Cheating on Betfair!

[SteveO]

The following is a paragraph posted on Betfair by the poker player who calls himself ariston and was on the Betfair payroll: I am not going to defend myself as I have done wrong and admitted it. I played on somebody elses account to try and help them get their stax cash score up as he was crap at cash. I was also crap as well obviously because I lost. I refunded the losses to him as he had been kind enough to put me into a live event when i was broke and he had no money in his account for the last few days of stax and couldnt put much in there. I refunded the money by dumping to him on a low stakes cash game (he thought at the time stax may have been based on big blinds won so even though I only gave the money back he had in effect increased his stax cash score). This I admit is morally wrong and against the sites terms and conditions and I will accept any punishment they deem fit. I know many other players dumped cash to him as well but I wont go into that as I dont mind admitting my guilt and involvement, it is up to any other players to hold their hands up if they wish. The player in question was not red14 or 14red and any attacks on him have fk all to do with any of this as I have never been involved in anything with him (or I am not aware of any cheating done by him). I have given a full statement to betfair of exactly what went on and when and currently have my old laptop being examined to find the IP blocker (or static IP address I was provided with) to prove what I am admitting is true. The other instance was where no actual cheating took place but a discussion did take place about one player buying another players chips in a team event. This would have been blatant cheating if it had happened and I wouldve been complicit as I was involved in the conversation but it never happened so I am not guilty of anything apart from a conversation there ( when i was about 20 I discussed with a mate how easy it would be to rob a bank as I had previously worked in one- we didnt rob any bank but i suppose i was also guilty of having a conversation where it was discussed...does this make me a bank robber??). If we are guilty for anything we ever discuss I would be hung drawn and quartered for some of the conversations I have after a few beers. You can all decide for yourself in which instance I was cheating and which is worse. Punterz obviously wants the conversation highlighted to deflect from his blatant cheating (remember I was only one of many playing on his account/dumping cash to him but the only one to admit it on here). I have offered my resignation as a writer for betfair and fully expect to be banned from the site for this, I have also blackened my own name. I still feel glad its out in the open and I no longer "owe" anything or am held over a barrel by a very dillusional man. If it helps highlight cheating on the site it will be worth it. This just highlights what the average poker player is up against online whereby you don't just have to beat the rake you have to battle the cheats and the rigged software too;).

[kippe6]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! betfair are very quiet about this.i dont think its the first time mud has been slung at this guy.when do you think he will be giving tips on this sort of thing in his betfair postings that he gets paid for

[Reeshah]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! very interesting stuff SteveO im a betfair regular and i had always wondered how punterz had an almost perfect stax ranking. bearing this in mind the stax promotion will surely have to be cancelled with some kind of compensation for the players that scored well by playing fairly.

[GaF]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! I dont know what the "Stax" promo is, so my comments have no bearing on that, however a general point..... I know a lot of people who get others to play games for them when they are unavailable - we all know it's "wrong", but poker rooms can be pretty inflexible and no-one likes to throw money away..... I'll add - I've never (so far as I recall :unsure) had anyone else play on my account - but that's mainly because I'm "available" far too much to play my games myself. Playing someone else's ID is wrong and if you're caught, you have to face the consequences, however I believe a significant majority (espicially amongst the online communities) have been involved at some point. So playing someone else's ID isn't the "crime of the century". The bottom line, with online poker, you just dont know who is sat on the other side of the screen, and I can see no way that this can realistically be enforced. Given that, and the most important thing being a "level playing field", is it time for a radical solution and for Poker rooms to abandon the idea of fixed aliases? Maybe they could let people change their aliases as often as they liked? Or maybe you could choose an alias every time you log on (that no other online users currently have) - it means you never know who you are playing, instead you have to judge people from a specific session and not from session to session. Major downside (for me) of this, is it will make Poker Tracker and similar, totally ineffectual (but some would argue that's a big benefit). Other downside, it will remove the users as a "police force" - the Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet Poker superuser cheats would never have been found without fixed aliases. I'm not saying I think that floating aliases should be introduced, just that maybe it should be considered :unsure

[Reeshah]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! the stax ranking is a promotion that scores your poker performance over the course of one month giving you a number up to 100. There are various prizes on offer but its essentially a winner takes all prize structure. I have a stax ranking of over 80 which places me in the top 15 of all players. But if players are dumpijg chips to each other then their stax ranking will be artificially high (99.99 etc.). in my opinion it is money laundering in the attampt to fraudelently win individual prizes in the tens of thousands. i reckon its a nightmare scenario for betfair and id be impressed if they can find a way to deal with this without totally losing alot of their reputation. i also imagine the stax ranking system will be dropped and never brought back. interestingly the leaderboards have also been dropped with no date for reintroduction so it seems that cheating has become quite an epidemic on betfair.

[DaMatrix]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! I guess most leaderboards that involve amount/BBs won are corrupt.

[Guppie]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! Think the key point here is the chip dumping as this is what would of affected the Stax rating.

