Absolute is actually rigged

Hectorjelly

Fascinating thread here; http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12493401&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1&nt=5

I dont think its been posted already.

Im only a few hundred posts deep, but it seems like conclusive evidence that a player had knowledge of other peoples hole cards and used it. Theres one tournament in paticular, where the guys on 2+2 managed to get a file containing every players hole cards for the whole tournament. The player plays the whole tournament as if he was aware of the cards around him. EG open folding KQ when AA is behind him, and opening 26o when no-one has anything. Doing things like that twice would be extraordinary, but for hundreds of hands its incredible.

In away the whole thing is quite reassuring, as it proves what I have thought and said for a long time, if online poker was actually rigged some maths nerd on 2+2 would discover it and be able to prove it.

BigDragon

Plenty on pocketfives.com and a much bigger deal than the WCOOP thing tbh

DingDong

Here's another little write up on it by Steven D. Levitt(who happens to have a very interesting book call freakonomics well worth checking it out)

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/how-not-to-cheat/

And a link to some of the HH
http://www.pocketfives.com/AB0A6FCE-734B-425B-AA64-036D3A99D2CC.aspx

Hectorjelly

You can watch the tournament here:

http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HA90370/2_20071014_190711/2

DingDong

Hectorjelly wrote: »

You can watch the tournament here:

http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HA90370/2_20071014_190711/2

Cheers

semibluff

Stage #896642899 Tourney ID 1883389 Holdem Multi Normal Tournament No Limit $50 - 2007-09-12 21:41:57.004 (ET)
Table: 13 (Real Money) Seat #2 is the dealer
Seat 3 - POTRIPPER ($27047 in chips)
Seat 4 - POTR0AST ($8423 in chips)
Seat 5 - POKERME420 ($12715 in chips)
Seat 7 - DZ00NUTS ($7749.50 in chips)
Seat 8 - KOOLKEITH13 ($8445 in chips)
Seat 9 - SCARFACE_79 ($10002.50 in chips)
Seat 1 - BIGREDAK86 ($8491 in chips)
Seat 2 - JOSIAHW ($7057 in chips)
POTRIPPER - Posts small blind $25
POTR0AST - Posts big blind $50
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to KOOLKEITH13 [Jh Kh]
Dealt to SCARFACE_79 [6c 10s]
Dealt to BIGREDAK86 [3h 4h]
Dealt to JOSIAHW [9h 6h]
Dealt to POTRIPPER [Qc 10c]
Dealt to POTR0AST [9c 4c]
Dealt to POKERME420 [Qh Jd]
Dealt to DZ00NUTS [4d 3d]
POKERME420 - Raises $200 to $200
DZ00NUTS - Folds
KOOLKEITH13 - Calls $200
SCARFACE_79 - Folds
BIGREDAK86 - Folds
JOSIAHW - Folds
POTRIPPER - Calls $175
POTR0AST - Folds
*** FLOP *** [8d 6d 3s]
POTRIPPER - Checks
POKERME420 - Bets $250
KOOLKEITH13 - Raises $850 to $850
POTRIPPER - Raises $5700 to $5700
POKERME420 - Folds
KOOLKEITH13 - Folds
POTRIPPER - returned ($4850) : not called

Hectorjelly

Hand 5 seems like definite proof

On a AJTx5 board with a possible flush and straight, he bets his 2 pair tiny to induce a raise from 99, then 4bets his two pair!

BigDragon

Hectorjelly wrote: »

Hand 5 seems like definite proof

On a AJTx5 board with a possible flush and straight, he bets his 2 pair tiny to induce a raise from 99, then 4bets his two pair!

One of many many many hands

Hectorjelly

Its actually quite enjoyable watching what looks like the best poker ever played. I love how he min bets whenever he is ahead trying to induce raises.

Im also surprised people didnt start playing back at him (esp preflop), he wins basically every hand. I got bored at hand 50 though, so maybe they did.

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

Jesus Wept

If this is a case of someone being able to see hole cards...



