I’ve only just skimmed through the document, but it doesn’t seem to me to condone selectively exposing a card to some players but not others. Is there a particular part I should be reading?
Is it not still cheating even if the system does not go to such lengths to prevents its occurrence? I mean, the agreement every poker site asks of you is one which, no doubt, expressly forbids collusion of this sort.
I work in a card room and exposing your cards to ANYBODY whether they’re in the hand or not before action for the hand is complete and your cards are automatically dead.
Derleth: Collusion IS cheating. It is NOT a valid strategy.
Have information is very important. If you flop a king high flush and then another of the suit hits. You KNOW you still have the best possible flush if you know your friend folded the ace.
Collusion is a very touchy topic in poker. But the kind that involves flashing cards and giving information is against the rules in every legit card room.
What do you mean by this?
There’s a lot of uninformed speculation going on in this thread, which is I guess inevitable given the scant information available if you aren’t following the threads on some of the poker forums pretty closely. I haven’t checked for new developments in the last day or two, but the situation as it stood then, while painting Absolute Poker in a bad light for sure, in no way threatens the integrity of online poker as a whole. Assuming such would be like losing some money in an investment and deciding to put the rest of your money under your mattress. Poker sites have no incentive to rig the system, since there is no possible way for them to lose money if everything is on the up and up and they only stand to lose if anyone should find out they’re being less than honest. The vast majority of cheating allegations in online poker belong in the same category as any other conspiracy theory.
But with so much money at stake, people will try to cheat if they possibly can. PokerStars just recently disqualified TheV0id, the winner of the World Championship of Online Poker main event, for playing multiple accounts. This kind of thing shouldn’t surprise anyone, but the big successful sites like Stars are quite good at catching cheaters colluding or multi-accounting. It helps that they have access to perfect records of all player actions ever made.
The situation at Absolute is quite a bit shadier, and I have little doubt they would have been happy to deny until the end of time that anything untoward ever happened except that they basically shot themselves in the foot. The account in question, PotRipper, won a tournament in such a blatantly stupid display of aberrant behavior (The final hand he called an all-in on the turn with ten-high to beat 2nd place finisher Marco’s 9 high missed flush draw) that Marco requested his hand history for the tournament and stated his suspicions to Absolute. He received a reply that contained three things:
- An excel file hand history whose formatting was scrambled badly and had to be pieced back together.
- An assurance that there existed no such thing as a “superaccount” (An account capable of seeing other players’ cards) in Absolute’s software.
- An assurance that Absolute had reviewed the tourney in question and was satisfied no cheating had taken place.
Marco and some friends pieced the excel file back together to discover that someone at Absolute seemed to have made a huge mistake. The Excel file contained everyone’s hole cards for the tournament, letting everyone see exactly how perfect PotRipper’s calls, raises, and folds were. It turns out he only folded 7 hands in the entire tournament, and every one of those was when some other player had been dealt a big pocket pair.
Absolute continued to deny everything, but the players discovered that in the Excel file was a lot more information than even the hole cards of all the players: it contained IP addresses and other identifying information of all participants and observers of the tournament. It turns out that from about 2 minutes after the start of the tournament, user #363 observed PotRipper play until the end. User accounts are numbered sequentially, so user 363 must have been one of the earliest accounts created. At this point, combined with AP’s denials, it looked like this was an inside job by someone at AP using a superaccount to feed information to PotRipper.
The IP address for the PotRipper account was further traced to the home of one Scott Tom, part owner of Absolute Poker, who has been accused of unscrupulous behavior in the past. His current relationship with Absolute is not clear to me, he is either a former part owner or still has a stake in the company, I’ve seen contradicting reports.
It certainly looks like Mr. Tom decided to abuse a superaccount he knew existed by virtue of his status at AP, but the plan was executed in a remarkably stupid fashion. It also looks like someone at Absolute knew this and decided to blow the whistle on this little escapade, by sending the Excel file with the damning evidence out to the players. The subsequent detective work and blatant evidence of cheating was probably what prompted Absolute’s turnaround in their PR statements.
