IS HANK(REDTOP) legit??????

I have sadly had the misfortune of watching Hank (REDTOP) for 6 years
on MSN gaming zone.. He has no respect from me as well as many other
players. He is well known as a cheater who will enter tournys despite
being banned. There is a letter making the rounds of the internet now
from Paul Weever to Hank that goes a little further than I do.. I am
just posting this as a warning to other players to beware of REDTOP.

Hank:

I would love it I were wrong. I wish it were not true. I would be
very happy if you would show me that you are a legit 3.5 player, but
that is not going to happen. I would give you a public apology in the
newsletters and on the Internet if you would just take a bit of time to
play a few monitored matches to prove yourself.

Did you think you could get by with it forever? Did you really think
nobody would ever figure it out? Do you get a big kick out of winning
by cheating? I admit that I was naïve for a long time. You fooled me
for more than four years after I first met you.

I now know what you have known for years - you use a bot when you
cheat to play backgammon on the Internet, for rating points and also
for money. You are not merely a cheater, you are also a thief. You
have committed the equivalent of grand larceny. Your violation is not
trivial. In the course of our country's history, many people have
been murdered for doing much less than what you have done.

As I recall, you told me at some point in 2004 that you had won more
than $10,000 playing backgammon on the Internet over the previous few
months. You deserve a prison sentence for your crimes.

How sure am I? Over 99%, as certain as I am that I am currently in
Japan. In fact, the evidence against you is far stronger than the
evidence you used five years ago to condemn Alex for cheating on the
Internet.

For starters, your integrity has taken many serious hits over the
years. To give just a few examples:

· You entered the same tournament on the Zone twice under two
different names.
· You originally denied to me that you had entered the tournament
twice, but you later admitted to me that you had done so.
· Your credibility took a hit when Jeremy discovered your plagiarism
in the article you wrote and posted on your web site.
· Your credibility took another hit when you denied that you had
committed plagiarism.
· When Patty was playing a match on your team, you offered to help
her and tell her what moves to make over the phone as she was playing
the match. Patty declined your offer.
· You did, in fact, tell another woman over the phone what moves to
make. At some point after the match, her conscience bothered her and
she reported the incident.
· Bethesda told me that you offered to give him a demonstration of
how it was possible for someone to consult a bot quickly enough to play
a match without making the opponent suspicious.

There is not enough room on the Internet to list all the rude and
dishonest things I have heard about you from different people. Am I
supposed to believe, "Everyone is lying except Hank?"
I said above that the case against you is stronger than the case
against Alex five years ago. The bullets above support this assertion,
as do the bullets below.

You have claimed to me that your Snowie error rate is 3.5. However,
you do not act at all like the genuine 3.5 players that I know. For
examples,

