I Have Been Banned From Online Poker

BY: Ben Jarvis

How do these things happen? One day you're happily clicking away your hard earned cash playing game after game of online poker and the next you're unceremoniously escorted off the web site's premises. The heavies are coded in a programming language you don't want to mess with and the croupier's plastic smile never falters even as you begin to declare your complete and utter innocence - or at the very least complete and utter ignorance.

Such was my plight a few days ago. Upon being escorted out of the virtual casino I sneaked back in cloaked as young woman known as Roxy_99. I headed straight for the cash desk, walking unsteadily on my high heels and cursing myself that I didn't simply cloak myself as a twice divorced overweight middle aged man in flat shoes.

The program at the cash desk didn't even look up to admire my perfectly coded curves. He simply motioned towards the credit terminal. I can remember the age old days when online customer service programming code made you feel welcome. Back in '04 one would at least expect a hello and forwarding email address. I punched in my credit card numbers with the dexterity of an online 'pokerpro' and waited, a small smile creeping over my face. How dare they attempt to stop me spending money in their casino. REJECTED! The machine started to whine like a small child denied a second tasting of sweet sweet candy. Flustered I reached into my fake designer purse and pulled out another three credit cards. I jammed each of them one by one into the screaming terminal's slots but each was rejected in turn. It was then that I felt the area's bandwidth increase exponentially - a Sys Admin was approaching! I was attempting to disconnect when I felt the hand on my shoulder. I would have logged off in time had my bag not spilled its contents all over the casino floor. The last thing I needed was a serious case of identity theft so I duly knelt down to pick everything up, including my black book full of IP addresses.

The Sys Admin was not amused. He immediately sourced my home IP address and linked my cloak account to my real identity - a jaded teen called Smo struggling to figure out why News Reader's are taken so seriously. A motion of the hand and I was whisked into a back 'interview' room. I could see the delete function in the corner of the room. The dark black hole in the wall seemed to emit the cries of a thousand deleted poker player accounts. I was not going to let them get the first word in. "I have not done anything wrong."

"It's as simple as this PokerPro." He paused, he could see I was shaken by the fact that they had found my true identity, hidden as it was beneath layers and layers of hard code streamed through thousands of daisy chained host machines only accessible via a secret handshake. "Our systems have identified that your IP is linked to a player known only as Pillageking".

Pillageking is my brother, he is what is known as a Dark player. He mixed in online circles I did not want to have anything to do with. They were Dark players that kept multiple chat windows open and even, I had heard, were known to use the telephone system while playing. I simply swallowed hard and nodded for him to continue. The Sys Admin waited looking deep into my eyes. I realised that he was searching for PillageKing, his minions running tests on my login details in an attempt to discover whether PillageKing and I were one in the same. I guessed they got nothing because he continued on."We had been watching PillageKing for quite some time. A shady character indeed - his avatar was the picture of a Viking in full battledress surrounded by gold. Immediately we were on notice. The picture was simply too creative, too demonstrative of his love of money. Most players have a picture of their dog, or God forbid, a picture of their own face. But PillageKing, no, he had to be a rich king viking. It wasn't long before the statistics started to point towards abnormal behavioral play styles. We knew we were onto something, but we had no idea just how deep the well went."

His last sentence was in bold and capitalised. I couldn't figure out if he was really angry or just attempting a dramatic peak in the conversation. Before I could choose which, he went on. "It was evident that a ring of dark players had set up a communications system outside of our own programming. We had every eye in security fastened on these players for weeks - they never spoke, never moved. But we knew, we knew that their communications were outside of our hearing and that they spoke of each other's holdings."

He snorted, or at least that was what I took the ! mark to mean. Hanging way outside of the sentence structure as it was.

"We took these dark players down one by one. But we're fair after all, so we asked each, before their deletion, to explain in the hope that they may be exonerated. Some cried, some screamed and some logged off, their online accounts going limp in securities' hands before their lifeless bodies were thrown into the void. But, you know PIllageKing..." The Sys Admin paused as if remarking upon the very meaning behind poker itself. "PillageKing just smiled at us. He didn't say anything, he didn't log off, cry or scream innocence. He simply turned toward the void raised his middle finger at each of us and launched himself head first into the blackness."

Yep, that sounded like my brother. The Sys Admin was silent for some time, he was clearly disturbed by the experience. I did not speak and we sat for a good five minutes, each of us remarking upon the wild life that PillageKing had led. I was motioned towards an exit link and I left, shaken and perturbed.

I crossed the street outside the casino and entered another website. Security took my details and welcomed me to their system with open arms. I hit one of the tables straight away and soon forgot my experience at the other casino. I was focused on my cards when I looked up, there in the distance was a Viking King sitting on a pile of gold designed so well it gleamed with the strong edge of reality itself. Unmoving, unspeaking he looked right at me and winked.