Building on the momentum of improvements made in January, Incredible Technologies announced last week additional changes designed to increase operator revenue on tournaments conducted on Golden Tee Golf machines.
Effective with the March tournament, Incredible Technologies will strictly enforce rules permitting tournament play only in public establishments. According to Scott Morrison, Executive Director of the International Tournament System, the tournament has grown to such an extent that it made economic sense for players to own a machine. "It was never our intention to allow players to compete on home machines, but with the explosive growth of the ITS in the past 3 years, some machines have slipped into the system under our radar screen," he said. "By allowing tournament play only in public establishments, we'll increase operator revenue, level the competitive playing field, and reinforce the integrity of our tournament system."
On February 16, 2004, The Stinger Report broke a news story revealing tournament fraud scandals in the online golf tournament sector and that Incredible Technologies had ejected eight ranked players following investigation into the manipulation of scores.
Regarding the report of some players being banned from tournament play for cheating, Mr Morrison issued the following statement:
"Some players posted scores in the February tournament that looked peculiar, so after thoroughly reviewing game play data, we found some suspicious results. This checking in and of itself is nothing out of the ordinary – we do it all the time as a matter of course. On February 4th, we removed the scores in question, posted a notice on the
www.itsgames.com website and started an investigation. Any further details are not available until the investigation concludes."
"The players in question are cooperating for the most part and we determined that they employed a low-tech, specialised and unreliable method that has nothing to do with the game's hard drive or the ITNet system. This illegal technique would still require a player to have exceptional skill to post a winning score. There has been no breach of security and all hard drives are and have been encrypted and secure for years. The data that is stored on the drive cannot be accessed and manipulated without corrupting it. We have already taken steps to combat future actions by players and to improve the tournament system. We have been designing, reacting and modifying the tournament system and its rules since 1995."
"We want our players to know that they can continue to compete in complete confidence that the ITS is secure and fair. We want our operators to know that the ITS is still the biggest, the best, and the most profitable tournament system in the world."