The final hand of the tournament, heads-up play:

Stage #896976330 Tourney ID 1883389 Holdem Multi Normal Tournament No
Limit $4500 - 2007-09-13 01:43:48 (ET)
Table: 14 (Real Money) Seat #3 is the dealer
Seat 3 - POTRIPPER ($765740 in chips)
Seat 8 - CRAZYMARCO ($214260 in chips)
POTRIPPER - Ante $450
CRAZYMARCO - Ante $450
POTRIPPER - Posts small blind $2250
CRAZYMARCO - Posts big blind $4500
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to CRAZYMARCO [9h 2h]
POTRIPPER - Calls $2250
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
*** FLOP *** [4h Kd Kh]
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
POTRIPPER - Bets $9000
CRAZYMARCO - Calls $9000
*** TURN *** [4h Kd Kh] [7s]
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
POTRIPPER - Bets $13500
CRAZYMARCO - All-In(Raise) $200310 to $200310
POTRIPPER - Calls $186810
*** RIVER *** [4h Kd Kh 7s] [5s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
POTRIPPER - Shows [10c 9c] (One pair, kings)
CRAZYMARCO - Shows [9h 2h] (One pair, kings)
POTRIPPER Collects $428520 from main pot



What kind of absolute idiot is this guy calling allin w/T high when this is the how suspicion began, the 2nd place finisher emailed support after this hand.





*Intersting link from the thread.*
Edit: This graph is from cash games, not the tournament in question.

DeadParrot

This IP info has me a bit confuzzled (lovely word eh?)

Holy [censored], I think I found him and I'm like 99% sure this is not a coincidence. Skip to the bolded text if you don't care about the details.

I put all of the IP/email address lines in the following type of SQL table:

CREATE TABLE `ipinfo` (
`table` int(3) NOT NULL,
`date` datetime NOT NULL,
`action` varchar(10) NOT NULL,
`email` varchar(80) NOT NULL,
`userid` int(15) NOT NULL,
`ip` varchar(25) NOT NULL,
`port` int(8) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Then I ran the following query:

SELECT *
FROM `ipinfo`
GROUP BY `email`
ORDER BY `ip` ASC

It returned 267 rows.

Then in the IP range starting with 200, there are two guys with identical IPs. snagglepuss alerted me to these two guys earlier. But here's the evidence on one of the guys:

1. This guy "enters" table 13 at 2007-09-12 21:02:14, which is 2 minutes and 14 seconds after the tourney started.
2. Table 13 is the table which POTRIPPER was playing on
3. He never leaves the table, which means he was observing the table until at least 11:20 PM EST (at least, that's how I understand this)
4. His IP address is based in Costa Rica.
5. This is the most damning. He is user id 363 at AP. That means he was created in the system very very early on. Most of these user ids are in the 6 or 7 figures.

I think this tells me that there was some sort of inside job going on.

I will withhold his IP and email for the time being.

Where the fcuk did they get the ips?
Does AP log ips and is visible by each player?

And sure this would be quicker

SELECT ip,
COUNT(ip) AS NumOccurrences
FROM ipinfo
GROUP BY email
HAVING ( COUNT(ip) > 1 )

Jesus Wept

I bet TheV0id is delighted that this absolute thread is dominating the 2+2'ers.

BigDragon

http://www.neverwinpoker.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44393

Okay, so I didn't completely "solve" the whole AP mess. After all, nobody has received any compensation, nor has Absolute even admitted that any sort of fraud even occurred.

However, some recent damning evidence has come to light that has allowed me to put together a complete start-to-finish re-creation of the crime. The newest development again involves the POTRIPPER tournament. Thanks to a blunder by support, one of the players in that tournament accidentally received an Excel spreadsheet containing the hole cards, IP addresses, AP account ID numbers, and e-mail addresses of most players in the tournament. Nat Arem of pokerdb.com analyzed it, and came up with the following new conclusions:

1) POTRIPPER was initially placed at Table 13. He folded his first few hands.

2) About 2 1/2 minutes into the tournament, a railtard opened up Table 13. This railtard had a Costa Rican IP address, which is where AP is located. The ID number of this account was 363 -- a number so low that it probably pre-dated AP's opening to the public.

3) Account 363 stayed at Table 13 for the entire duration that POTRIPPER was there.

4) POTRIPPER started cold-calling every hand as soon as Account 363 showed up.

The Excel spreadsheet is incomplete. Not all hands are listed, and not all users are listed. However, the part that has been seen has been authenticated by several players in the tournament, according to those on 2+2, and it is generally accepted as being legit.

Obviously, given the Costa Rican connection, as well as account #363 being involved, it is now clear that this was an inside job, as opposed to being perpetrated by outside hackers.

