In a story that seems to have taken on a life of its own, the continuing discussion of the PokerStars Chinese collusion scandal was recently the subject of discourse on the British Broadcasting Company’s radio airwaves. In addition to the attention brought by the BBC broadcast, a U. K. poker player has taken steps to push the subject with Chinese law enforcement officials.
On Sunday, the BBC Radio program “5 Live Investigates” and its host, Adrian Goldberg, brought the story of the Chinese collusion ring to its listeners in the United Kingdom. As previously reported on Poker News Daily, there was a collusion ring of Chinese players found on the Double or Nothing (DoN) sit and gos at the number one site in the online poker industry dating back to earlier this year. These sit and gos were highly popular, with the resulting controversy and compensation by PokerStars extending to cover over 25,000 players. Goldberg attempted to detail the continuing controversy by discussing the issue with several people.
“Online poker is a phenomenon, with million of people around the world generating billions of pounds for the gambling companies,” Goldberg stated at the start of the show. In bringing up the subject of the Chinese collusion ring, Goldberg stated, “We’re going to lift the lid on the unseemly side of the game.” He then introduced BBC correspondent Mike Wendling, who pointed out how collusion can be done through either the usage of instant messaging systems (Skype, MSN Messenger, etc.), the phone, or, as Wendling states the Chinese ring colluded, through soft playing a friend at the tables.
Goldberg and Wendling went on to discuss the safeguards at all online gaming sites. “Legitimate sites have protection,” Wendling says, “but the growth of online gaming has caused problems.” Wendling interviewed a former PokerStars employee who left the company approximately a year ago who told him that the security team did have a “difficult time keeping up with complaints.”
According to Wendling’s investigation, many of the online poker sites have automatic software alerts that will tip them off if any possible cheating is occurring. The volume of the games, the unnamed PokerStars employee said to Wendling, caused problems for the security team. These problems reached such a point, according to the former employee, that the auto alerts were shut off because the staff was so overwhelmed.
Goldberg welcomed two people close to the subject, U.K. author and poker player Tom Broadbent and PokerStars Game Security Specialist Michael Josem, to talk about the issue from their own sides. Broadbent says the DoNs were “his favorite game” and he played them quite extensively before he learned about the collusion ring through the online poker forum TwoPlusTwo. After learning of the problem, Broadbent applied for some of the nearly $2.1 million given out to players and was refunded $16.90, “far below” the amount Broadbent figured he had been cheated.
Josem came on the program to defend the actions of PokerStars, contending that the compensation pool of $2.1 million was “above and beyond” the approximate net of the Chinese colluders’ $500,000 take. “We wanted to be fair and reasonable to those players who had been a victim of the collusion ring,” Josem stated. It is estimated that approximately 25,000 players have been compensated by PokerStars.
In the report, Josem disputed the former employee’s allegation that the auto alert system had been disabled at some point. He stated that PokerStars has a system that prioritizes “risk factors” and attempts to find a balance between the auto alerts and player complaints. During the segment on “5 Live Investigates,” PokerStars stated that approximately 70% of the reports investigated come from players, with the remainder caught by their auto alerts systems.
Prior to the end of the discussion, Broadbent stated that he has taken the steps to file charges against the colluders in China and was heading to Beijing to continue the investigation into the collusion ring. Poker News Daily caught up with Broadbent yesterday while he was in transit to China and, as he stated on Goldberg’s program, he is not sure what he will find once he gets there.
“When I get there, the first port of call is the police station where I registered the criminal case a couple of weeks back,” Broadbent wrote to PND. “I will see what, if anything, they have done to this point. Then I will go around (to) various government bodies asking if they are serious about some of the legislation reported on Reuters in February that China was planning on online gambling, around the same time the DoN collusion occurred. The legislation, as far as I have found out, was passed as law on August 7th, two weeks after I began e-mailing various governmental bodies on this issue.”
Broadbent continued in the e-mail, “I am doing no more than meet and greet on this trip. If I get anywhere, next time I go to China, I will head down to Wenzhou and Hangzho, hopefully to meet some of the 38 that were banned in this case… (this is) a big, long story.”
Poker News Daily will continue to monitor developments in this ongoing story.
I am glad reporters like this are attempting to help us players. During my two year stay on PokerStars, they have refunded me twice. One was in the amount of $25, the other was $14. Not sure how they came up with these figures, but I am sure I had lost way more than the allotted amount.
I am so sick of these Chinese players. I truly wish something will be done to end their cheating ways.