Shills, who are they and what exactly do they do?

[ksech]

Who determines who is a shill? And what exactly are the components used in determining if a person is a shill? I have a hazy idea of what a shill is/does, but in all the time I have spent here, I don't think I can honestly say I know the true answer.

[chayton]

From the free dictionary:

n. One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle.

Slang a confidence trickster's assistant, esp a person who poses as an ordinary customer, gambler, etc., in order to entice others to participate.

So basically if a casino offers me $ for every sucker I get to sign up, then I go into the forum and talk about how great the casino is, how wonderful they treat me and how easy and fast it is to cash out, I'd be a shill. Or if I worked for or owned the casino and pretended to be a player.

Didn't you ever see any movies with the snake oil salesman, he'd have several 'shills' in the audience who pretended to be blind or lame etc, and one swallow of the magic juice and "oh my he's cured!" and all the rubes would run up waving their dollar bills. Then later they'd all meet up and the shills would get their cut, and off they'd go to the next town.

[ksech]

I think I'm having one of those 'senior' moments this morning

[chayton]

So am I - I was reading the news and read "NYTimes offers discounts in mistaken email giraffe"

...the last word was actually "gaffe" although what I read may have been funnier.

[Casinomeister]

We get them every so often in the forum. Either a casino signs up in the forum and acts like a satisfied customer, or a webmaster opens several accounts and posts about how cool his website is.

Normally, they get caught, and when they do it's usually pretty entertaining.

[BingoT]

Shills

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill
big_shill-450x275.jpg

[chayton]

We get them every so often in the forum. Either a casino signs up in the forum and acts like a satisfied customer, or a webmaster opens several accounts and posts about how cool his website is.

Normally, they get caught, and when they do it's usually pretty entertaining.

Usually it's pretty obvious - someone signs up and their first or second post is something like, "oh has anyone seen this (insert stupid rogue name here) casino, they offer a 2000% bonus and no max withdrawal and I played it and won $5K and got paid in 5 minutes..."

But sometimes it's not so obvious to the rest of us (like the iButler shill) but Bryan could see that the 'player' and the casino rep both signed up from the same computer.

[derail] That reminds me, wasn't there a member here who signed up under a couple different names and was actually having conversations with themself? I was looking for that awhile back and couldn't find it. [/derail]

[maxd]

... wasn't there a member here who signed up under a couple different names and was actually having conversations with themself? I was looking for that awhile back and couldn't find it.

Oh yeah, that happens from time to time. Back in the day it was not at all uncommon. After a few (fairly) high profile "outings" the practice fell out of popularity and became more-or-less a bottom feeder's trick.

These days it's usually fairly clueless noobs who think they've come up with a brilliantly original (not!) way to make piles of cash. 9 times out of 10 the experience of being thoroughly trounced by the community for being a lying sack of kack, and a donkey's arse to boot, is enough to shuffle them off to their next get-rich-quick scheme.

[rainmaker]

[derail] That reminds me, wasn't there a member here who signed up under a couple different names and was actually having conversations with themself? I was looking for that awhile back and couldn't find it. [/derail]

Maybe you are thinking of this thread

[chayton]

Maybe you are thinking of this thread

No that wasn't it - but thanks, I never saw that one. lol@mousey "like Chip and Dale...but not as cute"