===================================================================

Given the above, as well as everything else that has come to light over the past 2 months, I now have competely pieced together this entire situation. I will outline it below, in "timeline" format:


Sometime in 2003 or 2004: Absolute Poker's software is under development. Several hundred test accounts are created during the development and QA process. Among them is account #363, which is a superuser account. Account #363, unlike the others, has the ability to see hole cards at any table it opens. This can be an important tool during the testing process, as the developers can quickly and easily see that the pots are being shipped to the correct people. Of course, Account #363 is not actually registered to anyone, nor is it ever enabled to play in real money games. It exists strictly for "visual" purposes, and only used during the testing and development process.



Sometime between AP's opening and the middle of 2007: Four totally unrelated accounts are opened by four differnet people in different areas of the United States. GRAYCAT likes Limit Hold 'Em, but he isn't particularly good at it. He takes a few shots at the game, but is outclassed by his opponents and busts. He finally gives up on the site and stops logging in. The same happens with STEAMROLLER, who plays both Limit and NL. Again, he's a donk who plays some here and there, is never too active, but is active enough for a few people to remember him. Like most donks, he chunks off one too many buyins and is done with AP. DOUBLEDRAG, who likes NL, has a similar story. He plays a number of times, yet can't seem to consistently win and eventually busts. POTRIPPER enjoys tournaments, but he just isn't catching the right cards or making the right moves. Like the other three, he goes donk down and tries his luck elsewhere. These four guys are not cheaters. They aren't friends. They have never met, rarely (or never) played in the same game, and each had a different focus on the type of poker they liked to play. However, they all have one important thing in common: They were donks, lost their money, live in the United States, and have apparently not logged into their AP accounts for at least a few months.



July or early August, 2007: AP is in the process of a major software upgrade. One of the programmers, who lives locally in Costa Rica, stumbles upon account #363. He realizes how much money one could make by exploiting this little test account at the highest games the site has to offer. He realizes that this would need to be done carefully, as much suspicion will be placed upon a new account that inexplicably crushes the best players in the world. This rogue programmer comes up with the following plan of action:

1) Take over legitimate (but now inactive) accounts on AP. This can easily be done at the server side of AP, by simply changing the password of such accounts. He looks for an inactive, losing Limit player and comes up with GRAYCAT. When searching for an NL counterpart, he finds DOUBLEDRAG. He sees the apparently abandoned POTRIPPER with a history of losing tournament play. Finally, he finds an all-purpose account, STEAMROLLER, who has a (losing) history in all three areas. The password to all four accounts is changed, and they are now in the possession of the rogue programmer. The actual owners of the accounts are not likely to find out, as they seem to have already given up on AP.

2) Plan to play short sessions at the highest limit games with each of these accounts. Log onto account 363 on another computer, opening up the table where you're playing, so as to see everyone's hole cards. Don't multi-table, as there is a lot of information to see at once, and this will be too hard to manage. Regarding game selection, stick to the area of interest previously shown by each account. GRAYCAT will stay at Limit, DOUBLEDRAG will play primarily NL, etc. Don't win too much at one sitting, and don't stay for too long. Come up with excuses such as, "Time for dinner" when abruptly leaving.

3) When winning pots, act excited in chat, saying things like "Yes!" or "All right!" when winning. This will make you look like a maniac-type donk who is giddy about winning thanks to freak luck.

4) Get friends and relatives involved, preferably those who might already have accounts on AP. Have them deposit some money to get started, even if you need to front it to them.

5) You cannot use GRAYCAT, STEAMROLLER, DOUBLEDRAG, or POTRIPPER to cash out, since they are still registered to innocent, legitimate players in the United States! That's where the friends and relatives will come into the mix. After winning a lot of money on GRAYCAT, STEAMROLLER, DOUBLEDRAG, and POTRIPPER, play against these friends/relatives heads up, and dump all the winnings. Make sure that each friend/relative plays a different cheat-account heads up, so as to not arouse suspicion. GRAYCAT will play SUPERCARDM55 and lose badly. DOUBLEDRAG will drop his entire roll to REYMNALDO. STEAMROLLER and POTRIPPER will also play different friend/relative accounts and, like the other two, will lose everything.

6) Cash out of the friend/relative accounts. Enjoy the hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen from the top online poker players in the world.



Mid-late August, 2007: The plan actually goes into effect. It happens to start just a few days before the major software upgrade is complete. There is particular reason to begin on this day, but rather is just an arbitrary date that the rogue programmer decides to begin the operation.


