WSOP.com might be keeping confiscated cheater money, censors messages on their support forum about it

[Dan Druff]

WSOP.com is run by Bill Rini.

I don't know Mr. Rini personally, but I had read some of his blogs over the years and thought he was pretty on-the-ball. I felt he was a good choice as the WSOP.com poker room manager.

However, sometimes people with all the right qualifications and background for the job aren't actually suited for the position.

So it appears with Bill Rini.

I already had my own annoyances with Rini, where he basically ignored my messages about problems I was having with WSOP.com on their own support forum on 2+2.

When I finally goaded Bill into responding to me on Twitter, I asked why he was ignoring his own site's support forum. He claimed that it wasn't really a support forum (??), but that he would get someone in place soon to start answering questions there.

Months later, nothing has changed. The WSOP.com forum is mostly ignored by WSOP staff, as you can see by browsing the thread there: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/220/wsop-com/

Bill's solution was to hold "office hours" approximately once per week. This seems like a laughable concept. Why is he holding office hours on a forum? He's a poker room manager, not a tenured professor at Harvard. Forums, by definition, don't work like chat rooms. Messages posted there stay up for eternity. So why can't he just regularly answer the concerns raised on WSOP.com, rather than defining very short period of time where he will answer people's questions? Very weird.

Anyway, that aside, you will notice that the "Office Hours" thread for 4/10/14 was laughably short -- just 19 posts, including Bill's: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/22...m-pdt-1433086/

He even commented at the end, "Was a light one this week."

But actually it wasn't as light as it appeared.

Bill was actually furiously deleting posts in that thread, refusing to discuss a pressing issue.

A player calling himself "psasjc" brought up a serious issue. He claims that he reported obvious Sit-n-Go colluders, but weeks after doing so, he got no notification as to the results of the investigation, or any money once they were removed from the prize pool.

He wrote:

In order to protect the "privacy" of the accused, they do not provide the accuser a brief summary of the results of the investigation. They do not refund us anything and they keep the frozen funds of the banned players for themselves. We are not only being cheated by the colluders, we are being cheated by the site itself.

When he asked Bill Rini about the situation (and the policy) during the "office hours", his messages were deleted.

He had also asked Rini general questions about colluders in the previous "office hours" on 4/2, and he claims Bill said that he wouldn't discuss it in public. However, upon trying to get Bill to respond to him further, he claims to have received nothing. I believe this, because I found Bill to be very unresponsive to my own concerns a few months ago.

Here is the post that was deleted from the 4/10 office hours thread:

Hiya Bill, in your "Office Hours 4/2 3pm - 6pm PDT" thread you wouldn't answer many of the questions I had asked pertaining to colluders and your unjust policy of not providing a brief summary of the investigation results to those who were kind enough to discover and make you aware of potential cheaters. You evaded the questions and even resorted to deleting one of my posts. You stated:

Listen, I'm not going to go into details with you in a public forum.

I soon emailed support the following: "Hello, Bill Rini had implied to me in our spirited dialogue on Two Plus Two that he wanted to discuss the matter in another way instead of an open forum. Would you please remind him to email me back to either continue the back and forth or to set up a meeting when he gets a chance, so I'm not forced to use that forum as the only way to communicate with him on these player's rights issues? Thank you!"

I didn't hear back from you, but, instead, from another member of your team. So, when you said you didn't want to discuss this in an open forum, I guess you actually meant at all.

Look, you've got an unfair policy towards people who report cheating and to players who have been cheated by colluders. Can't you see that? Why would it be so hard to change that policy?

Telling a player who had suspected player(s) of cheating that they were found guilty or innocent after an investigation doesn't infringe on the privacy of the accused. That's just ridiculous. It can only violate their privacy if you provide their real names or personal information, or perhaps their hole cards.

However, not providing a summary of the results will only create divisiveness between the site and the accuser. The accuser will never know if the player(s) were banned or if the investigation found them innocent. They won't even be certain if there ever was an investigation. They'll always wonder if they'll get refunded or compensated from any losses from the cheaters. Why would a competent business subject their honest players to this?

In the short term, the only winner from this policy is you. You take in a rake and entry fees from cheaters and non-cheaters alike. You can take your time in an investigation and not even do a quick preliminary investigation to assess if their accounts should be frozen because you're not the ones at risk of losing money. If you find them guilty, you could freeze their accounts, ban them and keep all of their money. Obviously, you don't distribute their funds among those who had been cheated since I haven't seen a dime and since nobody has answered that question in 3 weeks. If you did, we'd know they were guilty of cheating and that would be "so horrible" if we were to deduce that.

It's win, win, win for wsop.com, but only for the short term. In the long term, many of your players will lose their trust in you. Many will stop investing their money or playing on a site that doesn't look out for their best interests. They will tell others and those people will tell other people. For those who stay, they will quickly jump ship once a reputable, international site gets the ok to provide service in their state.

Put an end to this policy, Bill, and start protecting our investments from cheaters by compensating those who have been affected. There's not a poker player who will agree with your policy, so why have it? I hope you regain my trust and do what is ethically right.

Bill Rini's response to the above (after it was re-posted in its own thread) in the next message...

[Dan Druff]

Bill's response:

First off, let's get some facts out of the way.

The reason your message was moderated/deleted is because you keep bringing up the same issue over and over again. I've given you the best answer I can give you and you started arguing with the answer. I told you that I could no longer discuss this issue with you online without violating one or more parties' privacy and you called that BS and demanded we hash this out in public.

Let's just go through this:

Here's why we're being cheated by WSOP.com:

3 weeks ago, I discovered 5 colluders at the sit and go tables on wsop.com which is no big deal since there will always be cheaters. I reported them to support with extensive evidence. They continued to play together for an additional 4 or 5 days after my initial email despite my additional evidence and pleas for them to perform a preliminary investigation to freeze their accounts.

Part of the reason it is difficult to have a conversation about this is that you keep bringing up the same things, even after they've been addressed.

I've already told you that we take allegations of cheating very seriously. We took some time to do a thorough investigation. Your "evidence" has to be corroborated.

Believe me, we get tons of cranks who claim this or that guy is cheating simply because they want them banned or they lost money to the guy.

You wouldn't like it if we just yanked your account whenever someone claimed to that you were cheating, would you? You would want us to to do some research and validate that there's reason to believe that you may be cheating, right?

Now, I can apologize that it wasn't handled at the speed that you would like but other than that, I don't know why you feel the need to keep bringing it up.

I didn't expect WSOP.com to have the same exact policy, but I was shocked to discover it is the quite the opposite. In order to protect the "privacy" of the accused, they do not provide the accuser a brief summary of the results of the investigation. They do not refund us anything and they keep the frozen funds of the banned players for themselves. We are not only being cheated by the colluders, we are being cheated by the site itself.

This is why I have refused to discuss this with you in public. You were told by our fraud team some of the financial details as they pertain to any money owed or not owed to you. I can't say anything else on this without violating both your privacy as well as the privacy of those who were caught.

So you know:

1. The colluders were caught.

2. What your financial resolution is.

What else can we provide?

I'm more than willing to have a discussion with someone but I'm not going to be harassed or allow you to hijack threads in the WSOP support forums. That's why you were banned.

Pretty harsh, right?

The 2+2 users weren't happy with this nasty/evasive answer, so a guy named 39suited posted this:

Is it correct that OP and other players affected do not get any refund from the games with collusion as stated in this thread? If this is indeed the case, can you provide us a reason why?

Bill simply responded: "OP has been informed why."

Wow.

And that was it. No more Bill Rini in the thread.

This is pretty outrageous.

Bill can't hide behind "player privacy" or "you don't know this particular situation" BS. That's the type of crap Lock Poker would say when avoiding payout questions.

He can definitely provide a general policy for WSOP.com regarding confiscated money, but is refusing to do so.

As correctly pointed out on 2+2, if a Sit-N-Go pays 3 spots and the top 3 are all cheaters, it ends up with a zero prize pool!

This is incredibly shady, and Rini just comes off as a combination of out-of-touch, arrogant, and incompetent.

Expect lots more of this crap as long as this guy is in charge.

