Many of the players in the last PokerDIY freeroll would have been witness to the unfortunate experience that occurred when the password was stolen and posted on other Forums.

I had not actually realised the extent of the problem, but it seems as they there are dedicated websites and forums for exactly this purpose - to spread passwords not meant for them!

I took some screenshots of actual posts in one such site. I had given the password out to about 20 PokerDIY regulars for the February CD Poker Freeroll, when suddenly the amount of registered users for the tourney went from 20 to 250 in 4 hours. I assume they all have RSS feeds and email to spread the password as fast as possible.

If you do have a poker site and host private password-protected freerolls then keep an eye out for these usernames on your site. They may be the same person leaking your password!

The solution I am trying for the next poker game will be to use PokerDIY's custom event system. Basically you can show different messages based on who has RSVP'ed, so 3 hours before the freeroll I will be showing the password to all the people who said "yes". I guess then it is a race for the password thieves to spread the password and for the honest users to register quickly...

Another suggestion was to set up the game using the PokerDIY event system, and then when you had enough people pass this list on to the poker room so they can allow these people in only. This is a lot more paperwork and time consuming, so I will save this as a last resort.

What I don't understand is why these freeloaders can't just register and join the community and get the password legitimately instead of sitting on their butts waiting for "the poker password thief" to send it to them... oh well - I guess the virtual world mimics the abuse of trust in the real world!

Feel free to expose more sites/players who are doing this and ruining it for everyone! Any other suggestions for preventing this sort of thing in the
 poker world?