· From the time I met you until the time you realized I knew you were
a cheater, you treated me deferentially, like I was a celebrity or a
big shot or something. On one occasion, I was over at your apartment
when you were on the phone to Patty, and you made a very big deal to
Patty about my presence in your home. If you were a legit 3.5 player,
you would have treated me like a peer and an equal, and not acted like
a groupie. It would have been no big deal to you that a Giant 32
player was in your home, and you would have not made such a big deal of
it to Patty.
· No legit 3.5 player would go up to Nack like you did, asking to
take lessons and offering to pay any price. No legit 3.5 player would
suck up to Nack and me and other Giant 32 players as you have done.
· No legit 3.5 player would ask Nack to play doubles with him,
offering to play Nack's entire entry fee and giving him half the
winnings.
· No legit 3.5 player would ask me to play doubles, making the same
offer as above. After I explained to you that I had absolutely no
interest, you still kept on pestering me to play with you. Doubles is
not an important event to a legit 3.5 player.
· No legit 3.5 player would make the claim that he plays much worse
on a live, physical board, to the extent that he could not play in a
live tournament. Your claim that you play 3.5 online, but cannot see
the board when you play live is absurd, ridiculous and preposterous.
It is merely an excuse because you know that you would be exposed as a
fraud if people saw how poorly you really play in a live setting.
· No legit 3.5 player would go to more than half a dozen live
tournaments, as you have done in Vegas, Charlotte and Atlanta and never
play in a singles event.
· No legit 3.5 player would get his jollies from being a big fish in
a lake of minnows on the Zone. You got your kicks out of being
recognized and respected as a great player on the Zone. If you were a
legit 3.5 player, then by entering half a dozen tournaments a year
(including Vegas), you could have and would have made the Giant 32 list
within a few years. What legit 3.5 player would prefer to be
recognized as a good player on the Zone instead of being recognized as
a Giant 32 player?
· No legit 3.5 player would tell me that Doug Daub is a strong
player, as you did. No legit 3.5 player would suggest to me that Doug
would be a great partner for Nack and me to take on in writing a book
about backgammon openings.
· A legit 3.5 player would have had interesting discussions with me
about backgammon positions and theory. You never challenged my
intellect with anything interesting to say about what backgammon
concepts you were studying and learning.
· When I visit in the home of a legit 3.5 player, or he visits in my
home, he wants to play me in backgammon. As many times as we visited
in each other's homes, you never asked me to play. You knew that if
we played, you would be exposed.
The above list could go on ad infinitum.

I have known you for a bit more than five years, and I liked you for
the first four years I knew you. Soon after I met you, I started
hearing many negative things about you from many different people, but
I simply dismissed them. Over time, however, they became too great in
number and seriousness for me to continue to ignore.

Once while I was at your apartment in Inverness, I saw that while you
were playing a match, you had a small Snowie board at the top of your
screen. Even then, I refused to consider that you might be an Internet
cheater.

The turning point for me came in January 2005, as I was leaving Howard
Ring's home after a long visit. Your name came up because I asked
Howard if he would play on your team again, and he responded by saying
something to the effect that you were a Snowie Internet cheater.

After considering Howard's statement, I pondered the many pieces of
evidence I had at my disposal. The same words and logic that you used
to condemn Alex five years ago applied with equal force to you.

There was a guy in Charlotte from Bethesda, MD, to whom you spoke for a
long time on Saturday night. He is tall, with gray-white hair and a
ponytail. I do not remember his name, so I will call him Bethesda. He
told me that he played four 11pt matches with you and your average
error rate was under 2.0. Your error rate in the demo match against
Ray Fogerlund was roughly 2.4. You have told me that your average
error rate online is 3.5. No way do I believe that you could have
averaged 2.0 in those five 11pt matches.

Even the brightest person on the planet would have to do a helluva lot
of work and study to learn enough about BG to play with an error rate
of 3.5 online. It is very clear to me that you do not have enough
understanding of the concepts of backgammon to play legitimately 3.5
online or live. Your claim that you learned the game and became a 3.5
player by sparring with Jellyfish is laughable.

But wait! Reports have been pouring in that your error rate has
miraculously improved from a world-class 3.5 to a world's best 2.5!
VCF (a very credible friend) told me that he has 18 of your online
matches in his Snowie account manager, and you are averaging 2.5. You
expect me to believe that against Bethesda, Ray and VCF, you are now
averaging better than 2.5? Am I supposed to believe that you are the
best player in the world online? Too bad you can't see the whole
board at one time well enough to play over a live board, or you would
be recognized as the best in the world! Why would you even want to
take lessons from Nack when you already play better than 2.5?

You wanted to have the accolades and respect that come with being a
great player, but you wanted to have them without paying your dues in
the form of studying.

Can you name one single player on the Giant 32 list who believes that
you legitimately play 3.5 online? Are you aware that dozens and dozens
of people know you are not
legit? Lots and lots of people knew it before I did. While you were
playing the demo match with Ray Fogerlund and Phil Simborg was doing
the commentating, one of the players mentioned in the chat that you are
a cheater.

