** - Added new updates: JJProdigy Returns
This post would start off with a "FLASH!! STOP THE PRESSES!!" --- except the news ain’t quite that new. If you monitor poker news on the web with any frequency, then you already know that two hot-‘n’-risin’ Internet poker wunderkinds have crashed and burned in separate (but related) incidents the past two weeks. Both incidents began on Party Poker, then spread to PokerStars and other sites, and in both cases, evidence of simultaneous play under multiple accounts was uncovered. Both players had their accounts frozen, funds seized, and were banned from Party and other sites.
Let’s do the mandatory backfill. A couple of weeks back, congratulatory posts appeared on poker-discussion site 2 + 2, lauding online whiz kid JJProdigy for taking down the $140,000 first-place prize in Party Poker’s weekly $500,000 Guarantee tourney. A funny thing happened on the way to the bank, however: other site participants who participated in the same tourney recalled that first place was won by the unknown account "ABlackCar," rather than JJProdigy’s own widely known account, which had also participated but busted out earlier in the tourney.
Sure enough, an investigation by Party Poker conclusively found that ABlackCar and JJProdigy were one and the same real-life player, with the resultant stripping of the $140,000 first prize, an additional $40,000 in JJProdigy’s other account, and the closing and banning of JJProdigy from the site. PokerStars subsequently found similar activity on their site, and also banned JJProdigy, and at least one other site has as well, though that has not yet been publicly disclosed.
Who, one might ask, is JJProdigy? Word has leaked that the wunderkind is an actual kid --- 16 years old, to be precise. So his identity won’t appear here. One wry comment in passing, however: JJProdigy rose to fame by winning the celebrated PokerStars Leaderboard challenge with Gigabet, Exclusive and other big online names over the month of August, 2005. Good thing it was summer vacation.
You’d think lightning wouldn’t strike twice, but it did, as only a few days later an even bigger name was exposed as being an angle shooter in the online games. Justin Bonomo, a 20-year-old rising star who is (to date) the youngest player ever to make the final table at a European WPT event, was also exposed, again through unwise forum postings that pointed directly to the existence of multiple and simultaneous-played accounts. Bonomo --- widely known online by the handle "ZeeJustin" --- had approximately $100,000 seized from six different Party accounts, his own widely known one and five others. Each of the six were created with distinct biographical and geographical information, yet all six were traced back to the same physical computer. The six accounts:
ZeeJustin
IBLUFFUOUT69
jwilson55
vapoker58
mehsab
greenb272
While JJProdigy’s admittance of guilt included a concocted story concerning his "grandma"’s account that came straight outta Paul Bunyan, Bonomo’s confession ‘fessed up to the real motivator, greed. Here’s the paragraph from Bonomo/ZeeJustin’s "My Statement" post on 2 + 2 that cuts to the core:
First of all, the accounts were NOT created solely for MTT use. They were originally created for SNG play. It got to the point where everyone knew that ZeeJustin would steal the blinds often, and everyone called him liberally. I created these accounts to erase this loose image. Everyone would be readless against me, and it was a huge advantage. These accounts all did very well in the big SNGs on PartyPoker.
To paraphrase other comments, both players also attempted to rationalize their cheating by noting that some other online players also cheat in this manner, and that "hacks" were available to exploit certain software weaknesses to allow cheating of this type easier. Bonomo’s posting, in particular, offered up curiously twisted logic, pointing the dreaded Finger of Evil back at Party Poker for (a) being easy to exploit, and (b) then having the audacity to seize funds at least partially obtained through said illegal exploitation. Illegal, mind you, in terms of Party’s own ToC; I ain’t a lawyer (though I talk a good game), so we’ll stay away from the other stuff.
There. Backfill thus completed, it’s time to step away from our two l’il naughty boys for a bit. Let’s just say that right now, JJProdigy and ZeeJustin are… lyin’ low.
What should be of most concern to the thinking online poker player is not how and why these kids cheated, but how and why their cheating --- and the sites’ inevitable reactions to it --- will affect the online game. Because, and make no mistake about it, the other sites are scrambling to re-evaluate their security measures, participation rules and more in the wake of this affair.
Unsurprisingly, the most vocal of the other site hosts has been Lee Jones over at PokerStars. Lee was quick to post the results of Stars’ own investigations, showing that for both JJProdigy and ZeeJustin, the cheating wasn’t limited to Party. However, a difference in how Stars enacted their banishment of Bonomo/ZeeJustin, when compared with Party’s actions, shows the flux of the situation.
Here are two rapid-fire 2 + 2 posts from Jones:
(Post #1)
Hi folks -
We did our own review of ZeeJustin and unfortunately, found that he'd been playing multiple accounts in several tournaments at PokerStars.
