Cheating and more cheating

Cheating in poker

I refer you to this rather remarkable post on the Pocket Fives forum, containing several stories of apparently shady goings-on in the Partouche Poker Tour:

http://www.pocketfives.com/f7/cheating-accepted-partouche-poker-tour-598429/

I obviously have no way to verify any of the accusations. I await further eyewitness accounts. For the final and longest story, I checked Michael Binger's blog, because he is named as a vocal objector to the ruling made, but there's nothing about it there yet. Binger is unquestionably one of the brightest minds in poker, and, from everything I can tell, a completely ethical straight shooter (except for the fact that he agreed to be a pro for the cheatingest online site on the planet, and except for the fact that he knocked Cardgrrl out of the HORSE tournament at the WSOP on a horrendously bad beat, which is even more unforgiveable).


Cheating in blogging

I first learned of this story from Richard Marcus's "Poker Cheating and Casino Cheating Blog," here. It rather nauseates me to have to post that link, but integrity requires it. It's ironic to speak of integrity in the same paragraph as Marcus's name. On several occasions I've called him out on his dogged refusal to follow ordinary ethical practices in blogging; see here, and then follow links backwards. He's a slime bucket. I continue to subscribe to his RSS feed because it does serve as a useful aggregator of news on the subject; if there were another that did the same but treated its source material with normal respect, I'd use it instead.

In this case, Marcus does not name the source, does not link to it. In fact, he tries to make it sound as if he has personally been hearing these stories from the French poker tour from his own private sources, and his publication of them is original. I did a Google news search for "Mike Matusow Partouche" and quickly found the Pocket Fives post noted above. I then discovered that it contained in one place all of the allegations that Marcus names. His post tries to make it sound as if he is compiling them from multiple independent sources, but in reality, he has just plagiarized one pseudonymous post.

I have zero hope of reforming Marcus; I believe him to be an unredeemable thief and cheat. But I feel some obligation to point out his ethical violations when I become aware of them.