PokerStars customer support

Are you curious what PokerStars does when you report a possible instance of abuse of the disconnection protection feature? I was, because before the incident I mentioned earlier, I had never noticed what I considered to be a suspicious disconnection. Well, today I found out what they do about it.

(A word of explanation for those who don't play online or otherwise haven't faced this issue. Suppose your Internet connection goes dead in the middle of a hand. You have money in the pot, but cannot act when it's your turn. What should the site do? It seems unfair that you would have to just reliquish all claim to the pot as if you had folded. After all, you might have the best hand. Conversely, if somebody else has the best hand, it's unfair to him to simply give you back whatever you had put into the pot, which is another possible solution to the problem. The most common compromise is the all-in protection. This means that the site temporarily acts as if the amount you had put into the pot at the time of the disconnection is all that you had on the virtual table. The hand plays out. You cannot lose any more money, but you also cannot win from any other player more than what you had in the pot when the disconnection occurred. Other players still in the hand can continue betting, creating a side pot for which you are not eligible. It's a pretty good solution, but some players are known to abuse it. If there is a situation in which a player has a fair amount of money in the pot, but he's unsure whether he's ahead or behind, he doesn't want to fold and lose what he has already invested in the hand, but he also is fearful that he'll have to put in a lot more money before the hand is done, and he doesn't want to do that, because he's not sure he's going to win. So he pulls the plug on himself. It limits his potential gain, but also limits his potential loss. The sites consider this an abuse of the disconnection protection system.)

Here's the email I got a few hours after reporting the possible abuse:

Hello Robert,

Thank you for bringing your concerns to our
attention. The integrity of our site and games are of utmost importance to us,
and as such, we take any hint of unethical play extremely seriously. I have
completed my investigation into the play of 'BTB13'.

The first
thing to do in such cases is look at the hand in question. We consider an all in
to be suspicious if the user is facing action, or the prospect of action, with a
medium strength or drawing hand. Indeed I would term this a somewhat
suspicious all in.

That said one hand neither proves or disproves
abuse; with all in abuse cases, we look at *all* of a player's recent all in
protection hands.
Hands with all in protection can generally be
classified into one of three
categories:

1) Suspicious, where
the player holds a medium strength or drawing hand, and is facing action or the
likelihood of action

2) Neutral, where the player holds a hand of
no value, and disconnects facing small action (the most common of these is to
disconnect in the blinds preflop)

3) Unfavorable, where the player
holds a hand that is clearly worth betting, and disconnects instead, costing him
the chance to bet. This also includes hands where the player disconnects preflop
and has his hand folded, or when facing no action post flop - without the
likelihood of action from the remaining players

For all in abusers,
we look for a pattern whereby the player's connection history shows almost all
suspicious all in protections, a few neutrals, and essentially no unfavorable
disconnections.

In reviewing this players connection history for
the past couple of months I find that this player generally has an average
connection to the site.
With that said whilst the player has logged
plenty of hours on the site there were only a few other hands where the all in
protection was used.
Of those other hands there was definitely no
noticeable pattern. In fact I found many hands where disconnection was
clearly unfavorable to the player. The following hand is the
case:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

PokerStars
Game #19349887999: Triple Draw 2-7 Lowball Limit ($2/$4) -
2008/08/04 -
09:39:40 (ET)
Table 'Catriona' 6-max Seat #4 is the button Seat 1: moobaC
($81 in chips) Seat 2: razvan1ian ($148 in chips) Seat 3: Jovanella ($129 in
chips) Seat 4: mile.p1 ($118.50 in chips) Seat 5: BTB13 ($84 in chips) Seat 6:
Mighty Chub ($147 in chips)
BTB13: posts small blind $1
Mighty Chub: posts
big blind $2
*** DEALING HANDS ***
moobaC: raises $2 to $4
razvan1ian:
raises $2 to $6
Jovanella: folds
razvan1ian said, "master of the
89"
mile.p1: folds
BTB13: calls $5
Mighty Chub: folds
razvan1ian
said, "mile p1"
moobaC: calls $2
*** FIRST DRAW ***
BTB13: discards 1
card
moobaC: discards 2 cards
razvan1ian: discards 2 cards
BTB13: bets
$2
moobaC: calls $2
razvan1ian: raises $2 to $4
BTB13: raises $2 to
$6
moobaC: calls $4
razvan1ian: raises $2 to $8
Betting is
capped
BTB13: calls $2
moobaC: calls $2
*** SECOND DRAW ***
BTB13:
stands pat
moobaC: discards 2 cards
razvan1ian: discards 1 card
BTB13
has timed out while being disconnected
BTB13 is being treated as
all-in
moobaC: checks
razvan1ian: checks
*** THIRD DRAW
***
razvan1ian said, "lol"
razvan1ian said, "wuss"
razvan1ian said,
"looooooooool"
BTB13 is disconnected
razvan1ian said, "gimme a 4 3 maybe
7"
BTB13 has timed out while disconnected
BTB13: stands pat
moobaC:
discards 1 card
razvan1ian: discards 1 card
moobaC: checks
razvan1ian:
checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
BTB13: shows [2s 5c 8s 3c 6s] (Lo:
8,6,5,3,2)
moobaC: mucks hand
razvan1ian: mucks hand
BTB13 collected
$42 from pot
BTB13 is sitting out
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $44 Rake
$2
Seat 1: moobaC mucked
Seat 2: razvan1ian mucked
Seat 3: Jovanella
folded before the Draw (didn't bet) Seat 4: mile.p1 (button) folded before the
Draw (didn't bet) Seat 5: BTB13 (small blind) showed [2s 5c 8s 3c 6s] and won
($42) with Lo:
8,6,5,3,2
Seat 6: Mighty Chub (big blind) folded before
the
Draw

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I
think you will agree with me that this hand can certainly be classified as
unfavorable for the player!

I can only conclude that player
'BTB13' is not abusing their all in privileges. I will however make a note
of this investigation in their account for future reference.

If
there is anything else that I can help you with, don't hesitate to let me
know.


Regards,

Howard
PokerStars Support
Team

This is so excellent. They took the report seriously, investigated it in an apparently thorough manner, and reported back to me quickly, including an explanation of how they look into such things. They have successfully dispelled my suspicion.

PokerStars support is simply the best in the business.