[Seahorse]

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Wasn't Roy Cooke the one who admitted to reviewing players hands on planetpoker and using it agains them in live games?

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<font color="black"> </font> No – Cooke wrote in article in CardPlayer (not exactly an admission) about reviewing the play of a friend and helping that friend – my memory is that people said they were afraid Cooke would do what you said, but he always firmly denied it and Caro backed him up.

I think what Cooke said in this post was:
Russ G. is definitely a cheat and his info on cheating on his website is good.
Cooke knows some of Russ G.’s accusations are true, believes some are true, he doesn’t know about others, and he’s not accusing anybody in particular. (I’d like to know which, but I can understand his reluctance to go farther.)
Under 10-20 cheating is irrelevant, higher it starts to matter. Real high it matters a lot.

This is a guy who has spent the last 5 or 6 years investigating internet cheating accusations. I’d guess he knows something about it.

All these guys are part of the industry, including David and Mason. And it’s a pretty clubby industry. Mason once said he thought he’d never been cheated. David has said indirectly a number of times he’s sure there is cheating. Like Cooke they have an interest in not causing problems for the industry which pays their bills.

I live in LA but spend a lot of time in Vegas. Cooke doesn’t play $4k-$8k but he knows pretty much everybody, probably sees and hears a lot. He did play-by-play at Live at the Bike recently (he was really good) he's always hanging out with top poker people.

I’ve seen in his articles that he has a strategy of never playing the highest game of his type in a room, because the best players and the cheaters play high when it’s available ---- if there’s $100-$200 at the Bellagio which sucks the toughies out of the $80-$160, he plays $80-$160. If the biggest middle limit hold em game is $80-$160, as it often is at the Bellagio he plays $30-$60. I’ve seen him playing $200-$400 at the Commerce though he usually plays $40-$80 there and $75-$150 at Hollywood Park. They were both sweet games where he obviously had huge edge. I think that’s what he’s about, picking the best spots with the least fluctuation.

I heard from a good source that Party busted a guy with 350 accounts and IP addresses who was playing 5 seats in 6 handed games. I know at least two high profile Vegas regulars, friends of mine actually, were barred from several sites including Planet and PokerStars for cheating. And I’m not in the know like Cooke, David and Mason – I’d bet they know lots of stuff I haven’t heard. And I’ve heard stories like the ones Russ G. tells lots of times over the years, though I got no clue whether they’re true or not.

I do know that I heard from a real reliable source that when Scotty N. checked the nuts behind Daniel N. at a WPT final table on television, Daniel had put Scotty into the tournament. That’s surely not a righteous thing, and I kind of think Daniel is a good guy and straightshooter.

I’m sure we all get cheated some but it’s like the rake, just an expense of playing the game that you have to allow for.

I think it’s pretty remarkable that Cooke went against the grain of the industry’s tendency to just not talk about this subject and take a public stand. You can quibble over the details about how he want about it, but hey he’s got us all thinking and talking about it and that’s got to be bonus.


BTW since I admit to having friends who cheat I made a new account to make this post.