UNDERAGE ONLINE POKER CHEAT APOLOGISES

28 December 2007

But is it genuine....or an attempt to obviate live tournament confrontations?


The cynical are opining that it's an attempt to avoid embarrassing personal confrontations at live tournaments in the future, but others are more charitable and prefer to give Internet poker ace 'JJProdigy' the benefit of the doubt in a public apology for cheating the player has made.

Josh Field, who uses the 'handle' JJProdigy in his numerous online poker successes, 'fessed up over the weekend by posting an apology for cheating on several major online poker websites. Field was nailed by major sites Poker Stars.com and Party Poker.com for underage multi-accounting some time ago (see previous InfoPowa report) and was banned at both sites, losing his account balances.

Since then he has been associated with several multi-accounting issues, challenging his reputation both on and offline. Field makes the surprising admission that in the beinning he was an immature individual in his mid-teens, unable to handle various online situations in which he became embroiled, and now embarrassed by his cringe-worthy reactions at the time. He claims these encounters forced him to become anonymous, and the Poker Stars and Party Poker debacles added to his problems and, again, were not well handled by him.

"After that, it was a downward spiral. I was a fugitive in the online poker world. I used the reasoning 'if I'm already a wanted man, I might as well maximize my value.' It was terrible logic, but it made sense to me then," he posted over the weekend.

He goes on to explain why he mixed with questionable people, used screen names of people he hardly knew, played on sites from which he had been banned and on occasion suffered the consequences of himself being prejudiced. And he claims it wasn't for the money, but for the love of the game, with which he was selfishly obsessed.

But the deceptions were caught up with him. He reveals: "Accounts were getting closed, people were trying to take money from me, but I kept playing full force. I regret it, but I understand my position."

Fast forward to the present, and Field claims that he has now matured and developed "...a sense of morals and personal ethics. I was always too scared to apologize to the community, mostly due to the fact I didn't think what I was doing was wrong. I finally realize now that I was cheating completely. I neglected my fellow poker players and cheated a wonderful thing we have with online poker. I betrayed a community I cared so much about all for selfish reasons. It shames me to think about it. I did it for so long, and I never had the courage to quit and admit what I was doing was wrong."

Field ends with an apology to the online poker community in general, and especially to those he played against under false pretences and the sites who's facilities he abused; he promises never again to multi-account, and not to play online again until he is 18 years of age!

Field will turn 18 in January 2008 and said in later posts on 2+2 that he will be venturing into live poker tournaments with the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure as well as the Aussie Millions in January.

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa