Party Poker Blog

"We used to do it, buying in other people for the majors and then having extra accounts in case we busted out."
Gavin Smith

"I'm sure people who have bashed you have multi-accounted themselves....maybe they've done it and haven't been caught. I want to let you know it was a bad thing that you got caught, young man; next time you do it don't get caught."
Gavin Smith

This whole thing just burns my ass. For people like me, who have played it straight for years and years, it's a kick in the nuts.

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Poker Road Radio: Are you remorseful because maybe you felt like what you did was wrong, or are you remorseful because you got caught?
Josh “JJProdigy” Field: Well, I think first I got caught. I mean, it had to take them to catch me for me to realize that I was wrong and what I was doing was wrong.

Poker Road Radio: So you are telling the world right now that . . . you right now are not playing on the sites that you’re banned from and you have no plans to play on the sites that you are banned from?
Josh “JJProdigy” Field: At this moment in time, yeah. I can’t tell you in a month I’ll be thinking the same, because it’ll be really hard not playing all those sites. But right now, yeah.

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Wow. I can't help but start to feel like a sucker: if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying? Is that really what it's come to?

Anyway, in the Open letter to the poker community on integrity thread, I found this post by Barry Greenstein as people were debating all the gray areas of poker, both B&M and online:

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I'm confident that I could pass a lie detector test that I've never cheated at poker. That means that I don't think I've done anything wrong, but not everyone will agree. Some people don't think that I should have been able, in the past, to play under more than one screenname. Since I signed with Pokerstars a year and a half ago, I was told that I could only play in one account and that no one else could play my account. I have had no problem abiding by those rules that weren't always in force.

I was at the Commerce casino today and I asked about 20 people who also play on the Internet if they had ever played in someone else's account or if anyone had ever played in theirs. Everyone had done both. It used to be accepted, but now it's not on Pokerstars, and I think other sites are following suit. But to accuse me of being unethical for doing this when it was not against the rules seems ridiculous.

Someone asked what is legal to do online, but not in live poker: My girlfriend was playing in an online tournament. She had a difficult decision and screamed across the room the details of the hand and asked me what she should do. I told her to move in. I have talked to the higher-ups at different sites and that is not against the rules, but some people here would claim I was unethical. Obviously, I would never give advice during a hand of live poker.

For those who think we deserve to be punished: she moved in, got called and went busted. So much for my advice!

Barry