there is a scam running currently on poker stars,i have e mailed support a number of times and they have never responded back.this is what is occurring.they have a poker school to learn people how to play better. and pokerschool tournament that are$10 freerolls every 4 hrs.winner gets about$3 no big deal.however each month over$20,000 is paid out in prizes to people who do the best in the tournaments each month. you earn or lose points by how well you do in these tournaments. so this is how the scam goes. a computer enters you in every tournament 24hrs a day 7 days a week. then the player times out every hand. the computer will only bet all in with aces (never a ordinary raise) or an all in if the hand was checked to him while in the big blind and he has flopped the nuts. if neither of these occur the player is sitting out every hand and just wasting time. as the real players knock each other out the sitting out person will have enough people knocked out to earn points in almost every tournament, 24hrs a day 7 days a week. the people who end up at the top of the leaderbord by the end of the month will never have cashed for .01 cents, never won a tournament. and really NEVER PLAYED A HAND and will win all of the big prize money. it appears that this is being done by 4 people from different countries that play multiple players as the leader board is domminated by these 4 countries. there of course will be a player of the year prizes also. so a person can win $100,000 by sitting out.(multiple players, times money each month, plus year end). POKER STARS in thier agreements say you can not use computers and search you computer for these helpful devices so you can not cheat. yet when informed that they have a problem offer no response. the question is how does a person play for 400 hrs in a row????? now these same players have frequent player points so they are also playing in real money games and they question is how are they manipulating those tournaments ??? pokerstars promised to make the games fair. promised people using illegal computers to be barred, and YET PAY THESE PEOPLE TO DO IT !!!!! am i missing something ???? maybe someone here can help with it as it kind of sucks when you try to get better by reading books,study strategy and try to get better only to find out the best players at pokerstars just sit out and win all the prizes. you will never get to be as good as a sitting out person. somebody please help.

Do u really know if this is actually happening?

yes i tracked the people at the top 20 positions my self personally and looked at the playing records of these people. they were all the same. i even got to on a number of occasions got to play with the "sitting out " people . there turn weould come the time bank would expire every hand ,the player then for 1 second becomes a sitting out person as there hand is timed out folded. 1 second later they are miracously back and the process starts all over. if the "player has A-A is the only hand bet and the bet is all in. again if the player is in the big blind and the hand is not raised and the flop is seen the bet is again all in and only all in if the nuts were flopped other wise the hand is timed out and folded.
what gets me so mad is that "poker stars advertises" free rolls, thousands of dollars in free rolls as a way to attract players. but the "free roll money" , the largest portion is given away to the monthly ,yearly, poker school players. so the free roll moneyy is not being given out to the players. it is given out to people who don't even play. a true player has a ZERO CHANCE of ever winning.
the response back from poker stars is NON EXSISTANT. anyone can look at the tournaments and results and points awarded for the "sitting out group" and a 3 year old could figure out a person needs to sleep sometime. a real person could never enter or particapte in tournaments 24 hrs a day for days on end. it is IMPOSSIBLE. Therefore the "players" are all computer entered automatically , the hands played automaticaly, timed out to sitting out then again automatically "i am backed" to time out the next hand.
what gets me even madder about this is the 8 other real people who must have 15 minutes(time bank plus time to be folded out of every hand ) of thier lives wasted until the person is blinded off. hours of people lives wasted for this.
and it is repeated every 4 hrs. the game truely sucks as there is no rythm ,no anything, just bored frustrated people at the table. it gets really great when 2 or 3 of these people are at the same table.
now as i stated before poker stars ensures the games are being played fairly and computer use by players will lead to your playing privledges being REVOKED. it is also stated by poker stars that they can scan your computer for "illegal software" and again revoke your privledges or money won if your found to be using them.
in this case poker stars is REWARDING PEOPLE to warp an outcome to gain financially. they are advertising freeroll money that truely does not exist for any real player.
as i said a 3 year old could figure this out and even though poker stars was informed about this on numerous ocasions they once again paid these people out again last month and will do it again this month and have not responded to a single email about the problem. so the question is if this is what is being done in these events what is happening in the bigger real money tournaments. if this can be done so successfully for $22.500 a month in prize money and make it profitable to do so ,how are the real tournaments being manipulated by thee players. how much money is being lost by real players to this group.
no they do not win the tournaments but they win more money then the people that do win the tournaments. i believe this is how and why this is going on , NO ONE CARES who finnished 2nd, or 3rd ,or 115th. however in the end if you could win player of the year without playing a hand i guess that would be pretty good.
I GUESS IF YOU ONLY CASHED IN EVERY TOURNAMENT THAT WOULD BE PRETTY GOOD TOO.
so what is going on at poker stars ? why do they not respond, and how much money is being won by tournaments being manipulated ? scam yes, false advertising, yes, is poker stars protecting real players NO!! is poker stars ensuring the outcomes are fair NO!! is poker stars protecting you from what they say is illegal use of computers under there conditions of terms and use of the sight NO !! am i disapointed ? YES !! what also bothers me is that there are some good pros (such as daniel) who lend their image of good and fair to this sight that wont even protect thier integritty.

