ZeeJustin Makes a Statement
Well ZeeJustin is back in the news again and this time he came out and gave an apology for his actions. Good for him for coming out and giving the real side of the story. He knows what he did was wrong, and I'm sure there are a bunch of other guys out there right now doing the same thing he and JJProdigy did, and just haven't got caught. I would like to think that these guys would stop now that they know they can be caught and the penalties that will follow. Even with ZeeJustin's apologies his fellow online poker player's are not going to forgive him or his actions any time soon, and when you think about it why should we. He took potential prize money away from all of us who are playing the game legitimately. Online poker is tough enough to win and be successful in its own right let alone having to deal with guys cheating. Trust me if this guy cost me a bunch of money playing in tournaments I would not accept his apology. However, I am glad that he decided to come out and give the rest of the online poker world an explanation for his wrong doings.
Here are some excerpts from ZeeJustin's statement:
For those of you that aren’t aware of the situation, I recently got caught by PartyPoker and PokerStars using multiple accounts in tournaments. There were six different PartyPoker accounts that I used. For big tournaments, I would often use these accounts to enter a single tournament with four entries. (I used all six once or twice, but generally used four) I did this by exploiting a bug which let you open multiple PartyPoker clients on your computer simply by clicking on the icon rapidly. On PokerStars, I had a single extra account which was mostly used by people other than me, but occasionally I did use it to double enter large PokerStars tournaments.
At that time, I unfortunately did not realize that what I was doing was unethical. For starters, many of the poker players that I have learned from were using the same practice. This obviously doesn’t make it ok, but I wasn’t questioning it at the time. Until recently; this wasn’t a well hidden fact. People seemed to accept it as ok and talked about it in the open.
Also, the idea was NOT to collude or chip dump with myself in any way. I only multi accounted in tournaments with thousands of players where it would be very unlikely for me to ever end up at the same table as myself. If the goal was collusion, I would have multi-entered smaller tournaments like sit’n’gos. This is something that I have never done.
I don’t think Party handled the situation as well as they could have. The money taken from me was won legitimately, almost entirely from sit’n’gos. None of the other accounts I used had any big tournament scores; in fact, they lost money overall in the few tournaments that they entered. Party has a zero tolerance policy which in my opinion is unfair. If I had only double entered a single $10 tournament, by the same policy, that would be grounds for them to confiscate $100,000 from me which seems unreasonable. The punishment was arbitrary, and no investigation was done to determine a reasonable adjustment. I feel like the amount of my punishment has been determined by what was in my account, rather than by what a thorough investigation would have determined.
Some players have begun to question my two recent tournament wins. Lee Jones publicly stated the following, “His big tournament win on PokerStars was legitimate (we checked it carefully).” PartyPoker has not made any similar statements, but my second place finish in the million guaranteed was legitimate as well. I have the hand histories to prove this.
I have many friends that have multi-accounted tournaments in the past. To my knowledge, they have all stopped, but I want to encourage them to talk to me if they still do it. I will explain to them exactly why it is wrong on both an ethical and practical level.
For starters, it is against the spirit of the game. In poker, there should be no situation where you have knowledge of more than one hand. Even the chance of this occurring is against the spirit of the game. It doesn’t matter if there’s a 9/10 chance or a 1/10,000 chance of ending up at the same table as yourself; that chance existing is against the spirit of the game.
It also leads to many gray areas in terms of ethics that should not exist at all. How many accounts is it ok to play with? Is two any better than fifty? What number of players in the tournament makes it ok? It’s obviously wrong in a 10 player tournament, but what about 100, 1,000 or 10,000? There is no one number at which you can draw a line and say, with 673 players or more it’s ok. Also, if you do happen to wind up at the same table as yourself, what is proper protocol? Should you try to play normal? Should you sit one account out? What if there are 5 people at your table each with two accounts making up ten players? Is there any way that game can be on the level? The answer to these questions isn’t important. What’s important is that you should never have to ask these questions in poker. There should be no gray area.
Most importantly, I’ve been thinking a lot about my character. In general, I’m a nice guy. I always try to be respectful of other people, and I’ve never stolen anything in my life. I’ve always wanted to be viewed as an ethical citizen, and up until recently, I believe I’ve deserved that view. Because of my actions, that’s no longer the case. My reputation has always been extremely important to me, but now I’ve compromised that. I’ve been getting a lot of heat lately, and I deserve it. I’ve been a huge hypocrite, and I didn’t realize it until recently. There is now a cloud over my poker accomplishments, and I vow to be the person I need to be to earn back trust in the poker community.
As for what the future holds, I’m not entirely sure. No matter what, I will return to poker. Poker has been my passion, and I can’t picture myself doing anything else. I hope that I can one day reclaim my reputation. Obviously this will take years and not days, and I accept this.