It is no big secret. It is out in the open. You have absolutely no
credibility in the BG world. Your scam is over. It lasted a long
time, and I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted, but it is now time to
give it up. Why don't you start cheating at poker instead? You
could make a lot more money cheating at poker online.

You could allay all of our suspicions by agreeing to the same test that
you proposed for Alex five years ago. Would you be willing to play a
series of matches online in the presence of a monitor? Would you be
willing to do this the next time you are in Vegas or at some other
tournament? I would be willing to fly to San Antonio, paying my
airfare and hotel expenses, to give you the chance prove yourself.
Name any weekend in May or June, and I'll be there. I'll watch
you play some matches online, and we'll do the Snowie analysis and
see what your error rate is. Are you willing to do this?

If so, and if your error rate is what you claim it to be, then I will
be happy to offer you a big-time public apology.

I believed in you for a long time, but sorry, it has now become far too
difficult a stretch of the imagination for me to believe that you are a
legit 2.5 or 3.5 player.

You evidently wanted a shortcut to gaining respect. The irony is that I
would have respected you just fine with a 6.0 or 8.0 error rate, as
long as you had been honest, but now, neither I nor any other BG player
I know of has any respect for you at all.

You were trying to find people to enter your tournament with a $100
entry fee and a payback of 120%. You told me you had only nine
entries. You could not figure out the reason that more people were not
interested. Did it ever occur to you that the reason you had a tough
time getting entries is that people are onto you and want to have
nothing to do with you?

To answer your questions:

Someone on the Zone made the following statement to me:

"it is alleged that he said to all who wud listen that he saw you using
a bot while playing bg in zone and u said that u do it whille playing
money games as well"

The "he" in the prior statement was you, in other words, that you were
telling people that you had seen me using a bot in Zone games, and that
I had told you that I use one in money games. This allegedly took
place in Charlotte.

This all sounds very strange, did this happen? It makes very little
sense.

Yes, I said that I saw you using a bot in your home while playing BG on
the Internet. Yes, I said that you do it while playing money games. I
did not, however, say that you
had told me you used one in money games, but I may very well have told
them about the self-incriminating e-mail you sent me on or about Sep
23, 2005, telling me about the wide disparity in your Snowie error rate
online and in real live play.

Did you say those things, or didn't you? And if you claim to have seen
me using a bot on the Zone, it could not possibly have been more
recently than early 2003, since that was the last time you were at my
home. What would possess you to suddenly make this claim years after
the fact?

There was no "suddenly" to it. I've been saying this for the
last year. I said it to Bethesda because he told me about playing four
11pt matches with you in which your error rate was under 2.0, on
average. I told him that there was no way your level of play was a
legit 2.0. I told him that I had seen you use a bot in your home. It
is not merely a claim, it is a fact.

One evening when I was over at your place, you were sitting on your
sofa, playing a match on your desktop, while I was lying on the sofa to
your right watching TV. You thought I could not see your screen from
that angle, and you were correct, but when I suddenly got up for
whatever reason, I caught a glimpse of your screen with the larger
board in the center and the cheating board at the top. You looked at
me and I quickly looked away and acted as if I had not seen anything.
Even after seeing this, I was still in denial, and still not willing to
believe that you were a cheater. That has now changed. Now I know.

Even the way you phrased your question indicts you. You wrote, "And
if you claim to have seen me using a bot on the Zone, it could not
possibly have been more recently than early 2003, since that was the
last time you were at my home. What would possess you to suddenly make
this claim years after the fact?"

Instead of saying, "You could not possibly have seen me using a bot
because I never did it," you said, "It could not possibly have been
more recently than early 2003, since this was the last time you were at
my home." By the way you worded the question you were conceding that
I had seen you using the bot. Instead of asking, "Why would you make
such a baseless claim?" you asked, "What would possess you to
suddenly make this claim years after the fact?"

You are a fake. You are a fraud. You are a phony. You are a thief.
You are scum.

You defile the backgammon scene. You need to get totally out of
backgammon.

Git out wile the gittin's good.


Paul

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