The 2+2 poker forums have been a hotbed of activity lately with everything from talk of blackmail to PokerStars pros with secret identities (PeachyMer), and as we reported earlier this week, a little bit of bomb-throwing by Team UB Poker pro Prahlad Friedman, who accused Justin “zeejustin” Bonomo and Isaac Haxton of sharing accounts when they play against him.
Friedman took to his Twitter account to level the allegations:
“Isaac Haxton and Justin Bonomo share and switch accounts often. Was playing random guy and looked up his stats. Identical to Hax,”
“Haxton knows I don’t want to play him, so scummy. Beware of their scummy tactics. They have been doing this for years. No more.”
Once the 2+2 community got a hold of this the thread quickly grew into “epic” proportions. Obviously Friedman’s affiliation with UB Poker does not sit well with many UB forum users, so he was mainly blasted for having little evidence. Friedman once again went on Twitter and explained his side of the story, stating that the account he knows of that belongs to Haxton played eerily similar to the random account that just beat him, and posted PokerTableRatings.com data to prove his point.
Again, many posters doubted the accounts were the same, and were not close enough in play to be considered damning evidence; which is when Ike Haxton showed up on 2+2 to clear his name.
Unfortunately the plot thickened a bit since Haxton said Friedman was correct in that both accounts were used by him, but was wrong in the specifics, because UB Poker and their sister-site Absolute Poker allow for two separate screen-names. So knowing that Friedman would not play him on his UB account Haxton used/created an AP account to get his action.
The 2+2 community seems to be torn on the matter; some claiming it is entirely within the T&C of the site, while others claim it is unethical, since Haxton used a backdoor method to anonymously play someone who he was told did not want to play against him.
Further complicating the matter was the initial response by ZeeJustin, who stated:
“To the best of my knowledge, all three sites in question (Stars, FTP, Cereus) acknowledge that there is no one player to a hand rule online. Prah however isn’t accusing us of talking strategy, ghosting, or coaching. He is accusing us of outright cheating and account sharing …Isaac has the right to anonymity so long as he follows the site’s ToS…”
Therefore, according to Bonomo, as long as you are within the site’s T&C you can take part in all manner of underhanded tactics, including ghosting or coaching –which is simply multi-accounting by proxy. I’m sure we haven’t heard the end of this matter…
Related Posts
- Prahlad Friedman Accuses Haxton and Bonomo of Cheating - March 14, 2011
- A Look at UB Poker Pro Prahlad Friedman - January 18, 2011
- Prahlad Friedman Signs with UB Poker - January 10, 2011
Written by Steve Ruddock on March 17th, 2011