I'm surprised PokerStars lets this occur, and I'm also surprised they can make it that deep by simply stalling. BallBerring, do you have your E-mail correspdonces with PokerStars support? If you post them here it may help us get to the bottom of this, or at least fire off to someone I know at Stars.

Do you know I always thought there was something funny about so many people sitting out of Freerolls, maybe you have something here.

Are you sure they weren't just multi-tabling?

i do not have copies of emails to poker stars as i sent them on thier support pages. now all i ask is that you look at the records of the top players at poker school and thier records as they post them . go to poker school, lauch web, then to poker school openen click on leaderboard this brings up top 50 players and a box where you can enter a players name. pick one pick any of them. now their whole record will come up .every tournament entered and where the finished and points they earned. now pick another player and another they are all the same. notice also that they never make it to top 90 places that pay .01 cents for finnishing in 90th place,or win. then look at the flags and you will see about 1/2 come from 1 country. now look at the movement in position on the leader board it hardly moves. that is because they are all doing the same thing. then go to request and find a player and watch. the player will time out re appear and time out again. now take a look at the number of tournaments entered in a row without sleeping. and it all comes together,
now how far do you make it in the tournament by sitting out or just playing ACE-ACE is about 1,000 place. however you will earn points at about 1,780 th plaace. 1,000th place is worth about 20 points and 34th place is worth 80 points. i am not sure how many you get if you win but i would guess it is 100. now if you finnish lower then 1,780 place you do get - points but this rarely happens for them unless A-A loses. and the number of - points you get is very small. so 6 , 1,000th place showings in a day means you get 120 points. a person who played 1 tournament a day and won every single one for a month straight would earn less points (100 vrs 120) and the sitting out people would get the prize money.
again i do not know how these people do not sleep and i do not know what these people are doing in tournaments where bigger money is involved. but they do have the poker school part figured out to a science.
the only reason i figured this out was i had cashed in tournaments 2 days in a row and had won a total of .03 cents and i wondered how i was doing. so since i was there i wanted to see the records of the best players and i was shocked to see not 1 of the top 10 people i looked at had won a single penny. and the amount of tournaments they entered amazed me. then i looked at the points and where they finnished and i knew in a tournament roughly where the sitting out people were eliminated and thats right thats where they were all finnishing. money for the best players NO all the great prizes to people that dont even play.

I think I'm getting the jist of this and it does sounds a lot like you might have Uber grinders who are registering for freerolls and simply not bothering until they get the premium hand to play it as you have mentioned.

I believe this is simple turbo-hyper-nittery and nothing more because they realise that being in the money very often is better on the leader points board than winning first places etc.

Or look at it another way you have realised this as a .25/50 or .5/1 grinder and you see lots of nice prizes for being good on the leaderboard. Obvs first prize in a freeroll is pretty negligble especially when you consider that your table earnings are going to outweigh a first on a freeroll in no time.

But say the Pokerschool prize is coaching with an awesome coach who usually charges 500$ an hour et winning that prize is very much plus ev.

So if you notice this loophole that in-the-moneyers get too many points just for getting to the ITM stage you just boot up plenty of freerolls and sit out waiting for the nuts. T

This is perfect because freerolls have many of the worst players on and the field thins quickly. Many players don't understand you are just playing the nuts and pay you off anyway.

You can have many many freerolls running for absolutely zero effort and get lots of points.

I agree that this is unfair as someone who is preparered to battle to get a first place in a freeroll which is not easy at all should get a dispraportionately large amount of points compared to an ITMer, maybe stars have set up this way so people don't feel so bad about the wasted time playing a freeroll.

I actually think the people you could legitimately be annoyed at is the already accomplished grinders or whoever has figured it out who are just booting up freerolls to abuse them.

When Minted Poker did their freeroll steps you found that in stage 1 everyone sat out as top 4 got a ticket for stage 2. It is a shame as their is not many tables on that site but the action and that promotion were top notch actually.

I would say this is more of a loophole than a scam. These players are merely taking advantage of rules that allow them to gain points. PokerStars should come up with a way to solve the problem (maybe by making the points awarded more top-heavy or by loweirng the amount of time a player can take to make a decision)

i want to thank everyone for thier input on this problem. what really worries me is can this be done in real money games. can this work in games where the same people may make it to the money 99% of the time and double or triple thier buy in money. with thousands of different games or tournaments being played each day which ones can, and are being manipulated in the same way. sure there winning a game % is ZERO but the cash % is almost (or could be if this is being done) 100%. i needed to let people know how this is being done, you can get the names of the players to know who is doing it, and maybe you can protect your real money from these players. and maybe just maybe stop this from continueing to occur on poker stars or other sights.