Late August, 2007: Plan is proceeding well. A lot is being won, but never too much in one sitting. Even heads up, the cheater restrains himself and keeps the winnings relatively moderate. Still, after numerous very successful short sessions, he is now up in the multiple six figures. The first chip dump operation commences. GRAYCAT drops 55k to SUPERCARDM55 at a 200-400 Limit heads-up table. For the benefit of anyone watching this supposed drubbing, "GRAYCAT" constantly laments his terrible luck, but overacts a bit. SUPERCARDM55 plays one session the next day, loses a few thousand, intentionally, and never plays again. He initiates a cashout.


Early-mid September, 2007: Greed takes over. The money is rolling in so easily, and nobody seems wise to what is going on. GRAYCAT starts to absolutely destroy people both heads-up and full ring. DOUBLEDRAG does the same at NL, often calling huge all-in bets with as little as king-high, if it's the best hand at the moment. POTRIPPER plays his now-infamous tournament on the 12th, blatantly taking advantage of what he sees under account 363 without concern about later scrutiny. The STEAMROLLER account is brought into the NL and Limit games to try and take some suspicion off GRAYCAT and DOUBLEDRAG. In the meantime, DOUBLEDRAG dumps 300k+ of his winnings to fellow Costa Rican friend REYMNALDO. REYMNALDO initiates a cashout shortly thereafter.


September 16, 2007: Perhaps greed isn't always good. People start remarking in chat that they are suspecting cheating. As a cover-up attempt, DOUBLEDRAG plays NL again, this time intentionally LOSING every hand. While a decent amount of money is lost in this session, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what has been won, and is in fact a necessary evil for damage control.


September 17, 2007: The accounts in question are frozen by AP, pending an investigation. It is unclear whether the cashouts of SUPERCARDM55, REYMNALDO, and other recipients of chip-dumping were successful.


====================================================================


There you have it. I strongly believe that the above is VERY close to what actually happened. If the full story ever comes out, you'll see how close the above is to the actual truth.

Strangely enough, I believe that the actual owners of GRAYCAT, DOUBLEDRAG, POTRIPPER, and STEAMROLLER are innocent. I remember seeing the cities of GRAYCAT and STEAMROLLER, who both played Limit, before the update. (They eliminated the ability to see cities after the update.) Both lived in the U.S. I remember STEAMROLLER being from Miami and GRAYCAT being somewhere further north, like Chicago.

There is a myth that the cheating began after the update. This is not true. I saw cheating occur a few days BEFORE the update. I believe the only part the update has in this whole thing is the fact that it allowed this rogue programmer to go through the AP software and stumble onto the existence of account 363. Account 363 has clearly existed since the beginning. This was not a vulnerability brought on by any recent software change.

I also believe that, before greed took over, the guy behind this was more careful. Near the beginning of the whole thing, in mid-late August, he kept things more moderate. He lost some hands on purpose, and he never killed anyone heads up too badly. For example, GRAYCAT beat me for 6k heads up at 200-400, then quit the game and insulted me from the rail. Obviously he did this to keep things in moderation, not due to any fear of losing to me. This differs from what he did later, such as when he slammed STEREOFLAVAS for 28k in an hourlong September heads-up match. The POTRIPPER tournament was also executed highly carelessly, but again he was probably blinded by greed at this point.

I believe that the guy playing all accounts was one person. I also believe he had a second computer logged into superuser account 363. I think that the only time he invovled others was for chip-dumping. I am relatively certain that you will find SUPERCARDM55, REYMNALDO, and the other dump recipients with Costa Rican addresses, while the four accounts used to cheat all have U.S. addresses.

Also, keep in mind that the cheater simply needed to open account 363 at the right table on a second computer in order to see the hole cards. I am certain that POTRIPPER, GRAYCAT, STEAMROLLER, and DOUBLEDRAG were not special or superuser accounts, and were just like any other account on the system. Perhaps AP support simply looked at these accounts themselves and stupidly determined that no cheating went on. More likely, however, they know what happened and are covering it up.

This is how it happened. You heard it here first.

shoutman

Thanks for the post BigD it explains a lot.

ionapaul

Crazy and with very troublesome implications for online poker I believe.

A post on the economist Levitt's blog interested me:

...
Let’s say that you are a mathematical and fuzzy logic whiz, operating out of Hong Kong. You would not need to see your opponents’ cards. All you need to do is recruit three or four confederates, put them in the same room with their computers, and have them access the Internet via satellites. You would constantly change their name tags. The game would become a conversation among the cheating players about what their cards are and how to trap, save bets, and generally pound their helpless opponents. Edges are small in Hold Em poker; this kind of advantage will get all the money.
...


