Collusion Ring Shut Down on Partypoker

On October 18th, online player “FarseerFinland” reached the final table of a $109 Partypoker tournament, but soon felt that six of his fellow finalists were acting unfairly and exhibiting collusive behavior. After eventually busting in 7th place, FarseerFinland reported his suspicions to the site, who subsequently investigated and confirmed his findings before suspending the players’ accounts.
FarseerFinland started noticing something didn’t seem right after six of his opponents on “somewhat short stacks” failed to go all-in even once while he busted three other players at the table. FarseerFinland was then eliminated himself a little later, after which the remaining six players then proceeded to conclude the rest of the tournament in just three minutes.
Somewhat perturbed by their behavior, FarseerFinland carried out a bit of research on the suspicious six finalists, only to discover that they has all joined partypoker in May, and from August had all been exclusively playing high-stakes tournaments.
On October 20th, FarseerFinland then continued following the players around partypoker, and after opening a discussion on the 2+2 forum, another eight players with odd betting habits who also signed up to the site in May were found. Fortunately, partypoker has since suspended all the 14 suspicious accounts, with the managing director, Tom Waters, stating that security had discovered that “a group of accounts were found to be playing in teams in order to collude against other players.”
Waters was also keen to highlight that partypoker employs “sophisticated fraud control mechanics” to ensure collusion, bots, and other cheating methods are detected early. He further stated that 99% of the time collusion claims are usually proved to be unfounded, and that accusations are often made based upon high emotion after a player loses a pot, or is running below EV against a certain player.
While explaining that it is important that suspicious behavior is reported to the site’s security team quickly, he also noted practicalities associated with the situation, commenting that the site “cannot simply close every account that is emailed to us as being suspicious of collusion.”