Why multi-accounting is cheating
Following the Brian Hastings controversy, Barry Carter explains why multi-accounting is a serious and overlooked issue.
Last week Brian Hastings was accused of multi-accounting, and essentially admitted to it via a private message to David Baker. It has been a scandal which has been one of the big talking points of the WSOP, made especially significant by the timing of him winning two bracelets this summer (and collecting a lot of extra cash in bracelet bets).
The poker community is up-in-arms about this story, however the high stakes community, who are arguably the biggest victims of the multi-accounting, have been surprisingly quiet. Some high stakes players have dismissed it as not being that bad an issue, while it has been suggested that others knew about it for some time, but did nothing.
Unlike other forms of cheating like collusion, multi-accounting still requires a player to be good at the game to win. The winner is still the person who makes the best decisions, and a bad player with a second poker account is not going to able to gain an edge. This is perhaps why some people dismiss it as a problem, not least the ones who do it.
Anonymity doesn't last forever
Given that online poker is anonymous, some people struggle to comprehend why multi-accounting is such a problem. Indeed, some online poker sites have anonymous tables and others allow you to change your screen name at various intervals, both of which achieve a similar outcome to multi-accounting.
Online poker sites which don't allow screen name changes are like live poker in this regard. Everyone is 'themselves' online and they can enjoy anonymity for a while, but experience and success will change that. Most live players are 'unknown' to most when they sit at the table, but when Phil Ivey joins the table everybody knows him. It is a price of success and the good players adapt and use that image to good effect.
When you play on sites that have anonymous tables, lots of skins or screen name changes, there is an unspoken agreement that anonymity is allowed, and the players adjust accordingly. When you play on sites which do not allow them, it is an unspoken agreement your decisions will be based more on other factors (Which I will explain next), and multi-accounting violates that agreement.
Small fields and small edges
While ethically the same, multi-accounting is much less of an issue at the lower stakes in games with large player pools. If you are playing $1 Spin & Gos or $0.05/$0.10 Zoom, it is going to be very rare that you come across the same players regularly, making multi-accounting quite pointless.
Where multi-accounting does become a problem is at the higher stakes and in games with small player pools. So games like $10/$20 No Limit upwards as well as some of the more esoteric midstakes games like PLO8.
The smaller the player pool, the more your decisions are based on metagame. You choose to call and raise much more based on your previous experience with a player, their table image and their reputation. Making decisions in a vacuum could make you exploitable and you trust your reads much more instead.
Multi-accounting takes this crucial part of the decision making process out of the opponent’s hands. A high stakes player might call a ‘NoelHayes’ bet that they would never do against a ‘Stinger88’ bet. There is an example on TwoPlusTwo where player 'BERRI SWEET' details two hands against 'NoelHayes' that cost him $30,000 more than it should have specifically because of this deception.
If you are a $1/$2 player, you shouldn’t worry too much about multi-accounting. However, at the high stakes the edges are tiny. Multi-accounting gives a good player a massive edge the higher the stakes. It's sad that it essentially gets condoned by many at the nosebleeds, but there is still little doubt that it is cheating.
Do you consider multi-accounting to be cheating? Do you think it's an issue at lower stakes? Let us know in the comments.