Someone else pointed out that this situation would actually give Adelson-funded opponents of online poker ammunition to claim people will get cheated by colluders. You would think that WSOP.com would take matters like this seriously and make sure that players know that all money won through cheating will be sent back to the affected victims, rather than kept by the site.

Even if this accuser is full of shit and isn't telling us the whole story, Rini's response is very troubling.

[Dan Druff]

Here is the 2+2 thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...ng-us-1433678/

[zealanddonk]

Wasn't one of your arguments against Pokerstars in America "American companies would never ever ever pull any shady shit"

[Shizzmoney]

Wasn't one of your arguments against Pokerstars in America "American companies would never ever ever pull any shady shit"

To be fair to Druff, the whole business model of any successful poker room, no matter what the country, is to skim off the top by doing shady shit.

The fact that WSOP.com even has problems, despite Caesar's/Harrah's having 7+ years to dev for it, goes to show that when it comes to the modern corporation, stupidity may in fact be more prevalent than malice.

[Dan Druff]

I just don't understand why Bill can't hire an assistant poker room manager, and make him head of customer service.

Assign that person to the 2+2 forums, have him answer all reasonable questions/concerns, and also make his e-mail available to the public for concerns that can't be handled by the third-world support staff.

Have him communicate all company policies and empower him to resolve things fairly.

Why is this so difficult?

Has Bill Rini ever managed anything before? Sure doesn't seem like it, from what I've seen so far.

[Dan Druff]

I got a call from Seth Palansky, director of media relations at WSOP.

He got wind of my complaining about wsop.com and Bill Rini, and wanted to discuss the matter with me.

I will not reveal all aspects of the conversation, as I assume he doesn't want me to repeat some things publicly. He is aware that I am posting this.


Customer Support Problems

- He admitted that there have been some customer service problems at WSOP, and that in some areas they should have done better.

- He stated that they want to get away from the forum support of wsop.com, and wanted to get everyone used to using support@wsop.com for all support matters instead. I told him that this wasn't a realistic plan, given the poor support usually received when using that e-mail address. He agreed that much of the support was outsourced, but insisted that there is some WSOP support staff based in the US. (I believe this, as I think "Brandon B" is in the US, and he's the only competent employee I've dealt with at WSOP support.) I told him that they should just delete the 2+2 forum if they aren't going to use it for support, as its existence will confuse people who are used to the forum support model of the past 10+ years. He understood my point, but I don't think they are going to be deleting it, nor do they seem to have plans to hire anyone to man that forum. They still want the forum active for "general discussion" of wsop.com.

- I told him that the players really need a go-to-guy at support who can address all concerns that the support@wsop.com people can't handle. He told me that he really wanted people to be able to just be able to do this through the channels of the e-mail address. I told him that they should strongly consider hiring someone who is available to the general public to handle difficult/troubled support issues -- someone who is empowered, responsive, and easy to reach. Palansky suggested that people should currently use @wsopcom, @BillRini, @DanielleBarille, or his own Twitter (@SethPalansky) if they need to escalate.

- He said, "We don’t believe it is wise use of budget to put someone full-time to man forums for support-related issues." Again, he stressed that they are pushing for support@wsop.com being used for all support issues, though he acknowledged a lag right now for solving certain tougher issues. I said that players would be willing to accept a reasonable lag if they knew their issues were definitely going to be handled by someone empowered & intelligent. I also told him that many of the current customer service issues on WSOP.com could be fixed by just making procedural changes, and would requite little-to-no extra spending.

- I told him that deleting old messages from 2+2 regarding support was a big mistake, as it looks like a cover-up. He stated that they did this just to avoid the mistaken impression that support would still be given there, as well as the fact that they have improved a lot since some of these issues were raised. I told him that it still was a mistake to wipe it clean, as it gives off the wrong message. His response was that 2+2 itself actually suggested the deletions. Palansky went on to say, "We wanted to stress this wasn’t a 'support' forum, so took the tact to remove support-related messages because they were both outdated, immaterial or as we determined, giving folks a false belief of what the forum was intended to be." I still think this was the wrong move, and they should just remove the forum altogether if they don't want to provide support there.