How often do you think the above, or low-level collusion scams like it, occur? How much confidence to have you in online poker companies to be on top of possible abuse by savvy / unethical (depending how you look at it!) players?

What are the long-term implications for online poker if we rely on 'maths nerds' on 2+2 to uncover all of the biggest scams and cheats online and ensure the problems are dealt with?!

BigCityBanker

The-Rigger wrote: »

*Intersting link from the thread.*
Edit: This graph is from cash games, not the tournament in question.

this is an interesting graph - whilst the outlier on the top right has been identified as one of the cheaters I would bet good money that the outlier on the bottom left who lost his money at 5c/10c is Reggies account during a flips session.

AdMMM

I remember when all this first came to light, I pretty much dismissed it as fiction. But this now looks like pretty damning evidence and could have a significant impact on online poker, not just for Absolute, but for all poker sites out there.

Imposter

ionapaul wrote: »

How often do you think the above, or low-level collusion scams like it, occur? How much confidence to have you in online poker companies to be on top of possible abuse by savvy / unethical (depending how you look at it!) players?

What are the long-term implications for online poker if we rely on 'maths nerds' on 2+2 to uncover all of the biggest scams and cheats online and ensure the problems are dealt with?!

You may or may not remember but I was colluded against a few years ago and UB support would do nothing about it. The attitude on 2+2 at the time was not to waste your time and effort on it. To me the collusion seemed fairly obvious but UB had the HH's that would prove it and they would not release them citing security reasons. This leads me to believe that these low level scams happen quite often and the the sites in general don't really care. If a group was to go about cheating in a sensible way then it would be very difficult to catch them. Seeing as the sites can't catch the dumb guys I can't see how they can catch anyone who has thought it through!

Something this big is actually no different, other than it is taking the money from the top of the system. Now of course the 2+2 regulars don't like it and make as much noise as possible. I will be astonished if AP's answer is anything other than the accounts were banned for cheating.... money may or may not be refunded to the victims ...and they can't say any more becuase of security concerns!

The long term implications are as I have said on the WCOOP thread. Sooner or later the sites are going to have to improve their security. They are currently not willing to take the risk as it may scare the fish away if the fish were to find out what was possible. This lack of security should be in the public domain - that is the only way we can be in any way sure that the oppurtunities for cheating have been removed. As Dev quoted/said on the other thread security by obscurity is not good security. The only problem with that is that some company has to develop the systems to do this at their own cost and take the risk before the other sites. It's probably unclear whether doing this will give them an advantage over other sites, especially seeing as it will have to be planned over a reasonable length of time, so nobody bothers doing it. All that ends up happening is that the companies and the cheaters continue as they were (with possibly the occasional cheater getting caught), the honest players lose out and security is forgotten about.

Ollieboy

bank and governments spend millions on security for there systems and the top hackers still get around these systems. I used to think it was impossible and very little advantage to hack these systems, was more worried about someone getting my password etc. But I've change my mind in the last 6 months, I think cash games and STT's are open to collusion. I'm not to worried about MTTs, but again a superuser account is worrying.

We might all be back playing live poker very soon...lol

shoutman

It definately would worry me if I was playing at higher stakes, but micro and small stakes players have little to be worried about other then the odd players who collude via msn etc.

Wombatman

DeadParrot wrote: »

This IP info has me a bit confuzzled (lovely word eh?)


Where the fcuk did they get the ips?
Does AP log ips and is visible by each player?

And sure this would be quicker

SELECT ip,
COUNT(ip) AS NumOccurrences
FROM ipinfo
GROUP BY email
HAVING ( COUNT(ip) > 1 )

Don't you need the datetime field in your select list for the query results to be meaningful?

hotspur

The AP superaccount cheat should have fleeced the HU high limit hold em bots that UB allowed to play on the network!

meathman 007

whoever has access to this super accound is an idiot to say the least.....

If i could see the hole cards, i would make sure that i wouldnt do any overly suspicious raising and calling on the river etc...... you could make an absolute fortune at high stakes nl without causing suspicion.....

DeadParrot

Wombatman wrote: »

Don't you need the datetime field in your select list for the query results to be meaningful?

sush you

Samba

ionapaul wrote: »

How often do you think the above, or low-level collusion scams like it, occur? How much confidence to have you in online poker companies to be on top of possible abuse by savvy / unethical (depending how you look at it!) players?

