Tonights game at pokerstars has higlighted what myself and other members from texasholdemforums members know what would happen.
People were cheating using multiple accounts and the password was clearly passed around.
With regards to
this thread, thanks for bringing this up. First of all i need to address that im always on top of things and work my ass off to protect my sites and my members from acts such as this. I work on average about 60 hours a week on both this site, texasholdemforums and my other internet ventures. I was online most of today but was out for the last 3-4 hours when all this occurred. I cant always be here so please just leave a thread in the feedback room and ill get back to everyone
Ok, with regards to multiple accounts. I cant do anything about it - i cant. I dont work at pokerstars, we simply hold games at pokerstars and other poker sites. Pokerstars is one of my fave poker sites. However, it is very easy for people to create multiple accounts. I have brought this up in the past with pokerstars but unfortunately, their present software doesnt really deal with it.
As i said, i dont work at pokerstars so i cant really do anything. What you can do to help is report multiple accounts to pokerstars so that they can deal with it. If you check our member list and see the same person here (ie. they used the same username) then let us know and theyll be banned.
My main concern is the password being passed around. Pokerstars is a great site for freerolls - their affiliate team is very supportive of what were doing here and they always respond to my queries quickly and professionally. However, there is a large group of people who hover around the play tables who play in a lot of freerolls and pass the password around.
To quote scottishben on THF, any system which requires a password is flawed - simply because we could have 500 superb loyal members here and 1 bad apple could pass the password around and everyone is screwed.
Manual submission just isnt possible - its timeconsuming and not practial. We tried it once at THF and it was a terrible waste of my time compared to what i usually do updating and maintaining the site
Someone has suggested emailing to members the passwords - the same problems remain with people passing the password around. Its easier to keep everything on the site
So password protecting games is the only way.
So how do we resolve this?
There are a number of ways.
First of all, you have to recognise that having freerolls at pokerstars will bring out a lot of spammers. Its unfortunate because its one of my fave sites. One way would be to stop having games there - i hope we dont have to resort to that as i like holding games there and i know a lot of members like it too
Blackstone has suggested that making the games only available at blue level will greatly reduce it. My plan in future is to host pokerstars freerolls at higher levels. However, we arent ready to have games at blue level as yet. There just simply isnt enough blue level members just now to warrant moving some games to that level. I hpoe that in 3 or 4 weeks time we can start adding blue level games.
One of the best way to stop passwords is to roll out the password much nearer the time. We will always strive to do that - however, at the moment we dont have enough members in the staff time to always gurantee we can roll out passwords close to the tournament commencement. We will be adding to the staff team in the near future. First of all, please dont ask to me a staff member. I wont spend any time to listening to any requests. I will be monitoring the community closely and after time those who i believe are fit for the job will be asked to join the staff team.
More staff will help us rolling out the passwords closer to the game. It just isnt possible just now to gurantee that it will be posted. Take today for example - i was online most of the day - before i headed to training i checked the site. Since i was the only staff member on at the time i had to post the password - i didnt want the chance of it not being posted and no one being able to play in the game.
As the site progresses and more members go to higher levels we can switch games to higher levels.
However, members need to know that games will remain at white level until they get too busy and a level jump is warranted.
Take next weeks huge game at poker.com for example. Ive invested a helluva lot of cash into the game. I need to get a good turnout to warrant me investing that sort of cash in another freeroll - its very difficult to find a happy medium. I want a big turnout for this big game...but i dont want members who dont contribute to take up lots of places.
Rest assured, i am actively doing my best to resolve this and i know you guys will help me and the staff here to resolve it too. Ill repeat myself again - the guys who contribute here will get rewarded - i want to reward the loyal members and not the assholes who are passing the password around and ruining these games for other members. We'll get through this - the site is still young and we're experiencing teething problems. Once we get up and running we wont have to worry about these idiots too much
As always, i do appreciate feedback on this and thanks to everyone who brought up the multiple accounts problem in the other thread
Multiple Accounts @ PokerStars Games, spammers and cheaters at games 
. As you saw by the other thread it looks like a few guys went and spoiled it by making multiple accounts, one guy claiming to be using 20 in the tourney 
I have emailed the nicknames to PokerStars and their reply said they were investigating and they will be banned if it is found they were indeed using muliple accounts.