Bill Rini

- He expressed a lot of support in Bill Rini, stating that Bill was intelligent and a big advocate for poker in general. I told him that I had a high opinion of Bill from reading his blogs in the past, but that his actions as the WSOP.com manager have disappointed me.

- He was surprised to hear that Rini had mostly ignored me during my support issues in December, claiming that Rini is typically responsive and cares a lot. I told him that Rini's unresponsiveness had been an ongoing concern for many players.

- In general, he seemed very pro-Bill-Rini, so I didn't bother to get in a debate with him about it. Seth did not agree that there was an ongoing concern by many players regarding Rini's degree of responsiveness. He said, "People should appreciate he doesn’t blow smoke, make empty promises or continue discussion just to appease them. He hears them out, investigates issues and responds accordingly. We are extremely satisfied with his expertise, knowledge and responsiveness." So it looks like the WSOP powers-that-be are satisfied with Rini's work, even if many on the forums are not. Personally, I think he has bungled communications and the whole customer support model pretty badly thus far.



Recent Collusion/Cheating Controversy on 2+2

- He stated that WSOP.com does not and will not keep money confiscated from cheaters, but the distribution of the money depends upon the specific state law, and often depends upon the circumstances. He said that it has to be handled on a case-by-case basis, due to regulations, and that a general policy cannot be given. I told him that they should give as much information as they can, so as to quell suspicion that they are trying to keep the money. Also, players just want to understand situations like these as much as possible, so they feel comfortable playing.

- I told him that I did not believe WSOP.com was running nickel-and-dime scams on its players, and that I don't think WSOP.com is intentionally cheating its players in any way. I said that most of these issues are tied to poor communication and poor customer service.

- I told him that nobody reasonable expects specific situations to be addressed in public, but the failure to address policy is the big problem.



As an aside, I brought up that I was unhappy that the WSOP had removed so many limit hold 'em events this year. He said that they might add some back next year.

I also suggested that they apply the recent (since 2012) structure changes for the $5k/$10k WSOP Limit events to other WSOP Limit events. He brought this to TD Jack Effel's attention for me, and gave me a response. Jack told him that recreational players want a lot of play at the beginning of limit tournaments, and therefore they cannot put meaningful levels at the beginning of the $1500 Limit as they do the $10,000 Limit. I still think there is a way to do this without the fish busting out too quickly, but it looks like this isn't changing. I'll be happy with the return of some limit hold 'em events in 2015, so hopefully that happens.


My overall feeling at this point:

I still think they are making too many excuses, and I still don't understand why they can't just hire someone easy to reach who can handle all tougher support issues.

I think they need to just delete the 2+2 support forum. They will never "retrain" the forum masses to not use the forum for support-related matters. If they really don't want to provide support there, they need to remove it, or make it to where nobody can post except WSOP Staff (to where it's purely informational).

I still think Bill Rini has not fared well in his handling of WSOP.com thus far. I know that Palansky feels he's been doing a great job, and perhaps he has done great things behind the scenes. However, if you read the messages from the regulars in the 2+2 wsop.com forum, you'll see they all feel the same way I do. I hope that he can learn from the mistakes thus far and provide better service and transparency in the future.

I do not believe WSOP.com is intentionally trying to be shady or steal anyone's money.

I believe that they are having to deal with a lot of challenges, including compliance with two different states' laws, as well as the fact that these sites are not generating a lot of money right now. However, I also feel that a lot of these support issues have nothing to do with regulatory matters or budgets, and could be addressed by someone with a good feel for customer support.

I think they can make a lot of quick and easy changes to their support structure that would greatly improve things, with little expense.

They also really need to either hire a part-time person to answer questions on the WSOP.com support forum, or just delete it altogether. Otherwise, it will just frustrate people.

Finally, they need to stop deleting messages, as censorship is the last thing anyone needs (or wants to see occur) after everything this industry has been through over the past 10+ years. I do believe Palansky's claim that they removed the messages simply to change the direction of the forum (i.e. away from a support forum), but unfortunately this looks bad and gives the censorship vibe, even if that's not what was intended.

So, in short, I don't believe that WSOP.com is shady or trying to cheat/trick people. I just think they have a lot to learn about customer service and communication with the online poker community.