Coming this summer, the online poker cheating tapes

[MS Sunshine]

Sometime next month GCA, Russ G, is going to tape himself and his crew cheating at online poker. He plans to market these tapes and DVDs for about $40. Russ says that he has many accounts at the same sites and that he is playing where there is big money. Now I'm sure that the usernames that will be shown in the future will get closed by the different poker sites, but this will be after they have made their money and cashed out. I've had problems with the ability of poker sites to truly catch anyone cheating without first getting a complaint from a customer first. I would not be a happy camper to see a tape of me being cheated in a $215 tournament out of a large amount of money. I can see a large backlash at the poker sites shown on the tape, cries for money that was cheated and the sites NOT paying because of the big number involved.

Now, for the reason that Russ would expose his own cheating ring, it would be an ego driven, but this could also be a major shakedown of the poker sites to avoid their sites being in the tape.

MS Sunshine

[HavanaBanana]

Are you Russ G, his shrink or his priest at confessiontime?
Maybe you are a G-man, tapping his electronic info?

I want a webcam in your home, with sound, so I will know what you and your wife is up to (at the pokertables only!)

OC said he had a friend who knew of a gang of cheaters at pokerstars, and wantes 2500? dollars to tell them who.

Well this sounds like same kind of story, no proof at all.

Faster Pussycat Kill,Kill,Kill

[RollaJ]

I dont know about his motivations and his name dropping/slander, but we all know cheating happens in poker and if he is willing to show us some of the methods that are used against us I see know reason to be against it. Furthermore it seems that anyone playing online should be prepared to detect cheating, as it is questionable as to whether the sites do enough to stop cheating, and even if they do the most they can it may not be enough

[Easy E]

... to start a collection, buy one copy, make multiple copies and post on every newsgroup that we know.

Same thing for his book, when it comes out.

Anyone remember the "Steal This Book!" tome that came out in the 70's? Lessons on making pipe bombs, how to pick pockets, etc.

[Vehn]

Why do you give this guy any credibility at all? For almost 2 years we've all heard the same unsubstantiated libel over and over with no proof and nothing but BS piled upon BS, followed by "reruns" of said BS when he's not getting enough attention. You really don't think the "big games" like Paradise $20/$40 are watched like an ant under a microscope? You really think this guy is capable of putting together a "team" of cheaters and get away with it for serious money in games above $5/$10?

IMO he's clearly a lonely old guy with living in a shack in Oregon with some money from god knows where making up a little fantasy world as he goes along. Note of course I am not exactly online poker's #1 fan here but I find this utterly retarded and not worth taking the time to even look at.

[Hotchile]

I'm a little concerned about giving credence to someone who is admitting to cheating. Nor would I want to give him any credit for coming forward with tapes supposedly as proof. He might cheat at poker but he would never fabricate or doctor tapes on cheating.

Having said that, I can see a couple of outcomes. One, pokersites that have been subject to cheating will get the opportunity to review their security, if they are so inclined to do so. Two, every wannebe cheat will have a how-to book on screwing people at online poker tables. Somehow, that just doesn't sit too well with me.

I don't know his motivations (and don't really care) but I would rather not give too much of my time to people like this or "projects" that they have undertaken. JMHO

HC

[beernutz]

I volunteer to put a divx avi on kazaa, bittorrent, and mirc if I can get a copy of whatever Russ sells.

[GrannyMae]

Why do you give this guy any credibility at all?

i don't want to be repetitive, but i have always said that online collusion is a REAL issue, and we all must be vigilant and watch for it then report it.

as far as giving russ credibility, i would bet my smiley bundles that not only is he actively cheating with teams online, but he is doing it with success.

as far as russ exposing his team members screenames in the soon to be released tape, my answer to that is that the biggest and most effective collusion teams change screenames very often. this is necessary for them to beat the security feature that searches for players that are always playing together.

russ is trash, and the lowest form of life. however, don't think that he is not a danger to us all.

finally, last i had heard he was accusing partypoker of being rigged. this translate to "my team can't win there". the best way to beat russ and his teams is to avoid them. i would think that they are NOT playing at party. this does not mean that party (or any site) is collusion-free, i'm saying it is GCA-free.

vigilance is your best defense. either that, or play nothing but SNG's like i do. there is no lure for colluders in these.

jmho

http://www.techhelpers.net/e4u/comp/comp04.gif

[Vehn]

Why would you believe him about this when he's clearly lied his ass off about everything else?

