Brian Hastings made the headlines on the poker circuit earlier this month when he went on to win two World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets. The U.S based poker player won the $10,000 7-Stud event and a cash prize of $239,518. He would also go on to win the $1,500 10-Game Mix along with a cash prize of $133,403.
This time around Hasting has made news for his online poker play on the U.S based PokerStars website. Hastings uses the online screen name of “NoelHayes” to play on the PokerStars network and that in itself is a little strange as Noel Hayes is an active Irish Poker player.
U.S. poker players are not allowed to access the PokerStars website but Hastings has been accused of using a virtual private network (VPN) to mask his IP address and play on the U.S PokerStars website.
Poker Player David ‘Bakers’ Baker initially tweeted that poker players were suspicious of the fact that Brian Hastings was playing on PokerStars using the NoelHayes account. The suspicions were later taken to the popular Two plus Two poker forum and the issue was discussed at length and the thread is currently over 50 pages.
In a statement, Brian Hastings said
I have been following the [accusation] thread some but been very busy this summer playing the WSOP. I’m aware of the allegations, but at this time I have nothing to add to the conversation publicly. I stopped caring what strangers on the internet said or thought about me many years ago; otherwise I probably would’ve jumped off the deep end by now. The path you’re going on by making this a big public ordeal hurts many parties more than it hurts me
It is interesting to note that Hastings has not denied the allegation nor admitted the fact that he users the ‘NoelHayes’ username on PokerStars. This is not the first time that Hastings has been accused of being unethical online. Initial accusations suggested he was accessing online poker websites even though he was below the specified age limit. He was also accused in 2009 of teaming up with U.S. poker players Brian Townsend and Cole South to share hand information against online poker player Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom while playing on the Full Tilt Poker platform. The U.S poker players ended up winning millions of dollars from Blom.
