Chesterboy speaks about Pitbull Poker

Poker News Daily has been following the Pitbull Poker controversy since the story broke some weeks ago.  At the 2+2 forums a user by the name of “Chesterboy” started a thread that quickly gained a large following accusing the site of foul play.  Among the things alleged against Pitbull Poker were superuser access amongst certain players and “stack shaving,” where money disappeared off the table without explanation.

We caught up with Chesterboy to get his current perspective of the controversial situation involving Pitbull Poker following the poker room’s statement issued last week.

NOTE: Chesterboy’s claims are entirely his own and do not reflect PND’s views or position in any way.

PND: Can you give a brief introduction of yourself and your online poker background?

CB: I am 27 and I have been playing online poker for a living for 7 years.  I primarily play as a prop in low limit games up to $10/$20 limit Hold’em and $1/$2 NL Hold’em and PLO.   I have made $50k-$100k a year as a pro, with my average around $70k.

PND: What drew you to play at Pitbull Poker in the first place?

CB: We had it as a prop site and they had a good rake race promo that added a lot of value to the normal prop pay.

PND: How long had you been playing there and when did you start to notice what you perceive to be suspicious behavior?

CB: I noticed strange play the first time I ever played in the $2/$5 NL games.  It took me about 10 days to become convinced I was being cheated.  I don’t believe there was much cheating in the lower limit games or in any non Hold’em games.

PND: Can you give a quick summary of why you believe the site has superusers and how you’ve detected them?

CB: I have faced numerous opponents that all play the same style, which involves donk betting at an abnormally high frequency, typically 2 big blinds, no matter what the size of the pot.  I noticed this before I sat in the games, and these players are the reason I decided to sit.  I normally don’t play higher than $1/$2 but these guys looked like free money so I joined the games.

However I quickly noticed they would only donk bet when I missed the flop or had a draw.  If I tried to raise the donk bet, they would call, and make another 2bb donk bet on the turn.  If I had a draw and hit, they would check fold every time.

I basically was never able to get any action when I had them beat, and they consistently made small bets at me when I had air.  The accuracy was way too high to be possible without seeing my cards.

I have never faced so many players that play this style on any other site.  Anywhere else you play, if someone donk bets that much it is great because you get all their money eventually, but on Pitbull Poker they are never wrong.

Several other long time professionals had come to the same conclusion as me, each of us independently, and we eventually we talked about it and realized we weren’t just imagining things and there probably was some cheating going on.

PND: You posted on the 2+2 forums your case and communications with Dave Brenes (Pitbull Poker’s Manager).  How do you feel the support has been for your argument from the other users on the forum?

CB: Initially it was assumed I was imagining things, which is to be expected.  There are a few posts a day about site xxx being rigged and 99% of the claims are baseless.  Fortunately for me other long time players had experienced something fishy too and people realized we were maybe on to something.

PND: Part of your argument against Pitbull Poker is that they are virtually an unlicensed and unregulated poker room.  Some say, however, that it’s “buyer beware” out in the Internet gaming landscape.  Do you feel Pitbull is at fault for possibly being unlicensed, or the players’ fault for playing on a site with that type of background?

CB: I don’t fault Pitbull for being unlicensed.  The legal environment for online poker is rather vague and their offices are located in Costa Rica, where they do not need a license to operate.  However, I do fault them for lying and claiming to have a UK license.  They also claim to encrypt data being transmitted for server to client, when in fact they send hole card data unencrypted.  They actually have their servers in Panama, which I believe means they legally need a Panama gaming license, which they do not.

When I initially viewed their site I didn’t intend to play there because the software was horrible and it just seemed like an out-of-the-basement kind of operation.  The only reason I played there was because they said they had a UK gaming license.  I assumed no one would lie about this because it is easily verified.  I have learned my lesson now and will never play on a small site without verifying their license.

The fact that Pitbull Poker ownership is so comfortable with lying and possibly breaking laws does not inspire confidence in my mind that they can be trusted to not cheat their players.

PND: You received 1,000 hands from Pitbull Poker to analyze for suspicious play, however, they were not the 1,000 hands you requested. You had requested the hands from a certain time period and against certain players, correct? Why were you not given these hands?

CB: Dave Brenes told me that getting the hand histories was extremely tedious and involved some manual processing.  I proposed he simply get 1,000 specific hands for analysis and we could let those hands stand as evidence of cheating or innocence.  The specific hands we were talking about were hands played by another prop who posts under the screen name “Rapala.”  They were 1,000 hands of $10/$20 limit Hold’em where he claims he was never called by a worse hand.  These hands were played in a mostly 4-handed game.  I am sure anyone that plays limit Hold’em knows that it is impossible to never get called by a worse hand in a shorthanded game.  This seemed like the clearest way to prove guilt to the poker community with the least amount of work for Pitbull staff.

Rapala had already asked for these hands repeatedly over several months.  Initially Dave replied that he would get him the hands soon and it was no trouble to do so.  But he quickly changed his story, eventually saying it was simply impossible.  His main excuse was that some programmers had left and some workload was being redistributed.  This became a rather humorous statement when we realized this was the same time that Dimensus Ltd, the company that owns Pitbull Poker, was dissolved.

Somehow Dave Brenes managed to confuse those 1,000 hands we were requesting with the ones he actually sent me.  The hands he sent me were played after I realized I was being cheated.  I was avoiding the cheaters and playing a fair bit of PLO while I waited for them to process cash-outs.  So if I was ever cheated, it wasn’t in the hands he sent me.

Now that they have demonstrated they have the ability to get 1000 hands, I repeat the challenge to get us the 1000 hands of 10/20 LHE Rapala played for public analysis.

PND: Have you been able to do any analysis of the hands given to you, and if so, what are your findings, and if not, what are the obstacles in front of you in making an attempt at analyzing them?

CB: Some people on 2+2 are doing some work with them.  They are converting them to a format that will work with a standard poker database.  Quite frankly I am not too interested in looking at those hands as I know that they will not show any cheating.  As I said earlier, I was avoiding the cheaters at the time that I played those hands.  I did post them publicly so that we can figure out how to convert them so that we will be prepared to analyze the relevant hands if we ever get them.

PND: Pitbull Poker is an extremely small poker room with a very small amount of players on the site (69 during peak hours according to PokerScout). In your estimation why should the industry care what happens at this particular poker room?

CB: I don’t expect the industry to be too interested.  I primarily wanted to make sure that no one else got cheated so I wanted to make sure this got some exposure in the online poker community.

PND: At the end of this journey, what are you expecting to find and what are you hoping comes out of the investigations?

CB: If Pitbull ever releases full hand histories I think it will show obvious cheating.  I expect they will blame this on hackers, which isn’t too unrealistic considering that they don’t encrypt hole card data.  My only hope is that no one else will be cheated.  I don’t expect Pitbull to ever release evidence that would incriminate anyone, so I don’t think legal action will ever be taken, unless it is against Pitbull for operating servers in Panama illegally.

I also hope this will show small operators that they had better stay honest because one poker player on a site like 2+2 can cause quite a bit of trouble.  In my initial private correspondence with Dave Brenes I let him know that if he didn’t work on getting us some hand histories I was going to take this public and it would get ugly.  He basically told me to go for it because no one would believe me.  I hope this incident will show other site owners that they can’t lie and possibly cheat without any consequences.