Online poker scandals of the past decade: Multi-Accounting then and now part 2

In Part 1 of this series I discussed the early days of multi-accounting, where poker players were exploiting loopholes that existed in the online Poker Room’s software, allowing them to create multiple accounts and enter the same tournament with these accounts. Despite poker sites closing this loophole, players are still multi-accounting to gain an edge over their opponents, and while the offenses may not be blatant cheating, they still represent a serious threat to the integrity of the game.

Ghosting

‘Ghosting’ is not technically multi-accounting but does bear a striking resemblance to it. Basically ‘Ghosting’ is when more than one player is making decisions about their hand. This is all but impossible to detect in online poker since a player could be on the telephone, Skype, Instant Messenger, or just standing over their shoulder.

Since ‘Ghosting’ is impossible to detect the online poker sites should either allow it, or come up with an ingenious way of thwarting it.

Account Sharing

Account sharing is similar to ‘Ghosting’ only in this case a player takes over for another player -usually when an inexperienced player has made a deep-run in a multi-table tournament, or a player using someone else’s account. There have been several big name players caught taking-over for other players -or perhaps playing them throughout the tournament:

Mark ‘Play2Kill’ Teltscher won the WCOOP when he took over his sister’s account, ‘THEVOid’, after he had been eliminated from the tournament on his original account. PokerStars rightly stripped the account of the win -and the $1.2 million in prize-money. A lawsuit filed by Teltscher’s sister ensued, but was dropped after she came clean about the whole incident.

One of the most successful, and most popular, online poker players, Sorel ‘Imper1um’ Mizzi, was also busted for taking over for a friend late in a tournament for a percentage of the winnings. Mizzi took a beating on the online poker forums, not only for the transgression, but also because of his aloof responses to the issues presented.

Reclaiming Anonymity

This is perhaps the most widely used reason for players who are caught multi-account nowadays.  With all of the data-collection that goes on even the best players can be exploited, so they turn to creating a second ‘Fresh’ account.  The people affected by this are their opponents, since the multi-accounter still has a plethora of statistics on them, while they are playing a ‘known’ opponent completely in the dark: Imagine if The New York Yankees played against a team wearing totally generic uniforms with obscured faces? Are they playing an All-Star team, or is it a High School team?

Some of the biggest names in online poker have been caught multi-accounting under this guise: Brian Townsend and Nick “StoxTrader” Grudzien being the most well known -both of whom will be the focus upcoming entries in this series for this, and their other transgressions.

Benign Multi-Accounting

Most multi-accounting takes place so a player can gain a rakeback deal, or for some other harmless reason, and it shouldn’t be a big deal for a $1/$2 player to setup a new account -so long as they abandon their old account–but it’s still wrong to do this, because that little crack will soon turn into the San Andreas Fault!

After the safeguards were put in place to prevent the multi-accounting abuses of the past the next step is for the online poker rooms to put an end to virtually all multi-accounting. The simplest way to do this is to make every online poker player completely anonymous by using randomly generated numbers instead of a screen-name -perhaps with an exemption for sponsored players who would play under their own names. This would also eliminate data-mining which will be one of topics discussed in a later piece.