[Punterz]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! I will not be drawn into discussions around alleged incidents. The bottom line is there is a simple flaw in the stax formula which makes it easy for any player to hit 99%. I will happily reveal it when stax is quashed. Absolutely any player can easily get 99% if they know what i know. As for Ariston's accusations one must wonder why he has not said anything for over a year. I cannot reveal too much but people know Ariston is a regular freeloader and scrounger who will (and probably has) sold his own grandmother for a tourney buy in. Basically a player called wingding won the first ever stax promotion, this month he let other people play his account (some days it was active almost 24 hours). His score was fairly high and he thought he would win, now myself and red14 started playing a few of his 6paks to make the field tougher and he cried foul play. Remember he has been account sharing. Now Ariston has dealings with wingding, i recall he sold his wsope package before. From what I am hearing some kind of deal was brokered that if Ariston could bad mouth a few players and get cheat rumours going they would get thrown out and wingding was confident he would go on to win. I am not aware of the exact deal but it was planned between the two. Anyone with a small amount of commonsense knows a player would not say nothing about something for so long then when a promotion has a week left come out with all this. Money means nothing to me, I will happily disable my sharkscope stats and people can see i made £20,000 from sng alone this month. I have never ever denied people have used my account in the past. I am not saying it is right but it is commonplace in poker. Betfair emailed me last year saying nobody could use my account other than me and I haven't let anyone since. In initial posts Ariston claimed he played my account using my ip address, he has since changed that to saying he used an ip changer. Showing betfair he has an ip changer on his pc does not prove absolutely anything, I know 20 players who have ip changers. Just how the two (wingding and ariston) thought they could get me thrown out of a current promotion by suggesting i cheated in a past promotion that I never won god only knows. The betfair poker forum has a reputation of having huge hate and jealousy. I will not be losing any sleep over this and take comfort from the fact that so many well known players i know say they will never trust ariston again. Maybe now he will actually pay for a few lunches himself instead of keep relying on free lunches. There was even a post saying i cheated leaderboards from him (I would have 15,000 points and second place would have 5,000). The whole situation is very sad and just a case of yet another bitter scrounging freeloading ponce player biting the hand that now refuses to feed them. When he made his plan I am sure he totally forgot he tried to cheat the badbeat live final. I had nothing to play for but pride, yet I turned down a £1000+ offer for my chips. When Ariston has his judgement day I cannot wait to read the forum posts. Good luck to everyone on this forum, do not judge anyone just on accusations made by others. The prize I was meant to be so desperate to cheat to win I actually won several months later and gave to charity anyways...... just think about whose story makes sense.

[SteveO]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! Thanks for posting Punterz. I've never played in the Stax Promotion but I thought that this thread was worth highlighting and the paragraph I pasted was rather biased towards Ariston and I apologise for that. I used to enjoy reading your posts on Betfair as it is mostly full of clowns and there did seem to be a fair amount of jealousy towards you. Your stax score did seem almost impossible to beat and I think a lot of people found this suspicious. I really hope you speak the truth if you were part of this forum I'd probably believe you 100% as that's the kind of people who kick around here. Good Luck to you Sir!

[Punterz]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! No worries, one thing I would like to mention is that Ariston is not exactly on the betfair payroll. I think he gets like £200 or so for a few articles a year, hardly much. So when he said he is willing to lose out by coming clean it is only a few hundred quid he is risking losing as opposed to potentially costing me $46,000. Still I have every faith that Betfair will just ignore his ramblings. I do not see the point in acting on the words of a self admitted cheat on a promotion a year ago which was won by wingding anyways. The guy is one of the biggest frauds in poker, he talks a good game but thats about it. I recall bumping into him when I played in my first ever world series. He had played 3 events I asked how well he had done and he replied with a sense of achievement I made the dinner break in Razz. So three tournaments and one dinner break made in a limit tournament. He acts as though he has some clout in Betfair but he really doesn't. I remember the BAPT when Betfair were throwing seats around like confetti, some player who raked virtually zero were given seats and he wasn't even considered. He has been sacked about three times by badbeat so even tried to say the live tournament he tried to cheat in was the idea of badbeat as it would be good promotion if their team won, not being funny but badbeat is worth millions and they would never think that way. I am sure no doubt Ariston will post on this thread soon enough, I will not post again on this issue and see this thread turn into something similar to the betfair degens forum. Just remember to not put someone down without any evidence. The words of anyone person are not good enough let alone a self admitted cheat with a grudge and an interest in another player near the top. Once again this is my last post on this thread no matter what is said. Bye

[glceud]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! I Knew the name Ariston at betfair meant something to me, I was very, very suspicous about this at the time. He might only get £200 through the books but that might not be the end of it. This is the betfair snowball promotion from a whle back were the Ariston team appeared after the first round of matches. http://www.punterslounge.com/forum/f17/betfair-12-plays-christmas-event-1-team-reindeer-39193/index7.html

[dik9]

Re: Cheating on Betfair!

So when he said he is willing to lose out by coming clean it is only a few hundred quid he is risking losing

I wouldn't have thought he would be worried about a couple of hundred quid, I believe what he is stating he may lose is his reputation and having his name darkened. I don't play much online, but from what I have seen of Ariston live, I believe him to be a genuine geeza.

