Originally Posted by
kewlJ
I will give you that Mdawg is different that all these other scammers in that he isn't about making money. He is wealthy. I guess only he can tell you what it is really about. he is a wealthy dude, who likes to gamble. Loses overall. Gets nice comps and concessions. But losses overall, and for some reason, wants to convince everyone that he is a winning player, defying the math, on top of it.
I don't know if you want to argue this, but it is almost certain that he is a former banned member at WoV, using a new account/handle. WoV used to be top notch in identifying sockpuppets and second accounts. I don't know what happened that they now seem to look the other way. Was it BBB that was the tech savy mod that was so good at that? Or has technology changed with the VPN's that it is now harder to do. We had this discussion with Dan Druff, who is still able to see through VPN's to identify multiple accounts and when he can't he requires members to unmask for a post so he can see IP addresses. WoV, post BBB either has fallen behind on this, or just no longer cares.
So this is just my opinion, but I really believe the motivation behind the whole Mdawg fiasco was to make a mockery of both WoV and Wizard personally. If you consider that, he was a great success, driving away many legitimate long- time players and members in the process.
That is my theory, but it is only a theory. It doesn't even really matter. What matters is if a member shows up claiming winning, winning, winning, for months on end, playing a -EV game, by altering his wagers and betting up during winning hand streaks, I or anyone else that has the desire has to be able to push back and say that is voodooism and not the way things work.
I can't establish that MDawg is losing overall other than to say that all of his bets, as far as I can tell, come at an overall expected loss. Could he be up a few hundred grand after several months in Vegas? It's certainly mathematically possible. As you point out, it at least seems that one of his main concerns is that he is perceived as a winning player, so people can take from that whatever they want to. I wouldn't say that the mere act of winning is sufficient to deny the math and we did eventually get a retraction to the effect that he might be up or down a little bit.
When was WoV ever, "Top-Notch," at identifying sock puppets or other handles? It certainly was not when I was an Administrator. My entire standard was that I either had an IP Match or I didn't. Nathan, for example, I had enough circumstantial stuff (I did a small amount of digging) to have dead to rights on sock puppetry, but my standard was an IP match.
I couldn't tell you what BBB's methods were because IP Match was the standard anytime I was an Admin on there. If she wanted to ban someone for sock puppetry on any grounds other than an IP Match, then I would have told her that she has to absolutely prove her case to my satisfaction. Again, with Nathan, I was 100% sure that there were socks...but I tied my own hands with my own standard of proof. Basically, I had Nathan as other socks because of the IP's associated with that general area that were all the same cell phone provider. Like I said, could basically NOT be a coincidence. Nathan, whatever you want to say about her, was definitely smart enough to avoid logging into any sockpuppets (or, as Nathan) using a matching IP. It would have only taken one slip up, such as still being on an IP belonging to one of the others and navigating to the site (or already having it up whilst still being logged in) on the IP that account was not supposed to be on.
Actually, the one time that I might have banned someone without having an IP Match, BBB didn't want to do that, so go figure. I hope that's not seen as me throwing her under the bus because I did not even so much as hint at such a thing when she was still active on the site and when I resigned.
I think the VPN's could be an issue. Another thing that I will say when it comes to sock puppets is that BBB checked for IP matches for every single new member of the site almost religiously. For my part, you would have to at least be on the verge of trolling for me to even check for an IP match on you.