What are the long-term implications for online poker if we rely on 'maths nerds' on 2+2 to uncover all of the biggest scams and cheats online and ensure the problems are dealt with?!

Most scams would be low-mid levels as thats where they are less likely to get noticed especially in terms of collusion.

bigger games would tend to have more regularity in terms of the players who frequent the tables.

Online poker companies only really care about their daily rake figure, the cheaters pay good rake.

If you cheat well, you will simply never be caught as most companies trigger security investigations based on reporting tools ie if you are careful enough you will not trigger any alarms.

Thats the harsh reality of it.

Requiem4adream

ABSOLUTEly Rigged woulda been a good thread title lol

Norwich Fan Rob

i read a few articles on sporting life poker section on this recently, does look like it defo was rigged, shocking really, i played some cash on there for a while.

obv wont play on there again.
read something somewhere about 1 user account have something daft like a 100% win rate on the river, or something else stupid sounding like that.

Macspower

I guess this means absolute are kinda fecked no matter what now?
Although after all this it will probably be the safest place to play.... although I wouldn't play there... would you??

whats the future for them?

Lafortezza

Macspower wrote: »

I guess this means absolute are kinda fecked no matter what now?

Very little will happen I think. The only places this is known is 2+2 and similar sites. IE not fish. The other thing is that these cheats only really affected high stakes games, which would be maybe 5% of the sites traffic, people playing $5/$10 and lower are unlikely to be affected.
Finally, the uproar and stuff on 2+2 has caused many good players to abandon the site on principle. But loads of others won't move away due to the resulting relative abundance of fish.

pok3rplaya

Thread with the replayer for the HH. Free sign up. Makes for some interesting viewing.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=beats&Number=12512311&page=0&fpart=1

DingDong

The plot thickens it now looks like the CEO Scott Tom is behind it.

http://www.pocketfives.com/A22140A5-7054-4E7F-9F77-294951B89E6A.aspx

ocallagh

Why they are revealing all this on a public forum is beyond me. Leaking all this info on the internet just gives Absolute time to prepare for a soft landing. They should have investigated this thing privately and left themselves in a stronger position.

Jesus Wept

There is far too much back slapping in all the threads, makes it seem like an episode of The Famous Five, too much giddyness. It will detract from the evidence.

Ste05

I wonder what all this is going to do to the AP and UB merger... AP closes down and moves all their accounts to UB?? Or does anyone know if that was what they were planning anyway....

Jesus Wept

Maybe nothing will come of this but either way, it is seriously taking away from the multi accounting issue which is actually a far bigger problem.

AP are clearly just idiots, most if not all other poker sites are secure and don't have this horrible security hole.

This will turn out to me one person/very small group of people in an isolated incident.

But the multi accounting thing is being carried out by far more people, it's a far bigger problem, and it's not going to go away
unless a lot of changes are made.

semibluff

i disagree that multi accounting is more serious than company CEO's cheating their customers

How stupid are they for gettin caught BTW

Jesus Wept

Well this will be huge for AP, but it's one/or a few incredibly stupid arrogant bad eggs that happened to be working/have worked for a crap stupid company.
I would be confident that this major security hole doesn't exist on most/all other networks, and since this story, they are also likely checking and double
checking their security to make sure a blatant hole like this doesn't exist.



I think of it like this:

A:

The AP scandal is the equivalent of a big heist: the Northern Bank Robbery/The Great Train Robbery/The Thomas Crown Affair, etc

It's a huge story (to poker players), it's fascinating, it's jaw dropping that it could of happened. It garners attention. If there were a 'Poker Sky News' channel, it would be 'BREAKING NEWS' all day, for weeks on end.

But, it's unlikely to of happened on any site before, and it's unlikely to ever occur again.


B:

The Multi-Accounting scandal is like the 2 million + homes that are burgled in the U.S each year.
It's a statistic, it's a footnote on 'Poker Sky News', while the big heist story rumbles on.


The multi-accounting story will not run for days and weeks with 'breaking news' subplots. It hasn't got the Hollywood factor.
But, it's going to affect far more of us, and a lot less will be done about it.


And the main difference between the multi-accounting problem and a home burglary is that we won't even notice when multi-accounting cost us,
but that's also the biggest stumbling block preventing it being addressed

The biggest problem is the huge element of : 'If we can't see it, it's not a problem/worth stopping and/or possible to prevent'.