* We confiscated the money that he won illicitly.
* We closed his accounts and banned him from PokerStars.
* We are returning the money he won illicitly to players who were harmed by his actions in those same tournaments.
Obviously, we don't like doing this, but the evidence was incontrovertible. We will do whatever it takes to keep our games and tournaments clean.
Best regards,
Lee Jones
PokerStars Poker Room Manager
(Post #2)
Hi folks -
As regards ZeeJustin...
1. He had a single extra PokerStars account which he rarely used.
2. His big tournament win on PokerStars was legitimate (we checked it carefully). The amount of money that we ascribed to illicit play was relatively small (less than $5K), and we confiscated that entire amount. We permitted him to cash out the balance over that….
Right at the bottom is the important difference: Party confiscated everything, whereas Stars confiscated only that which they could trace directly to cheating, and allowed Bonomo to withdraw the rest. As for the $140,000 from JJProdigy’s big tourney win, that was redistributed directly to the players in that tourney, with all other finishers being bumped up one spot and receiving an accordant jump in prize money.
A key sub-topic has arisen asking what the plans are for the redistribution of the remaining seized funds, which may explain why Stars was hesitant to grab the remainder of Bonomo’s account funds in the first place. Party, on the other hand, confiscated the additional $40,000 that JJProdigy had in their system. This commentator actually favors Party’s actions in this matter, even though it puts Party --- already viewed in some quarters as draconian for their actions in the Empire matter --- in the delicate position of having possible financial incentive to find (or even create) cheaters, just to have reason to confiscate some more funds.
It’s possible, but a bit paranoid. Mass seizures of account funds without specific provocations would raise red flags across the ‘Net, and give a company like Party --- i.e.: publicly held --- the type of black eye most dreaded: A reason for stock prices to go down.
That said, Party must be public and proactive concerning what they do with funds seized from indirect cheating. Since it’s impractical to check back into every tournament or ring game ZeeJustin or JJProdigy ever played, there’s no easy way to distribute those remaining funds. Online posters favor a freeroll (of course) for site members, but other options include a very public development or incremental enhancement of security/anti-cheating measures, or even a donation to a worthy cause, such as anti-underage gambling efforts. One can’t help but wince when learning the real age of a JJProdigy or a ZapAA, the 17-year-old bounced from the final table of Paradise’s Million Dollar Freeroll. One hates to think of kids like these --- and they are, precisely, half-too-smart little boys in a grown-up’s world --- becoming a cause celebre for a politician with an axe to grind.
And that’s precisely why Stars’ stance is wrong. In a court case, for example, damages awarded are often both actual and punitive. The actual damages are designed to restore the situation to what it should be, and the punitive damages are the disincentive to the infractor to repeat the bad behavior. In the case of Bonomo, Stars’ seizing of all of his remaining funds would have been the punitive damages, as Party did with JJProdigy’s additional 40K. Lacking the boldness to take that step (at least temporarily), Stars now opens itself up to be perceived as a site "soft" on cheaters.
A prediction: We’ll see more changes in site rules in the coming weeks, and not only at Stars.
Moving on, moving out.
Online cheating? Of course it occurs, but its effect on the vast majority of us is small to nil. That said, occasionally a bump occurs in the process of things that causes an industry to size itself up and re-evaluate some things. JJProdigy and ZeeJustin may well represent that bump in this instance. There will always be cheaters, and sooner or later, the vast majority of cheaters will be caught. The reason for such a confident statement is that the process of detection is seldom a smooth flow, but rather an expanding layer of steps and processes that pull down or eliminate new and ever-changing categories of cheaters. So a smug, happy, self-confident cheat ultimately wakes up one morning to find out that his angle has been exposed, or that his secret has been inadvertently let out by another. That’s the fear and the truth for the perennial cheater, always cautious, always side-stepping ahead.
In a way it’s sad to see a Justin Bonomo exposed and his "public" poker career so prematurely aborted. I have no personal ill will towards Justin, no reason to care beyond the general ethic concerns all of us should share. Sure, there’s a general satisfaction in seeing another angle-shooter removed from the game (temporarily or not), but the world moves on. Rest assured that whatever spots Bonomo occupied in the poker universe --- both good and bad --- will soon be filled by another.
A shout-out goes to two other poker bloggers whose monitoring of the boards helped bring clarity of the issue to the web. Bill Rini offers some detailed, excellent commentary, and MissT74 (a.k.a. Tanya Peck) probed Poker Stars’ customer service department for related policy information. Good job, guys.
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