This whole chain of events is good for no one at Absolute, so I imagine their initial plan was to deny that anything had happened, tighten up the security on the superaccounts they claimed not to have, and wait for it all to blow over. The fact that they tried to cover this up rather than come out and fix it publicly as PokerStars did does not speak well for their management.
Statistically, just two people working together can absolutely CLEAN OUT a poker table. I don’t have the statistics on hand but I do remember them being quite remarkable. A table operates very much on faith that every man is for himself. Everyone wants to make sure their game isn’t crooked.
But strangely there are some cases in poker where collusion is not only legal but is considered good table etiquette. :dubious:
The most common situation where this is the case is when the pot is multi-way and someone is “All-in.” (This might be confusing but I’ll explain it as best I can). There is an unwritten rule in poker…When someone is All-In never bluff without a side pot. The ONLY WAY you can win a hand in poker is either betting everyone off a hand, or showing down the best hand. When someone is “All-In” it is IMPOSSIBLE to bet them off a hand. It is bad form to bluff other players out of a pot that could probably have this all-in guy beat. For example…
Player A is All-In preflop. Players B and C call. Player B has 66. Player C has Jack-Ten. Flop comes AJ8. Player B has no hand, but decides to bluff. Player C sees the Ace and folds. Player A then turns over his 99 and takes the pot when Player B doesn’t improve.
Player B CAN’T WIN ANYTHING without beating player A. He bluffed ‘C’ out of a pot but won NOTHING. The ONLY THING his bluff did was prevent Player C from winning a hand he was very much favored to win. Knocking out ‘A’ could benefit BOTH B & C greatly, especially if the tournament is already in the money. They could move up closer to a better payout.
Bluffing B violated no rules in this situation though. You can bluff whenever you want. But it’s considered bad form anyway.
There are other situations where players might not be playing against each other each with varying levels of appropriateness that I could explain if you want, but this is the biggie.
Absolute Poker will be out of business in six months.
This is an incredible breach of consumer trust.
John McCain said a while back that he was concerned with online gambling. Not in the usual “moral bankruptcy” attack on gambling, but in a “make sure it is fair”
This is exacly what he was talking about.
I hope someone can clear this up. I thought online poker was dead, at least in the US. Was this a game with players from elsewhere or has there been a change again? I have no interest in playing online for money. I didn’t trust it before this and I like being able to see my opponant.
Online poker in the US is not dead. The UIGEA does not make it illegal to play poker online, it just makes it more difficult to move money in and out. Several prominent sites pulled out of the US market while several others are still accepting US players. Now, it can be said that it’s more difficult to make money playing online poker than it used to be because of a lower amount of players and a lower amount of players who aren’t very good (“donkeys” or “fish” on most poker messageboards.) For that matter, the UIGEA calls for the creation of regs, and the regs are still being worked out and commented on. But there are large technical and possible legal difficulties in coming up with ways to actually stop the movement of money and there are also various legal challenges in the works (the IGREA and Antigua/EU WTO action) as well as bills in Congress which would effectively repeal the UIGEA.
I don’t know the exact statistics but it’s a massive advantage if all of the players except one are working together. A major key to poker strategy is knowing what cards are in play. In a six man game of five card draw, you’ve got thirty cards being dealt every hand. If five of the players know twenty five of these cards and one player only know his own five, it’s clear who’s at a disadvantage.
I think Cyberhwk’s point was a much stronger and less obvious one, that a mere two players, who cannot see each other’s cards but still agree to work as a team, have the ability to, well, “absolutely CLEAN OUT a poker table”.
