Poker Cheating

Rec.Gambling.Poker Posts

Cheaters
Bill Vanek wrote...
> Oh, I'm sure they're all still waiting for corroboration of Russ's claims.
> You know, because he's a liar and all that, and nothing he says can be believed.

Yet another post that is precisely the problem. Many honest poker players have for years spent time and effort and (potentially) risked a lot by fighting real cheating -- not the fantasies of a drug addict. People like Bill and James Hankins do more to damage honest poker than a thousand Russes could hope to accomplish. Look at Bill's last line "nothing he says can be believed." Why post that? It is total garbage. No one claims that. No one. Stop spouting this foolishness. All it does is distract from the real issues.

Russ Georgiev continues to do what he has always done, take advantage of gullible people. He waves his arms and says there is cheating in poker. Anyone who isn't a complete fool knows that. The real issues are: how much cheating; what KIND of cheating; what can we do to limit it.

Just like cheating does exist, it'll always exist. As long as chips (that can be palmed or shorted into a pot) and cards (that can be marked or dealt dishonestly) exist there will be cheating. So, what honest players need to do is combat it, but not in fantasy and not by hiding, but openly in public.

Russ' posts of lies and inaccuracies are done to serve his own purposes... Extortion didn't work, so he tried consulting, when that didn't work he tried the media, when that didn't work he tried his expert witness (LOL) shtick, and now he's banking on a book. In every one of these things he has hurt honest players by creating white elephants and distractions from the serious issues at hand.

In the tournament arena the principal problem is softplaying. Beyond that the next thing to focus on are a few casino policies that must be changed. For instance, rebuys must be sold individually to players at the table. The Commerce Casino policy of handing them out away from the table is awful. Players have complained for years about this. There isn't some mysterious "silence" going on. In this one specific case the casino has not listened. Perhaps they will before February, perhaps they won't. But again, if gullible rubes would not cloud the water with comments about Russ' blathering we could actually *accomplish* something. Contact the Commerce Casino. Phone Tim Gustin and Sheri Dokken. Speak to them privately. Demand action, but demand action on something that is an actual problem. Please leave the fantasies out of it.

Another casino policy that needs to be changed is the whole re-buy system. It's probably sanest to advocate that rebuy tournaments just be done away with, but since the casinos love them the next thing to demand is rebuys at the table; chip counts at every break; and *staff* moving chips from table to table when tables break. This would require more staff, but if casinos want these things they need to police them much better than they do. A solution though is there, and has been advocated by honest players for quite some time.

As for Men the Master, it would be nice if people could actually focus on reality. Idiotic rumors and lies have been posted about Men and Foxwoods. Other people make sweeping allegations that relate to nothing in reality. And again, Russ comes in with his 25% truth and 75% lies. The issue regarding Men is softplaying. Not dumping, not whipsawing, not chip passing. Men (like others of other races/creeds/friendships) likely has previously engaged in softplaying. This is very hard to deal with as it seldom is blatant (like the example of folding to a reraise) and is often fairly inconsequential -- and most important, almost everybody has friends who they play at least *minusculely* different than others.

People who play with Men need to watch him with others who he might softplay or get softplayed by. This is true also of married couples and many, many others. If someone sees anything fishy, they need to speak up. If they don't, THEY ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. (We get that here on RGP a lot... somebody comes crying to the group about bad behavior in a game after doing *nothing* about it when they could have.)

With few peers, there is no one in the poker world more generous, charitable and philanthropic than Men the Master. He also happens to be a prick when he drinks (not surprisingly, so is Daniel.) He is what people who have played against him have known for a long time -- an incredible poker player when he tries to be, who likely in the past has been involved with the cheating that goes with softplaying. He's not a cocaine fueled fantasy. He's right there for everybody to see month after month. Honest players need to be vigilant, they need to put pressure on Men to not softplay, and they need to put pressure on casinos to more vigorously police tournament games (the true challenge is the latter).

