"I have a lot to tell you about Full Tilt, and you're the only one I trust in poker right now. Can you call me?"

So I did.



END PART 1