My point was that collusion runs the gamut from being absolutely forbidden (flashing cards), to being proper etiquette (checking down an ‘all-in’ hand). But you are absolutely correct. Even just TWO PEOPLE who know each other’s cards can tear up a table. You don’t need to know ANY cards really. Here’s another opportunity to cheat…
Two friends sit down, one flops a flush draw. A flush draw is ~36% to hit by the river. So with 6 people still in the flush draw bets out, and gets 5 callers before it comes to the accomplice (who has been signaled somehow). Now even though the flush draw is behind right now, his friend actually MAKES MONEY by betting his draw (he’s 36% yet for ever dollar he puts in…5X that much goes in the pot).
So what will his friend do? RAISE! Why? Because it doesn’t matter what he has, his friend’s draw is good enough that he makes money, and everyone else is almost ABSOLUTELY SURE to call at this point.
This is very harmful to the accomplice’s bankroll, very true. But that’s why they end up going home and splitting their winnings. This is a dangerous way to cheat as they’ll take an ass reaming if someone flopped a set at fills up on the river, but it happens and I assume they know what their doing and can avoid such events much better than I even understand.
AbsolutePoker operates out of the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal, Quebec.
Well that explains it. Canadians. The root of all evil.
The latest:
Here is a recent communication that went out from AP to players:
Dear AP Player:
I am the former Grand Chief of the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake and the owner of Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, which holds a 100% interest in Absolute Poker.
As many of our players are aware, there has been a security breach in our system that allowed unlawful access to player information that resulted in unfair play. I am writing to you today to let you know what we know so far in order to set the record straight, and to assure you of AP’s commitment to player security. I am sure that this letter will not address all of the questions and concerns you may have, nor will it extinguish the heated discussion surrounding this issue. At this point, our intention is to let you know all we can disclose and to assure you of our continued efforts to keep you informed as best we can as the investigations continue.
We deeply regret this situation has occurred. A breach in security in online poker is serious and of great concern to players and the industry worldwide, and this particular situation has been the subject of debate within the poker player community and in the media, giving rise to the creation of several websites and hundreds and hundreds of comments, opinions, and theories of what occurred – some of which are accurate, and some that are not.
Like you, I have not been happy that during the initial stage of our investigation, AP has not been more forthcoming in providing a timely or comprehensive explanation on this matter, giving rise to anger, suspicion, and concern on the part of our valued customers. I hope that our customers can appreciate that this remains an incredibly complex and sensitive issue, and I want to give you my strongest possible assurance that we will be as forthcoming as possible on how this breach occurred and what we are doing to remedy the situation.
What We Know and Actions We Have Taken
AP was notified by a customer that a possible cheating incident occurred during a recent tournament, and in response forwarded players’ hand logs. This disclosure of the hand logs prompted our customers to determine that a more serious security breach had occurred. We immediately launched an internal investigation and also requested a formal audit by Gaming Associates, an acknowledged world-wide expert in audits, interactive gaming tests, and information security.
Based upon our preliminary findings, it appears that the integrity of our poker system was compromised by a high-ranking trusted consultant employed by AP whose position gave him extraordinary access to certain security systems. As has been speculated in several online forums, this consultant devised a sophisticated scheme to manipulate internal systems to access third-party computers and accounts to view hole cards of other customers during play without their knowledge. As this consultant was aware of the details of our fraud detection process, the likelihood that the scheme would be uncovered through our normal procedures was minimized. We consider this security breach to be a horrendous and inexcusable offense.
We will pay for all losses suffered by the affected players as soon as our audit is finished and the amounts are determined. Although we are in the process of attempting to recover all the winnings of this consultant, any unrecovered losses of affected players will be paid by Absolute Poker so that all affected persons will be made whole.
Next Steps
We are still investigating whether the consultant was acting alone or in concert with others, and it appears at this time that all account holders are innocent of collusion and were unaware of any wrong-doing by the consultant, who was immediately terminated. We continue to investigate this matter aggressively, and all of these preliminary findings are subject to the audits currently underway. We have recently uncovered additional accounts used by the consultant that have not been publicly reported. So as to not compromise the investigation, we are not releasing the names of these additional accounts at this time, and will contact these affected customers individually.
