Nick Grudzien is a great poker player and a contributor to the poker industry. Nick is known as StoxTrader online and he created the successful online poker training site Stox Poker and he also has wrote the book ‘Winning in Tough Holdem Games’ with Geoff Herzog. Now the respected pro has come under allegations of multi-accounting.
Allegations have come out at popular online poker forum 2plus2. The accusations started when David Peat posted on the forum stating that StoxTrader was multi-accounting, which is a form of cheating. He was accused of Short-stacking and Rat-Holing which are illegal. And he was also accused of working with another player.
Nick admitted to the first charges but then denied that he was working with another player. Nick admitted at 2Plus2 as well as on the Stox Poker Forum that he had two accounts at Full Tilt Poker one under StoxTrader and one under 40Putts. He also admitted to having two accounts at PokerStars one under StoxTrader and one under knockstiff. He also created a third account on both sites in January bulltf0rdtuff at Full Tilt Poker and gr3atvlewbr0 at PokerStars.
Both sites have rules against multi-accounting listed under their Terms and Conditions but it also gives players an unfair advantage if they multi-account since they can play against players they are familiar with without the playing knowing who they are.
This scandal comes right after another Stox Poker scandal involving Jason Ho. Ho was a Stox Poker instructor who misrepresented his ability and results in a drastic way to scam many of the members of the site out of money for private coaching and such.
Since Nick founded Stox Poker, this brings the name back into the forefront of the scandal. He has since resigned from his position at the site and seems to have sold off his financial interest in the site as well. Another piece of this story is that Taylor ‘GreenPlastic” Caby , who is in charge of Cardrunners, admitted that he knew of Nick multi-accounting since January and he did nothing about it.
Nick also posted a blog post which stated his parting with Stox Poker and that the collusion allegations were not true. He did admit to discussing strategies with online players kinetic and littlezen and that they practice similar table selection strategies. He also apologized for breaking the Terms of Service at both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars and he stated that he hopes he can continue to contribute at Two Plus Two and Stox as a regular member in the future. Despite admitting to his faults and apologizing, it is going to be very hard to Nick to gain trust back in the poker community.
The thread on the subject at 2Plus2 is over 100 pages long and is full of people anonymously announcing information they have. Some of the biggest names in poker comment as well including Tom Dwan. It seems many people have opinion on the subject or they know something about what has gone on with Nick and the Stox Poker website.