And honest players need to continue to speak up, not hide or repeat Geobbels-like rantings.
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Bill Vanek wrote...
> We agree that cheating is bad, and that cleaning up the game is good,
> but you feel the problems should be kept quiet, while efforts are made
> in the background.

Nonsense. Please stop this. Cheating has to be exposed. It has be done directly and publicly. But clown acts and arm waving about drivel that doesn't happen and that nobody need to be concerned about are the best thing that cheaters could ask for!

YOU are the one doing things to keep cheating quiet. You don't talk about it. You don't deal with the hard, difficult, but specific issues at hand. Russ' ravings would be clouding the water much less if a few people didn't continually talk in general platitudes about "cheating" rather than speak clearly in public and to the casinos about what we-the-players want to see done.

> I feel that keeping the problems quiet is sleazy, and preferring that approach
> derives only from the self-interest of winning tournament players.

Sorry, that is completely insane. Winning tournament players have the best incentive to root out cheating, just like winning honest ring game players do in that arena.

> We disagree about Russ. You say maybe 25% of what he says is true,
> but even if that's so, that 25% is 100% more than anyone else has told
> us before he came along.

WHAT???? Did you live in cave? Cheating has always been with us. Colluders are in larger ring games every day, every minute. Individual cheats are in ring games of every size. Where have you been? My niece could get 25% of it right if she talked about cheating and she's nine and not a drug addict.

> I also believe that most of what he has stated is true.

I really don't give a crap about Russ because he doesn't matter. He lives in a fantasy world where he takes a few trivial bits and builds it into something that makes his pathetic, failure of a life look important. What does matter is that cheating discussions on RGP and in casinos address real cheating, not the stuff of some silly book Russ is writing because he failed as an extortionist.

> Badger wrote...
> >"With only a few peers, there is no one in the poker world more generous,
> >charitable and philanthropic than Men the Master."

> Bill Vanek replied...
> You can find plenty of people who will say that about John Gotti,
> and Tony Accardo, and others of their ilk. (But not about Tony Spilotro,
> who, unlike the others, was more involved with poker.[...]) That
> philanthropy stuff doesn't make them good people.

I agree. In Men's case there is conflicting evidence on "goodness". (In Russ' case he's been a slime in everything he's done.) Arm-waving about his philanthropy doesn't make him a non-cheat, and arm-waving about him being an asshole or even softplaying doesn't make him part of a "pack" or a chip dumper or any other of several things.

Again, not counting this isolated incident that may have happened at the Taj, there is more than a little reason to suspect Men of forcing softplaying onto the horses he stakes. There is no evidence -- although there has been ten years for it to appear -- that Men is a part of some grandiose pack (that includes people who don't even like each other!) or other arm-waving mysterious cheating. So let's stay on planet Earth and deal with the real, not the fantasies.
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James L. Hankins wrote...
> Well, well, well, Badger finally dusted the cobwebs off of his keyboard
> and decided to contribute something to this whole cheating business.
> A pitiful contribution, but a contribution nonetheless.

LOL, when you *contribute* something let me known. I spent a lot of time addressing cheating in casinos and online. You've helped create an atmosphere where cheating becomes all smoke, rather than a concrete problem.

> Badger, you have misspoken here and you need to be corrected.
> Since you have called me out by name I'll be the one to do it. You
> are an amazing hypocrite. You state that "no one" has claimed that
> Russ's allegations are lies, yet IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH, barely four
> sentences prior to this statement, you refer to his allegations as the
> "fantasies of a drug addict." I guess the fantasies of a drug addict now
> are starting to be believed.

Wow. Wow. Wow. If you were a cheater that would explain this complete lack of truth. Nobody has said *EVERYTHING* Russ said is untrue. For example, he said a good thing about The Cincinnati Kid. I've said I would think about 25% (maybe 50%) of what he says is true, because if you blather on enough, you will eventually hit some nails on the head. Russ says cheating exists. Duh, wow, revelation. That is "true", but in specific the majority of what he has written after 1985 has been shown to be untrue by anyone with knowledge of the facts.