The specific allegations of unlawful activity are being investigated both by AP and by the authorized authorities, including the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. We will continue to actively cooperate with these authorities in full compliance with the Regulations Concerning Interactive Gaming. In addition to our own investigation and the audit by Gaming Associates, we have also submitted to an audit by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission.
Please be assured that we have corrected the problem that allowed the system to be unfairly manipulated. We are working furiously to increase the safeguards within our systems. While we are satisfied that our systems are secured, we realize that our security systems must be continuously monitored and enhanced.
Without question, this incident has been unfortunate for all concerned, and we will emerge as a stronger company. I realize it will take some time and much more information for AP to re-earn the trust and confidence of our customers who are in doubt of our commitment to the highest levels of security, privacy and integrity. As we move to address and correct this situation, our valued customers have played a vital role in uncovering this scheme through various online forums and have become an active part of the solution.
With my full sincerity, I thank you, and I promise to keep you updated as we bring this situation to a close.
Sincerely,
Joe Norton
How do you go from “This is literally a geek trying to prove to senior management that they were wrong and he took it too far” to “a high-ranking trusted consultant employed by AP whose position gave him extraordinary access to certain security systems”? Absolute has done nothing but lie, lie, and lie some more on this. Every few days more tidbits come out that confirm that what the poker community has speculated is indeed true.
While it hasn’t been officially stated in Absolute’s email or any sort of press release the word from BRSavage on P5’s is that this “high-ranking trusted consultant” is AJ Green the number two guy at Absolute and the guy running the day to day operations there while numero uno guy Scott Tom is in Panama. This all makes sense since only a guy in charge of investigating himself would have the cahones to approve some of Absolute’s previous statements.
BRSavage also has it from a source at Absolute that AJ Green won’t be named and likely won’t even be prosecuted because he has too much dirt on Absolute and they’re afraid of the shitstorm he could create if they pissed him off. He has been removed from the company and Tom Scott will be removed from a management role for an unspecified period of time. Nat Arem sums it up pretty well:
Okay, the reason they will not send AJ Green to jail (or even name him at this point) is the following…
Think about how much he knows about both the money flow, ownership, other scandals, etc within AP and UB. Lots of people with heavy interests in both of those either don’t want those stories coming out or they don’t want their dirt being told to law enforcement. Basically, he has them by the balls because he has their dirt. Described at the simplest level as blackmail.
Also, I do actually believe that AP, KGC, etc will be a changed organization after this — not necessarily clean, but changed. They would never do anything this blatant again. How they ever get people to believe that they are both clean AND changed will be up to them.
I think Nat hits the nail directly on the head. If you’re basically running a leading online poker site you don’t need to steal money. You’ve likely got an amazing salary and you live in a country (Costa Rica) that has a piss-ant cost of living. The reason you steal money is because you’re an unethical asshat which means this is likely not the first shady thing he has done on behalf of Absolute. That’s certainly not laundry Absolute’s directors want aired.
Now they are speculating that Green may have worked this thing to the tune of $7 million.
The most prevalent response I’ve seen among poker players is that AP are run by scum and you shouldn’t trust AP or UB with any money from now on.
The second most widespread response is that anyone with just half a brain could have made a ridiculous sum of money from this scheme for the rest of their natural lives. This was probably one of the biggest completely squandered money-making opportunities ever.
Funny how the poker players get outraged over being cheated, but at the same time can’t help but appreciate how lucrative a superaccount would have been in the hands of someone who actually knew how to play poker :).
I’m not sure $7M qualifies as “completely squandered”. But it does seem as if the scammer took little trouble to be subtle.
It’s completely squandered since he was so blatant as to get easily caught; it’s not like he’s gonna get to keep any of that $7M now.
Is that right? My understanding was that the identity of the perp has not yet been formally disclosed, and he may indeed get away with it.