In the first two parts of this blog, I ranted about everything on my vacation to the Bahamas going wrong (and I do mean just about EVERYTHING) and my sick cooler hand to bust out of the main event.

Oh well, I could be left with a ton of down time in a million worse locations than the Bahamas. I'll just grab a drink and head to the beach, right?

Wrong. The temperature was in the 60s and peaking in early 70s most of the week. It's not bad weather, but when you get wet and have ocean winds blowing it's not particularly enjoyable.

I had high hopes of spending four days on the mile-long Lazy River, which is basically tubing with rapids and water slides. I spent several relaxing hours on it last year, and planned on putting in a LOT more on this trip. I went twice for about an hour each time, but I just couldn't take the wind and cold.

Then came the breaking point when I couldn't suck it up and just be happy that I was on vacation anymore. Some scumbag managed to hack my online poker accounts.

I don't want to get into too much detail about how it was done for obvious security reasons, but they managed to get me for about $3200 on PokerStars and about $1750 on FullTilt. Fortunately, my Lock Poker account was safe.

This was especially frustrating since I had to try to deal with all of this while I was in the Bahamas without my phone or access to some of the things they need to verify my identity.

"Paradise"

 

I got to spend a good chunk of my time in "Paradise" trying to convince the sites that I was me and figure out the whole mess.

To make a long story short, FullTilt handled everything wonderfully while PokerStars failed to notice several circumstances and warning signs that could have helped them protect my money.

Tilt did everything they could recover my funds and returned the 69% of the funds that hadn't been lost by the hacker after they transferred my money to another account. They even gave me a bonus (clears as I clear rake) for the 31% that they weren't able to recover.

Overall I couldn't be happier with how they handled the issue.

Meanwhile, PokerStars just told me that it was my fault and they weren't responsible.

They said that since the hacker lost the money in my account in heads up sit and goes and cash games that appeared to be legitimate (ie he wasn't just dumping the money to another account controlled by the hacker/co-scumbags), there was no way they could recover the money.

The *funny* part is that friends of mine were watching from the rail while the hacker was playing on my account. One of them even emailed Stars "support" and said that he was 99% sure it wasn't me playing my account because of the games I was playing and that I wasn't responding to him on the rail.

Stars just brushed it off as if it was no big deal and told him that maybe I had turned my chat off. Somehow they managed to overlook some things....

1) They can (presumably) tell if I have my observer or all chat blocked.

2) I had not played ANY heads up sit and goes in three years on the account.

3) I had not play ANY cash games in three years on the account.

4) I WAS PLAYING IN A POKERSTARS SPONSORED $10k TOURNAMENT IN THE BAHAMAS.

5) I WAS CHECKED INTO A POKERSTARS-SPONSORED HOTEL ROOM AT ATLANTIS.

6) THE HACKER WAS NOT LOGGED IN FROM THE BAHAMAS.

Well done, Stars. What a crack team you have over there watching over my money. Thanks for nothing!

It only took me almost a week of getting ignored by security before they gave me my account back...sans money and my FPPs, of course.

Oh, and that was only when I got fed up with waiting three days per response and went to PokerStars Security's representative in the tournament room at Atlantis and explained the situation.

Anyway, enough with that BS. I bricked out the $200 turbo PLO and $1600 NL "postliminary" events at PCA and was surprisingly happy to head back here to frozen New Jersey for the Borgata Winter Poker Open.

Hopefully I'll be able to count the times I'm happy to make that trip on one finger for my entire life...but being back at my home casino helps take the edge off a bit for sure.

To make it clear to all of those who seem to hate my multi-part blogs: THIS IS THE END! =)

Matt Stout

More Matt Stout Blog Posts:

• Bahamas Part Two: PCA Cooler
• Bahamas: Trouble in Paradise

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