Berri Sweet Wades in to High Stakes Bumhunting Debate

Last year’s biggest online high stakes crusher, ‘Berri Sweet’, has gone public with a threat to unmask the players he feels have led the nosebleed PLO games on PokerStars ‘to a point where breaking the rules has become the norm’ – with Joe Ingram calling on Daniel Negreanu to ‘use his influence’ to fix the problem.

As reported here in the New Year, the anonymous online beast topped the nosebleed stakes winner’s list with a $1,769,395 profit in 2017 – ahead of a host of famous highstakes players including ‘Isildur1’ and ‘Trueteller' – but he took to the 2+2 forum yesterday to decry those he claims are ‘cheating’.

Sweet’s 2+2 appeal

‘Hello everyone. High stakes PLO on PokerStars has degenerated to a point where breaking the rules has become the norm. Most people reading this probably don't care. That is understandable. The people who do care can, if they would like, help significantly with little effort.’

‘Sweet’ then lists the various ways in which the as yet ‘unnamed’ villains are cheating the system, stating the most common as:

• Sitting out on a 6-max with 3 people on it, unwilling to play 3-handed.
  
• Sitting out specifically when a recreational player busts/takes a break.
  
• Starting tables because a specific recreational is around, while having no intentions of playing unless the targeted player gets a seat at the table.

Cheating

“These types of cheating shouldn't be separated too far from MA'ing or colluding in terms of severity”, says Berri Sweet in his post, and it didn’t take long before Joe ‘Chicago Joey’ Ingram picked up on the contentious matter, himself making a stand this week for the integrity of the game with videos entitled Tournament Poker CHEATING Exposed On Winning Poker Network!! and Online Poker Cheating EXPOSED On America's Card Room!!!

Ingram calls on Negreanu to ‘use his influence’

Ingram replied to Sweet’s post, stating:

‘Thanks for posting this Berri. I have posted it to Daniel… so maybe this might be the first of 1000 he actually does something with it.’ He added: ‘I also might have meetings in place with higher up at Pokerstars about the state of high stakes games, bots, etc.. so we might be able to make an actual impact here in improving the current ecosystem. I think the first step is drawing awareness to these type of things.’

Negreanu himself had been the apparent target of a failed ‘bumhunt’ last month, after which Ingram, the Canadian PokerStars legend and a host of others discussed ways in which the problematical practice of singling out weaker players could be tackled…

‘Berri Sweet’ had explained that:

'Although I personally don't lose much, if any, EV from the poor behaviour of these people since they tend to make my games softer and I hold all tables anyway’, he believes that ‘there are many ethical regs that get cheated out of at least 5 figures each year’.

Naming the bad guys?

Although at this point Sweet says he won’t be naming and shaming those he holds responsible for the ‘degeneration’ of the high-stakes PLO games -  ‘I ultimately decided against making a list of repeat offenders at this time’ – he says:

‘If things don't change, I believe public outings will be in order. Just like they have been when people have colluded or MA'd in the past.’

Shout out to the good guys

He does make a point of naming those who DO behave responsibly however, those he describes as players who ‘never fail to show the highest level of ethicality at the tables’, listing Gavz101, fjutekk, Cobus83, Sauce123 and WRUUUUM, just to mention a few people off of the top of my head.’

He finishes his post with the following statement:

‘Often times, as a high stakes player, you have the choice between sacrificing a little money/EV or degenerating into narcissistically making whichever unethical choice makes you the most $$ in the moment. Far too many regulars have chosen the latter path lately. "Everyone else is doing it" is one of the worst excuses of all time.'