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:

Quote Originally Posted by psasjc
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:

Quote Originally Posted by psasjc
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:


Quote Originally Posted by Bill Rini
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...