> The fact is, most of the responses to Russ's posts have been aimed
> to malign him personally, attack his credibility, and minimize what
> he claims. Have you not known since the start that at least some of
> what he claims is true? Yet, you did not speak out.

Please try and LEARN something about what you are talking about. You are embarrassing yourself. I've "spoke out" for years before Russ oozed his way onto RGP. He's like a double agent. He gets gullible people like you to make cheating in poker easier. Sad.

> But poker insiders apparently know different. Russ has told the rest
> of us what you and the other poker insiders (Sklansky, et al) have
> known for years and I am grateful to him for it.

Russ has been preying on people like you for years and that's sad. But you only have yourself to blame because you don't educate yourself.

> What did he get for it? At first, he got a lot of indignant flames like yours,
> that he was a hallucinating cocaine addict. People in this forum have their
> poker heroes and simply could not believe what Russ said. I initially felt the
> same way. And Russ started off badly, no question about that.

Yeah, he's in his 50s, and he's never done an honest, non-selfish thing in his life... has he? Not even here, where he is motivated by revenge (and money).

> BUT WHERE WERE YOU ALL THESE YEARS? You think I do more to
> damage honest poker than Russ? I resent that, Jack. YOU are the problem.
> Without Russ, this discussion would not be happening.

My God, WHAT discussion? WHAT? What are you talking about? Wave your arms some more. I address cheating every single time I see it. I address it in general with casino employees and on RGP. Cheaters threaten my livelihood and I don't stand for it. Right now you are on their side, the more you blow smoke and swallow the hooks of that guy.

> You are a WSOP bracelet holder. A world champion. Are you going to
> tell me that you never had a clue that Men cheated? Or any of the others
> that Russ has named? Yet you said nothing.

I feel sorry for you. You actually don't get any of this at all. When Russ says Men cheats with Tony Ma, and they can't stand each other, don't you see how destructive and useless and utterly stupid these comments are?

Men involved in softplaying with his horses happens on rare instances, and NEVER if I were to be sitting there to see it. Softplaying is a small, specific, widespread problem that takes place largely because people who are friends or business partners often play poker together. It is a very difficult issue to deal with because there is a fine line between softplaying and just playing bad (or correctly).

I've spent a significant chunk of my life trying to make poker more honest and fair. Right now the greatest threat to that are gullible hysterics who PT Barnum knew about.

> Cheating is the evil that happens when good men do nothing.
> And that is what you are.

LOL, you are so hopelessly self-centered. Please stop making cheating easier for the cheats, and harder for the honest players who *are* doing things to combat it.
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Larry (Wayno) Phillips wrote...
> Badger addressed the subject about 800 times in about 27 different ways.
> But you [James Hankins] weren't around then. So I guess that makes it
> "his" problem.

When people talk to me about "wasting" my time on RGP, I always tell them that I think RGP is and can be a powerful resource for good, and for bad. I think of the 800 times and 270 ways and then look at the damage someone like James is doing... in this case now by thrusting Daniel and Melissa into the same sentence as Russ. I'd like to think my own and the efforts of thousands of good people isn't all a waste, but the sad fact is a lot of gullible, self-centered people will choose play poker, and a few bad people will take advantage of them. The rest of us can try but we can't stop these folks from essentially mugging themselves.
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James L. Hankins wrote...
> For Badger to say that I am setting back poker 25 years, I take that
> personally. I love this game and want it to move forward. But the true
> irony is, Russ, a cheat and confessed drug user, and Daniel N., a young
> upstart player, have done more to get the ball rolling to combat cheating
> than Badger and the other honest bracelet winners ever have. And for them
> to condemn me for posting on this I think is an outrage.

What goes on in your own self-centered head is something none of us have control over. Please try and wake up and get the fish hook out of your mouth! Daniel posted *specifically* that he does not believe Russ' posts. He has done this twice, just a day ago and when those lunatic ravings about Ted Forrest first came out. WAKE UP! Please stop AGAIN clouding a direct and specific claim with the arm-waving of a liar. Man-o-man, how can you not get this?