[GrannyMae]

he's clearly lied his ass off about everything else?

not everything. that is what makes him dangerous. there is some truths to his spew.

also, i was only expressing my opinion.. many or most disagree with me on this.

[jasonHoldEm]

I'm not much of a RGP'r, but I did a google and came up with this...apparently Gary Carson has been keeping links to all of GCA's posts (at least the important ones). Makes for some interesting (and somewhat scary) reading...I'm glad I play the micros

http://garycarson.home.mindspring.com/essays/cheating/

[yct]

Wow! I can't wait. Is there going to be a collector's special edition? /forums/images/icons/smirk.gif

[Hung]

Gary Carson

Oh damn, I forgot to post a chapter of his book... woops...
I got a chapter of his book and I was going to post it on my site. That was 2 months ago. I'd better go post it now.

the online poker cheating tapes

I hope they will not only make tapes. I'd like to have it on DVD. /forums/images/icons/grin.gif Ask him if he has a DVD burner, so he can put them on DVD. NTSC is bad. You know what they say NTSC, Never Twice the Same Color.

[Tom D]

Why can’t Russ’s team win at Party?

Tom D

[gdaily]

I would welcome such a DVD,

because I think that online collusion is a dangerous matter. This is the reason I ONLY play heads-up nowadays!

However I, reading what he (Russ) has written and bragged about before, am willing to bet that there will not be such a DVD during this month, not even this year.

Sadly

Ola

[MS Sunshine]

Without question Russ has a high BS/truth ratio, but the guy has scammed his entire life. He is also an excellent player, going by his poker posts and players that know him. He is not a dumb cheat. I feel that most measures to catch cheats on the internet are to catch dumb cheats. Even two players like the two that posted about doulbing their 1 BB/hr win rates by not playing more than 40% of the time together stand a good chance to get caught. Russ, has always had large groups of people working for him and with proper rotation it would take away one of poker site's major clues that players are cheating together. You don't catch cheats like Russ, with the same IP#, or from them using the same computer for two or more accounts. His guys are not capping with 53o and AA preflop five way action. These guys are professional scammers and with poker sites reluctance to bar a high-limit player, with say over $15K in rake a year, without hand histories that leave little, or no doubt, about the matter. As long as they stay within their guidelines and continue to open new accounts then even the sites that may have them on a watch list will always have just have a gut feeling, but be caught like a deer in the headlights by indecision to kick off 5-10 players playing the highest limits or let them continue play but watch them.

Even if some accounts are closed, they get their money back(because their cheating isn't completely obvious) and no longer use that computer at that site and just open up another few accounts with other names and ISP's.

We are having several tournaments on the net a week that have very good size money in them. $20K first prize is awful attractive to someone that has cheated his whole life, but is no longer playing live. Take ten players among 200 players, they don't need to have them paired up on the same tables at the start, but when it gets down to 3-4 tables and just about out of the money, being able to just sluff off chips to your partners has real value. As to catching good cheats sluffing off chips at a time when there is alot of legitimate stealing, and restealing, with most players trying to avoid playing, to miss the bubble, is is very unlikely, IMO Now it might be possible to have the software, during table moves, when tables break, and during the table draws to separate players on the watch list or previous high ratio of cashing players. This would remove some of the cheater's advantage before the final table.

Talk of cheating makes everyone crazy, because it does keep players from playing higher limits or from playing at all on the internet. But, the rake, a site go belly up, and cheats are the only real threats to a winning player's BR. Someone winning 1BB/hr loses maybe 30-50% to the rake over time. Sites going belly-up really is unusual. But I'm completely clueless to the cost of playing 5% of the time during the year with a large team of cheats on a site. These folks laugh at making just 2 BB/hr playing $15-30. IMO

MS Sunshine

[pokerguy11]

There can be 2 and only 2 cases:
1. He is lying about his online cheating.
2. He is telling truth about his online cheating.
Then what's the point in publishing the book/tape?
It will hurt his profits (in extreme case killing
entire online poker industry). Possible reasons for
doing it anyway:
a) his profits from B&M cheating are greater
that that of online cheating and he wants to
shift people to B&M from online;
b) he wants to get paid by some site (Party is
obviously being the best candidate) to
publish tape mentioning other sites, implying
that sites that are not mentioned are free
of cheating. a) will never work, and b) is
IMO quite unlikely.

Bottom line: it is unlikely that he will ever
publish anything specific on the subject of cheating
(which BTW will be quite inconsistent with his posts).