You won't see huge sums disappearing from your account overnight, but it will cost you far more.


It's like that saying that goes along the lines of:

If one person dies it's a tragedy, if a million people die, it's a statistic.'


Which are you or I more likely to be affected by? Which is going to cost you and I more, A or B?

semibluff

given your example, obv B

but i think you can choose to quote facts, give scenarios that will be able to support your argument, or stance point, as someone could do "from the other camp". I am not in disagreement with your views, but the emphasis of importance that you place, is masplaced IMO - hence the beauty of two people having different opinions.

The Poker sites are the sites that we entrust our faith in, and believe that "nah, dont believe the hype, it aint rigged"

An anology that is simular would be Fifa and Uefa penalising Juventus and all the other cheating teams in the Serie A (These teams being your multi account players, as as far as we know there are players diving all around the world every day (as with multi accounting this is next to impossible to monitor as a whole))

The recent findings would be like finding out that FIFA and UEFA were actually benefitting from illegal actions, that they as a ruling body (poker company) are meant to stamp out

Ste05

While I agree with The-Rigger that multi-accounting is a huge issue also, the integrity and security of a fairly high profile Poker site has to have possibly bigger implications, if people begin to suspect that these sites aren't secure then internet Poker will die alot quicker then with multi-accounting. The fish won't understand the ramifications of what and how multi-accounting affects them, but they damn well will understand what happens if someone can see all the cards. It's the reputation of all these companies is what makes people play on the sites, if there was even a whiff of this kind of thing in the general media can you imagine the implications!! It's also a much tastier story than multi-accounting (as you say).

For those who may have missed it, P5's have suspended all promotions of AP on their site. Linky: http://www.pocketfives.com/A4DDCEF4-907D-41D4-949C-B758BDA8E65A.aspx

Hectorjelly

Multi-accounting is tiny compared to this

Jesus Wept

semibluff wrote: »

given your example, obv B

but i think you can choose to quote facts, give scenarios that will be able to support your argument, or stance point, as someone could do "from the other camp". I am not in disagreement with your views, but the emphasis of importance that you place, is masplaced IMO - hence the beauty of two people having different opinions.

The Poker sites are the sites that we entrust our faith in, and believe that "nah, dont believe the hype, it aint rigged"

An anology that is simular would be Fifa and Uefa penalising Juventus and all the other cheating teams in the Serie A (These teams being your multi account players, as as far as we know there are players diving all around the world every day (as with multi accounting this is next to impossible to monitor as a whole))

The recent findings would be like finding out that FIFA and UEFA were actually benefitting from illegal actions, that they as a ruling body (poker company) are meant to stamp out

I think in the example given, it would be more like finding out that one or two people within FIFA or UEFA were benefiting, as opposed to the everyone in the organisation/the organisation as a whole.

I've always thought when people have said a site/online poker is 'rigged' that they mean generally rigged, as if it's inbuilt into the random number generator to juice up the action, I guess so pots rake higher.
Which makes little sense as it's horrible business practice because integrity is going to make a lot more in the long run, and with all the Pokertracker and 2+2 math genius' floating around, it would be spotted
quickly.

I don't think the general consensus about poker sites being 'rigged' was that there might be a handful of people on one site who can see hole cards and destroy players that way.

It's not like the site being 'rigged' was company policy, it was a case of some horrible security hole existing and the natural progression of human nature that some employee/former employee would take advantage.

So, IMO, it doesn't show that poker companies are taking everyone for a ride, it shows that Absolute Poker happens to have being run/setup in a horribly negligent manner security wise.

Unfortunately if the person who took advantage of the glaring security hole happens to be the CEO, people will look at it as if ripping people off was company policy from day 1.

RoundTower

Hectorjelly wrote: »

Multi-accounting is tiny compared to this

disagree. I think more money leaves poker through multi-accounting.

I'd like to change the-rigger's analogy.

The AP scandal is like the September 11 attacks. The yanks get hot under the collar about it and declare war on a dozen tiny nations. But really, 3000 people is a drop in the ocean.

Multi-accounting is like cigarettes. People get pissed off about it and tell you how many people die from it. But mostly it only affects people who would die soon anyway, a little bit of it doesn't hurt, and a lot of people have a vested interest in continuing to sell cigarettes. Very quietly, a million people die from lung cancer every year.

Ste05

RoundTower wrote: »

disagree. I think more money leaves poker through multi-accounting.