> The next tournament you play, I bet there will be an amazing number
> of players taking note of chip counts and looking for chip exchanges
> away from the tables and slow playing, etc. Honest players who don't
> want to be cheated. Russ did that. Not Badger or Shulman, or anyone else.

My god. It's like you just figured how to turn on the TV or something. People *have* been tracking chip counts for years. WAKE UP. Stop making cheating easier for the cheaters.
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James L. Hankins wrote...
> Badger, I'll accept criticism from you, but you have to explain yourself.
> Tell me about the "damage" I am causing to poker. I don't want to damage
> poker and I don't thing that I am. I am truly perplexed by your statements.

First let me start with this...

Suppose John's house is on fire. Russ tells you: "Mary's house is on fire." You call 911 and send the fire department to Mary's house, leading either to more or to complete destruction of John's house because *you* helped send the fire department on a wild goose chase.

Now note that in Russ telling you that Mary's house was on fire, he was correct in that there was a house on fire. Partial truth. Now recognize he told you Mary's house was on fire out of revengeful motives (against John, against Mary, and even against the fire department).

Okay, you won't agree this is what you have been doing, but if it was this simple, could you see how your phone call to 911 was damaging, destructive, unhelpful and a pure negative?

> Yes, if it was this simple I can see how the call would be harmful --
> IF Russ was untruthful and there was only one fire truck. You presuppose
> that he is being untruthful; I don't.

Why do you continue to do this? I don't "presuppose" he isn't truthful. In a few cases I have first hand information that he is a liar. Then, he has posted a lot of objective untruths to this newsgroup (the identity of the person we know is Andy Beal... the existence of a huge lawsuit against the Bellagio... Doug Dalton being led away in handcuffs... yada yada). I don't presuppose anything. But I'm not some gullible rube who believes what he says even though much of it has been objectively shown to be false (and in the case of the lawsuit he admits to lying for the purpose of disinformation).

You simply have look outside yourself and try to learn about these matters, not just be exploited by an evil man who has spent his life exploiting people like you.

> What if Mary's house is on fire and we don't believe Russ and do nothing?
> What's worse? Making the call and being wrong, or not making the call?

Making the wrong call of course! The fire department doesn't have one engine, but they have a finite number. Sending engines on wild goose chases is the worst thing you can do.
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Patti Beadles wrote...
> I wish that tournament rule sheets regularly included a paragraph to
> the effect that you are expected to play equally hard against all players,
> and not show favoritism to anyone. My wording may be bad, but the point
> is clear.

Patti's suggestion is very good, but the wording does need to be carefully considered. The point of the statement is clear, but there are times strategically when you will choose to play harder against a certain player or stack size than you will against others. For instance, in some cases you may want to not bet a hand against a short stack when you are a big stack because you want to keep him alive so that you can steal blinds for a few more rounds. Or sometimes in HiLo split you raise out a strong player to split a large pot with a weaker player.

The emphasis in "equally hard" should be on the "hard" part of that, rather than the "equally". You should play everyone in such a way as to benefit your own tournament finish the most. Sometimes that means checking down hands when a player is all-in or betting second pair into some players but not others. It's not equal action, but rather equal application of strategy.
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Summary of a Tempest in a Teapot
Howard Lederer wrote...
> I leave town two weeks ago and Doyle vs. Russ breaks out. Now I'm gone for
> another couple of days and W2-G happens. I have enough stuff to do when I
> get back from a trip. Spending hours trying to catch up on the latest Russ
> soap opera is just too much. We need an independent editor to condense some
> of the most popular mud slinging threads for the rest of us who have a life.

Russ says pigs fly.
Some other folks say "prove pigs don't fly."
Somebody tosses a pig off the roof.
It doesn't fly.
Some folks say "that pig chose not to fly, doesn't prove anything."