Obviously, whenever you see ZeeJustin's name come up in a discussion or a topic on any of the message boards you will see a lot and I mean a lot of comments on the topic. With this latest statement the message board community was going wild and here are a few the topics:
TwoPlusTwo Forums
NeverWin Poker
PocketFives
Full Contact Poker
Well another PokerParty at the expense of ZeeJustin has occurred and I hope that for all those chiefs still out there multi accounting you get busted and harsher penalties delivered to you. Multi accounting is flat out wrong and I hope someone is able to finally put a stop to it all.
This blog post was brought to you by the bonus code 20BR on PartyPoker.
Here are some excerpts from ZeeJustin's statement:
For those of you that aren’t aware of the situation, I recently got caught by PartyPoker and PokerStars using multiple accounts in tournaments. There were six different PartyPoker accounts that I used. For big tournaments, I would often use these accounts to enter a single tournament with four entries. (I used all six once or twice, but generally used four) I did this by exploiting a bug which let you open multiple PartyPoker clients on your computer simply by clicking on the icon rapidly. On PokerStars, I had a single extra account which was mostly used by people other than me, but occasionally I did use it to double enter large PokerStars tournaments.
At that time, I unfortunately did not realize that what I was doing was unethical. For starters, many of the poker players that I have learned from were using the same practice. This obviously doesn’t make it ok, but I wasn’t questioning it at the time. Until recently; this wasn’t a well hidden fact. People seemed to accept it as ok and talked about it in the open.
Also, the idea was NOT to collude or chip dump with myself in any way. I only multi accounted in tournaments with thousands of players where it would be very unlikely for me to ever end up at the same table as myself. If the goal was collusion, I would have multi-entered smaller tournaments like sit’n’gos. This is something that I have never done.
I don’t think Party handled the situation as well as they could have. The money taken from me was won legitimately, almost entirely from sit’n’gos. None of the other accounts I used had any big tournament scores; in fact, they lost money overall in the few tournaments that they entered. Party has a zero tolerance policy which in my opinion is unfair. If I had only double entered a single $10 tournament, by the same policy, that would be grounds for them to confiscate $100,000 from me which seems unreasonable. The punishment was arbitrary, and no investigation was done to determine a reasonable adjustment. I feel like the amount of my punishment has been determined by what was in my account, rather than by what a thorough investigation would have determined.
Some players have begun to question my two recent tournament wins. Lee Jones publicly stated the following, “His big tournament win on PokerStars was legitimate (we checked it carefully).” PartyPoker has not made any similar statements, but my second place finish in the million guaranteed was legitimate as well. I have the hand histories to prove this.
I have many friends that have multi-accounted tournaments in the past. To my knowledge, they have all stopped, but I want to encourage them to talk to me if they still do it. I will explain to them exactly why it is wrong on both an ethical and practical level.
For starters, it is against the spirit of the game. In poker, there should be no situation where you have knowledge of more than one hand. Even the chance of this occurring is against the spirit of the game. It doesn’t matter if there’s a 9/10 chance or a 1/10,000 chance of ending up at the same table as yourself; that chance existing is against the spirit of the game.
It also leads to many gray areas in terms of ethics that should not exist at all. How many accounts is it ok to play with? Is two any better than fifty? What number of players in the tournament makes it ok? It’s obviously wrong in a 10 player tournament, but what about 100, 1,000 or 10,000? There is no one number at which you can draw a line and say, with 673 players or more it’s ok. Also, if you do happen to wind up at the same table as yourself, what is proper protocol? Should you try to play normal? Should you sit one account out? What if there are 5 people at your table each with two accounts making up ten players? Is there any way that game can be on the level? The answer to these questions isn’t important. What’s important is that you should never have to ask these questions in poker. There should be no gray area.
Most importantly, I’ve been thinking a lot about my character. In general, I’m a nice guy. I always try to be respectful of other people, and I’ve never stolen anything in my life. I’ve always wanted to be viewed as an ethical citizen, and up until recently, I believe I’ve deserved that view. Because of my actions, that’s no longer the case. My reputation has always been extremely important to me, but now I’ve compromised that. I’ve been getting a lot of heat lately, and I deserve it. I’ve been a huge hypocrite, and I didn’t realize it until recently. There is now a cloud over my poker accomplishments, and I vow to be the person I need to be to earn back trust in the poker community.
As for what the future holds, I’m not entirely sure. No matter what, I will return to poker. Poker has been my passion, and I can’t picture myself doing anything else. I hope that I can one day reclaim my reputation. Obviously this will take years and not days, and I accept this.
Obviously, whenever you see ZeeJustin's name come up in a discussion or a topic on any of the message boards you will see a lot and I mean a lot of comments on the topic. With this latest statement the message board community was going wild and here are a few the topics:
TwoPlusTwo Forums
NeverWin Poker
PocketFives
Full Contact Poker
Well another PokerParty at the expense of ZeeJustin has occurred and I hope that for all those chiefs still out there multi accounting you get busted and harsher penalties delivered to you. Multi accounting is flat out wrong and I hope someone is able to finally put a stop to it all.
This blog post was brought to you by the bonus code 20BR on PartyPoker.
posted by Brad aka The Kid at 8:25 AM
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