I'd agree that more money leaves poker through multi-accounting, but the threat of each are not comparable IMO.

If people begin to think (as we already do) that the integrity and security of the 8th Largest Poker site in the world is compromised and this isn't dealt with effectively the whole integrity of on-line Poker could be at risk. To me this is a much bigger issue than multi-accounting.

What if there are actually loads of these super-user accounts? how about on other sites? what if programmers are selling them? is it possible to make them again? what's to stop any of this being done?

I suppose all this highlights the problem with having the industry completely unregulated, apart from the rather superficial licences they have from the Cayman Islands or wherever else they are regulated in.

There are so many questions that need to be answered by AP.

Multi-accounting is an issue to be dealt with but IMO this is a much more potentially damaging issue.

Samba

There is no way to combat competent multi-accounting

ianmc38

I saw a thread in bbv a few days ago by EM2. There was some mention of a program called Winholdem which is a kind of toolkit for creating your own bot. There's another feature in the software called team play whcih connects to your teams apps and shares their holecards with you. This software works on nearly every network and they've a large forum with loads of people getting teams together and stickies for avoiding detection and stuff. If you had two reasonable players at one 6 max table, you would absolutely destroy it..

Jesus Wept

Samba wrote: »

There is no way to combat competent multi-accounting

No point in trying so. :rolleyes:

It's virtually impossible to prevent anything 100%, but it can be made more difficult, it can be made very very difficult, and it can be made to have very serious consequences and repercussions.

There are people far smart than you and I who can come up with various methods of making it very difficult, things we haven't thought of.

We have seen the trail left by the perpetrator in the AP scandal, and how it has being followed by the 2+2'ers.

There are smart people out there who could make multi-accounting a rare occurrence with serious consequences instead of the free for all it is turning into.

Ste05

Winholdem has been around for ages, (just another BOT site, previously thought not to be much use in a NL game, I presume that's still the case?)

I didn't know the team play thing allowed to view hole cards while in play? I thought it was just used so you can have the BOTS interact with each other while playing, but the whole profitability etc. of the BOT depends on it's programming, and the 2+2 maths nerds have uncovered BOTS in the past, so it's an issue that has been addressed, I can't remember what the end result was now, but if I remember rightly UB seemed to have a problem (same owners as AP...)

Although if used in this context it's basically the same as just being on the phone with someone while playing. It's a problem but there's nothing can be done about it TBH. And it's not like they can see your hole cards!! It's a pretty lame excuse but that's the reality we're faced with.

EDIT: Obviously the usual collusion detection software etc. has been in place to deal with and seek out collusion of this type.

Samba

The-Rigger wrote: »

No point in trying so. :rolleyes:

It's virtually impossible to prevent anything 100%, but it can be made more difficult, it can be made very very difficult, and it can be made to have very serious consequences and repercussions.

There are people far smart than you and I who can come up with various methods of making it very difficult, things we haven't thought of.

We have seen the trail left by the perpetrator in the AP scandal, and how it has being followed by the 2+2'ers.

There are smart people out there who could make multi-accounting a rare occurrence with serious consequences instead of the free for all it is turning into.

Having worked in the industry for a number of years, I find this hard to believe if you are a highly sophisticated Multi-accounter there will never be any evidence for you to be caught, especially if you are IT savy.

The only highly sophisticated anti-collusion tools that I know of are on the ipoker network to safe gaurd the SNG Jackpots, it can be utilised effectively for one table but to take the measures they use and apply them across an entire MTT at present is simply not feasible imo when you consider the man power and resources required . I could be wrong however.

Personally i don't play online MTTs so this does not effect me, which maybe lends towards my attitude on the matter.

I found this particular sentence very funny

There are people far smart than you and I

Sometime in the near future detection tools will become more advanced PS will probably be the pioneers as per usual.

Even then as i've said if you are highly sophisticated you are going to make sure you leave no evidence behind and make it near impossible to be caught.

Only the idiots are being caught at the moment and when they are caught, they learn how to get away with it in future, once a cheat always a cheat.

hotspur

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission in Canada which AP is licensed by has stepped in and asked for Gaming Associates (independent testing firm) to investigate AP in relation to this matter. This is a big deal for them to do it, it doesn't happen much as most licensing regimes are just rubber stamps really.

What Gaming Associates will come up with I don't know. It seems pretty clear what happened, but I am sceptical about Gaming Associates as a firm.

cooker3

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