Growing up, I was always told cheaters never win, crime doesn't pay, etc. etc. etc. I'm sure you have heard all of them too.
Well, in the poker world these days, it seems not only does cheating pay, it pays well.
This week I heard that Justin Bonomo signed a pretty lucrative deal with Bodog Poker to become a spokesman for them.
Justin was a top ranked online player until he was caught in a cheating scandal and had his account banned on Poker Stars. Basically what Justin was doing was multi accounting, he'd enter the same multi table tournament more than once. Well he won the Sunday Million on Poker Stars, had his account investigated and was found to have other entries in the tournaments. He was banned by Poker Stars, and had his winnings frozen.
Also recently another pro Sorel Mizzi who was also caught cheating on Full Tilt poker signed a deal with Bet Fair poker. What Sorel Mizzi was doing I consider even worse than what Bonomo was doing. Mizzi was buying poker accounts from other players when they were getting deep into tournaments.
Basically what he was doing, was whenever a friend was getting deep into a tournament he'd pay a certain amount of money to finish the tournament for them. The players he was taking over the accounts would get a bunch of chips together, then Mizzi would finish the tournament for them.
Imagine if you are in a live tournament and early in the tournament you knock Phil Ivey out. Now you are getting deep into the tournament and Phil Ivey sits at your table. I thought we had already knocked Ivey out, well Ivey basically bought back into the tournament. So you had thought you had knocked one of the best players in the world out of the tournament, just to find him at the head table with a chip lead.
What bothers me about these two situations is both of these players have been caught cheating online and had their accounts banned on certain sites. Now they have been hired by other online poker sites to be spokesmen for them.
In a way these sites condone cheating. How can they tell the average player that multi accounting, or buying an account is wrong, when they have spokesmen who have been caught doing this.
Also I don't like what this says for the game of online poker. Online poker has just had a major cheating scandal on Absolute Poker where two people high up in the company where playing and seeing hole cards. It's believed that they stole nearly 7 million from their customers.
We are fighting a fight to make online poker legal and make it legit. How can it be legit, and how can players trust these poker sites when high ups outright cheat, and they hirer cheaters to promote their product?
