Wretchy: MTT Cheaters and why online poker may be screwed.

Here is my reply on P5s to the news that the cheater "Wretchy" is going to serve a short suspension and be allowed to keep his winnings on FTP and PS despite being caught using his girlfriend's account in the same tournaments. ZeeJustin and JJprodigy got lifetime bans just a few years ago. Remember the scene from "Rounders" when Worm gets caught bottom dealing to Mike and the butt whooping they received from the police? Vegas casinos used to break fingers and sometimes people just never came back from "Rides" in the desert.
The least we can do is start an online campaign to have his Online Player of the Year points at CardPlayer.com disqualified. CONTACT CARDPLAYER HERE (This is important. Please drop a comment, email a short note and forward this post if you care about fair play)
Here is his profile in case you run into him at the WSOP: http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-players/58314-dan-martin

Background:
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (pre 2006) I was asked to join a bonus whoring club. Once I got in and proved I could play rock tight full ring FLHE I got a second invite to the secret society. They required; at least five different IDs (called Gnomes), at least three computers with different connections (two for play and one for IM), and provided IP randomizer software / links. They set up times and we played 5 to a table on the Cryptologic sites earning around $8K in bonus bucks until the grind wore me down. So I quit. A little while later they came back and offered me Winholdem and an autofold bot so my gnome accounts could grind away. The catch was I had to allow remote access to the computers. Feeling on the edge of a slippery slope I declined and blacklisted their email addresses. (This stuff is probably still going on for all I know).

The Point:
These guys/cheaters had people in at least twenty or so cities that I am aware of and there were several other teams much bigger and better coordinated chugging away. Once the Bonus Grinding game got destroyed by UIGEA these guys were in a lurch and attempted to turn their sights onto rakeback scams. We have all seen the bots chugging away for hours on end until someone writes support and they go away. Well the sites had learned from the bonus fiasco to watch for abuse behaviours and are pretty wise to the whole thing.

My final point is the sites have learned from bonus abuse teams, Rakeback abuse and sign up deposit fraud to watch for and actively lock accounts based on a set of criteria which experience has proven to be valid. However, when it comes to MTTs they rely almost completely on the players themselves to police them. The one major drawing that a poker site has is its huge MTT payouts which attracts fish and criminals alike. The sites are not protecting the average, rake paying, recreational player from the cheaters, angle shooters and Multiaccounters the MTT community itself is thanks to P5s and 2P2. Which in and of itself is completely and totally wrong.

The technology to detect this stuff is inexpensive and easy to implement. What is hard is finding a security/IT geek who is an experienced enough poker player to spot collusive play. Which obviously FTP or PS has not hired yet since an account controlled by 'Wretchy' from the same IP, in the same MTT, was playing "Obviously different" style of play. That is ludicrous and just too damned lame a response to even justify trying to explain why "Obviously Different" is obviously cheating. Factor in the fact that they allow known cheaters to serve very short suspensions and return with no indication at all on their screen name they have been caught in the past. PS and FTP need to get off their rear ends and address these issues before they ignore themselves into a buy out from Harrah's.

Moderator Poker Dot Com Forums