Blotter: StoxPoker founder resigns due to online poker cheating scandal
Nick Grudzien, one of the co-founders of the poker instructional site StoxPoker, has resigned from his position after having been accused of using multiple accounts at the top online poker sites and colluding with other players.
The accusations came from members of the online poker forum “2+2″, where online poker pro David “Viffer” Peat proposed that accounts on Full Tilt Poker with the screen names “Stoxtrader” and “40putts” were both operated by Grudzien, a violation of the site’s Terms and Conditions.
Grudzien would typically play at both Full Tilt and PokerStars under the name “Stoxtrader” and record the results of those hands for his instructional videos. However, forum members recently discovered that he also played under different names on those same sites to disguise himself from those players familiar with his techniques. Major poker sites do not allow players to have more than one account in order to prevent the same player from occupying two or more seats at the same table.
Posters on the forums have also accused Grudzien of colluding with certain opponents to chase out other players while “soft-playing” against each other. Players used evidence from hand history software to show that Grudzien, playing under the screen name “40putts”, was not playing as aggressively against an opponent with the screen name “kinetica” as he was against other players at the table.
In one instance, the statistics showed that “40putts” would go to a showdown in no-limit Texas Holdem cash games against other opponents in between five and ten percent of his hands. The same numbers showed that he would showdown against “kinetica” in less than two percent of the hands they played against each other. The numbers also showed that “40putts” and “kinetica” were at the same table for twenty-five out of thirty-two hours covering multiple sessions.
The statistical methods that the 2+2 posters used were much the same as those used to expose the cheating scandals at Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. In those instances, the researchers found that players used “superuser” accounts to see their opponents’ hole cards.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 7:43 am and is filed under Casino News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
