I see this question a lot.
What @JustinBonomo did ~17yrs ago was nothing like what Jake and Ali did.
This is true even if he'd done it in 2023, but when accounting for the landscape:
It's like your grandpa being sexist in the 60s vs. you committing sexual assault today.
(I know this is an odd and kind of ironic metaphor because Justin wouldn't have been sexist in the 60s but I couldn't think of a better one)
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I have hesitated to comment because nobody likes people who "stand up for cheaters," because I don't particularly feel like launching into research and a long thought-out post**, and because it wasn't a good thing that he did. (It's not good that your grandpa was sexist)
[**Note: This is long but not well thought-out!]
But I've seen this so many times, and those who weren't around poker back then and/or don't know the details misunderstand what happened.
My point here isn't to defend Justin, who can handle himself, but to help us focus on the real bad actors who are fleecing the games, and in a way that lets the world know that these people aren't everywhere. So many comments come from people who think that Jake and Ali are two of a thousand like them. They are not.
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For those who just see the word "cheater" when they see Justin's name and don't know anything beyond that, here's my recollection:
My view is that young Justin and others thought they found a way to multi-enter tournaments before multi-entry existed so that they could play more volume. There were not as many tournaments running online as today, so some high-stakes MTT saw it as an opportunity to get more volume in at $100 and $200 buy-in tournaments.
There was no intent to card-share or collude with his other accounts in the large-field tournaments, and, in fact, Justin actively tried to make sure he couldn't do this.
Again - not saying this was good, but his intent was to get more volume in without gaining an unfair advantage...
Yes, being able to multi-enter when others can't is an advantage...
You know what - as I write this, I know it still won't land with many because they weren't around back then when online poker was new.
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Let me just say: There were a lot of things that we understand today that we didn't in the early 2000s, and community discussion and consensus didn't happen at the same rate it does now.
The point is - Justin didn't believe he was doing something bad at the time. That isn't all that counts, but it still counts. It's why I didn't believe he would do something like that again when he was finally welcomed back into the poker world.
Even though Ali is relatively young, like Justin was, he knew what he was doing was extremely wrong. He knew that by colluding with up to half of the accounts at the same table(!) he gained an unfair and unbeatable edge.
This is tantamount to theft, which was obvious even back in 2006.
If you want to judge Justin for what he did back then, that's your right, but I'm tired of seeing Justin's acceptance back into the poker community used in the same sentence as people who aren't anywhere close to deserving of it.
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I respect Justin, but I didn't know him back in 2006. We've essentially never spent time together away from the poker table, and we don't communicate outside of Twitter. To be honest, I hang out with very few poker players away from the tables.
When you see players who have been around a long time and are deeply integrated into the community speak up about specific instances of cheating and not others, it's not because we're all friends with each other.
It's because we understand who the serious offenders are. The ones who will likely cheat again and need to be eradicated from the poker world.
From my limited info, none of the other players on GG - even those who were banned - were on the level of Jake and Ali, who were truly robbing the games.