[ariston1]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! Ok not gonna get drawn into another huge slanging match on a forum I dont use but I have been directed to this thread by a friend who has read this. I write for and have played many live tournaments for betfair. i am not sponsored by them but have played in tournaments all over the world for them and paid for by them ( I didnt go to singapore because I was working on a big project for betfair and I didnt have the time to have the week off). By making the admission I made I have lost far more than a few hundred quid here and there financially as well as doing damage to my reputation. I am only posting here to answer the accusation that I have set this up so wingding wins stax. I dont know wingding and have never met him. When he won stax last year I arranged to buy his seat via the betfair forum ( I can find the emails but think it was for 50% of face value with 10% of any cash) for robert williamson the third or kirk morrison (not sure which one was having that seat without going back through all the emails as I arranged to buy about 9 seats in total for other players), . Betfair then said they couldn't transfer the seat to american players so I had to let him down (along with many others). We spoke via email a few times then and have not spoken since. I made the admissions I made when a cyber row got carried away and there were many things said that shouldn't have been. I have been threatened by punterz on the betfair forum including threats to pay to have me sorted and a final offer of a fight in a ring which I accepted if he feels the need to sort things out with violence. I also had my family insulted over and over again in attempt to get a rise out of me. Everything I have said and owned up to is true and I am the one who has admitted cheating. I have never said punterz has cheated in any subsequent stax promotions I have just owned up to me helping him cheat last year. Several other players are now dealing with betfair with similar accusations of collusion/chip dumping/account sharing (4 players at the minute and all have contacted me and I have said I want nothing more to do with it and betfair are currently investigating their claims)etc and although I may have started all this I wont be providing evidence etc to betfair as they take my word and my admissions- I dont need to prove anything as I have confessed to cheating. I have offered my resignation from betfair and expect to be banned for admitting cheating so I will be punished accordingly. The rest of this thread will mainly be punterz insulting me/my family and threating to get me done over etc. He will also be trying to create a smokescreen by going on about the badbeat live final where cheating/chip dumping was discussed but none took place. I wont be rising to any theats or any more insults but there are 2 sides to every story and I thought I should put mine on here before he spends the next few days insulting me ariston

[ariston1]

Re: Cheating on Betfair!

I Knew the name Ariston at betfair meant something to me, I was very, very suspicous about this at the time. He might only get £200 through the books but that might not be the end of it. This is the betfair snowball promotion from a whle back were the Ariston team appeared after the first round of matches. http://www.punterslounge.com/forum/f17/betfair-12-plays-christmas-event-1-team-reindeer-39193/index7.html

that promotion was flawed in the fact you got one point per finishing position (so if there were 300 runners 300th got 1 pt where 1st got 300 points). I noticed this and because it was a team event I instucted my team to simply fold and blind away every hand. This meant we all finished in roughly the same postion and before anyone else noticed what we were doing we had a lead in the promotion that nobody could catch. Basically the difference between 55th and 50th was the same as 5th to 1st so instead of getting a couple of your team busted early and a couple on the final table it was far better for everyone to blind away and take $8500 each. I didnt play in the promotion but did run the team that won.

[glceud]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! Dont know how to drag quotes but heres a few from me in the Snowball promo thread before tourney started, It's a shocking scoring system though and if you dont get points in the first couple the numbers will drop so much it will be waste of $2.50 playing the remainder not sure why I wrote $2.50, sure it was a $25 buy in perhaps the fee was $5 instead pf $2.50? After first games leaderboard posted on betfair, Top of the shop for the turkeys 13 points clear We are down in 7th 54 points of the pace Looks like it might be fun That leader board was later revised with the addition of one team, the Ariston team who had an almost unsermountable lead. Hate to say it but the appearance of a team on top of the revised leaderboard has left a bad taste in my mouth allthough the fact that they are all "higher" stakes players perhaps explains their superiority That was of course sarcasm hiding the fact that it looked suspect that at least 2 of the players were "big stakes players" at betfair. So you werent in the team Ariston, you just worked for betfair and set the team up. Jeeze, were would you like to hide the smoking gun. I admire your honesty on all matters and any sort of a confession that we were shafted on that promo and I'll nominate you for a sainthood.

[ariston1]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! there was no cheating on that promotion. It was just a flaw in the scoring system that could be exploited. The fact the team wasnt put on top of the leaderboard after week one was just a complete fk up by admin staff. All 4 members of the team finished in the top 50 out of I think 270 or so runners giving us a load of points. by week 3 there were only 120 runners meaning no team could catch us as long as we kept folding (the team were even folding AA preflop etc). My team werent playing poker they were just registering and then blinding away (even if they had 2 bbs they were folding AA or Kk etc to make sure and climb a few extra places in the next orbit). I didnt work for betfair neither. I am a freelance writer who is (maybe "was" after my recent confessions) contracted to betfair but have been "sponsored" to play many events for them. I have never worked for betfair as such.

[red14]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! Ok I wont get into the argument but I will confirm what punterz has said about the flaw in the stax setup and its very very easy to get 100%. I have raked the lowest amount of rake in my 5 months on Betfair and this month I will be nearly 100% on stax when it is finished.

[BAM]

Re: Cheating on Betfair! :zzz