Online Poker Strategy Articles

Brett "Gank" Jungblut

Recently, a few poker forums have lit up with discussion about the topic of multiple accounts under one player. Basically, the issue at hand is the ethical implications of one poker player playing in one tournament, but using more than one account.

This is basically the same thing as having two lives in one tournament. It's like busting out of the main event of the World Series, but being given a second shot in the tournament. Sure, you're paying twice the fee, but you get an edge by knowing that.

The edge comes from the fact that you are knowingly entering a tournament twice, and you can adjust your game as such. On one account you can play relatively tight, ensuring yourself a second shot in the tournament, while you gamble recklessly in another. You can push all-in with gambling hands and risk your first tournament life early for the sake of a large stack.

I won't go into the details of the issues that have come up both in the past and recently. If you dive deep enough into the online poker community, you can come up with your own conclusions on all the posts there are. This article isn't to implicate anyone, but rather open your eyes to the issue.

PokerTrails has always tried to give you, the poker player, an honest and straight forward insight into the professional poker circuit, as well as the online poker world. We feel it our duty to raise questions in the community and to strive to better the game for our fellow players. We're not here to question any specific player's integrity, but to question the integrity and ethical values of the entire online community.

Basically, my stance (and that of PokerTrails) is that this practice of multiple entries into a single tournament by a single player is 100-percent wrong. While you can put up whatever argument you want, the simple fact is this is a rule on the most popular poker room online (for poker tournaments, PokerStars.com has the most traffic) for a reason.

It's obvious that this is a practice that is a very gray area for online poker. Many people will argue that everyone does it, and it's impossible to really police hard, so we should allow it. It's a fair argument but it doesn't hold ground, because you're completely sacrificing the integrity of online poker by ignoring it.

Most people are claiming they didn't knowingly enter a tournament twice. For instance, maybe their friend had a problem and had to leave, so they took over that second account without intending to do so ahead of time. Whatever the circumstance, it should be considered against the rules all the same, since it's impossible to distinguish such things. You might be able to claim you're being ethical in your actions, but PartyPoker or PokerStars has no way of proving said claims.

I think both the detractors and myself would agree that if we could eliminate this practice we would. People on the other side of the fence believe that others only do this because it's the norm and you have to combat it with your own arsenal of entries into a tournament.

However, by letting it go under the radar, we're making it ethical to cheat. If we don't openly acknowledge it and tell everyone who plays online that it's not an okay practice, then we make it okay for people to set up all sorts of shady operations online. We can't let our most prominent players and leaders in online poker to go unnoticed and not question their ethics, or our entire community as a whole will crumble.

Years ago, Vegas was full of cheats and card manipulators. Now they have been run out of town and it's safe to gamble in Vegas poker rooms. I think that online poker will eventually run out people bending the rules and doing other unethical activities, and we'll have a safe haven for poker players in the future.

But, we cannot turn our heads and allow it to go on without calling attention to it. Hopefully this article opened a few eyes on the subject, and people won't be so quick to defend prominent players blindly without realizing what they're doing. We're not here to call out cheaters, but to help our community grow!