Note: the first post in this thread has been edited to include a summary of this scandal. The original post remains intact below the break.
Cornell Fiji


May 18, 2008



This following is a summary of this thread which originally appeared in the High Stakes No Limit forum on twoplustwo.com (to be referred to from here on as 2+2) where the story of corruption at Ultimate Bet originally broke. Ultimate Bet, an online poker room founded in 2001 and one of the largest in the online poker industry, has been given ample opportunity to refute any of the statements in that thread, but have chosen not to do so as of this writing. Every claim made in the summary that follows in this thread is backed up by insurmountable evidence, which can be provided by request. Some of that evidence is included in this thread and there are links to many of the source in this thread. If Ultimate Bet or Absolute Poker feels inclined to refute anything that is said in this summary, they’re urged to do so.

I believe that it is important for online poker players to know about the unethical business practices of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. It is also imperative to understand that these unscrupulous activities are not an indictment on the entire online poker industry. As you read this thread please keep in mind that Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker are owned by the same company. They are also regulated by the same puppet regulatory commission. Most poker sites are run with the utmost integrity and security. Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker are the exception and not the rule.

I urge the concerned reader to pass word of this summary on to other interested parties. The spread of this information will ultimately protect poker players from unknowingly exposing themselves to the corruption detailed below. If any reader is unfamiliar with any poker or technical terminology contained within, please let me know and an explanation will be provided.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to every one who investigated this scandal and who have worked tirelessly to uncover the truth and demand restitution for the affected parties. I did not participate in any part of the investigation myself, all I did was summarize the hard work of posters such as 'trambopoline,' 'dlpnyc21,' Nat Arem, and 'Josem.' Thank you also to poker columnist Gary Wise who took the time to fact check and edit this post.

Last, I want to make it clear that neither Two Plus Two Publishing nor any of its associative media is in any way responsible for these investigations, nor the accusations made based on their results. We thank Two Plus Two for providing an open forum in which those who have been investigating Ultimate Bet’s actions could gather and exchange information.

Steven Ware
Cornell Fiji



It has been one hundred fifty days since allegations about suspicious activity in the high stakes no limit games on Ultimate Bet were first made public in this thread in the High Stakes No Limit forum (referred to as ‘HSNL’ from this point) on twoplustwo.com.

Several million dollars were stolen and the evidence in the HSNL thread indicates very strongly that:

• Ultimate Bet has known about the cheating for at least nine months.
• Ultimate Bet knew about but did not make any attempt to acknowledge the cheating before it was exposed on 2+2.
• People who worked for Ultimate Bet facilitated the cheating.
• Ultimate Bet actively took steps to cover up these crimes and thwart the investigation of this scandal.

Additionally:

• Ultimate Bet did not make any public statements or acknowledge that cheating had occurred until March 6th, 2008, three full months after the crimes became public.
• Ultimate Bet has not reached out to any of the players who were stolen from (many of whom still don't know that they were cheated). When players read the HSNL thread, discover that they have been cheated and attempt to contact Ultimate Bet, they’re forced to wait several days for an email response, only to be told that Ultimate Bet is 'looking into the allegations.'
• Ultimate Bet has not offered to reimburse any of the victims of the theft.

The first post in HSNL thread provided irrefutable evidence, including a graphic (below) proving that that the player NioNio's winning statistics were abnormal.

Note: this image was posted 3 lines into the first post alleging misconduct at Ultimate Bet

Over the 2,984 hands examined in the first post, NioNio won $293,677.16; a rate of approximately 155 big blinds per 100 hands played (bb/100).

Less than twenty-four hours after the initial allegations were posted on 2+2, on the 68th post in the HSNL thread, 2+2’er 'Josem' created the following scatter plot;

The yellow data point in the upper-right corner is the accused NioNio account

Some facts about the scatter plot image that was posted on January 9th:

• There are 870 “normal” accounts from a variety of sites and limits.
• Each of those other accounts has at least 2,500 hands logged on them.
• The graph expresses big blinds won/100 hands. BB/100 represents the total winnings, expressed in number of big blinds at the stakes being played, that each player won per one-hundred hands that they played.
• The mean BB/100 win rate in the sample is 1.528 BB/100.
• The standard deviation is 14.08 BB/100.
• NioNio is winning at approximately 10 standard deviations above the mean.

Assuming a normal distribution of win rates, the chance that NioNio's results could be explained by variance is 1:131,236,127,000,000,000,000,000.

Expressed another way, 1:131,236,127,000,000,000,000,000 is about the same as winning the powerball jackpot three days in a row.

This information was all posted and explained within 24 hours of the first post about this scandal on 2+2.

On March 6th, 2008 in a long-anticipated press release , Ultimate Bet concluded that after “extensive inquiry involving an independent third-party expert… NioNio account’s winning statistics were indeed abnormal” but did not reveal whether they’d found an unfair advantage existed. This press release is the only time that Ultimate Bet has publicly addressed this issue.


Ultimate Bet is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, a privately owned company that also owns and operates Absolute Poker.

Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG is run by Joe Norton, the former Grand Chief of the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake. Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker are overseen and licensed by the “independent” Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is a regulatory arm of the Mowhawk Indian tribe in Canada.



Suspicious activity at Absolute Poker
In August 2007 a player on Absolute Poker with the username of POTRIPPER won the weekly $1,000 buyin tournament in a highly suspicious manner: he played an abnormally high percentage of his hands preflop and played near-flawless Poker after the flop, seeming to always fold when his opponent had a strong hand and raise when his opponent was bluffing.

With the field down to two players, the tournament culminated in an unbelievable hand where the board read 4KK7. POTRIPPER’s opponent, Marco Johnson, playing under the name CrazyMarco, made a massive check-raise all in with a flush draw 92 only to be called by POTRIPPER’s T9. POTRIPPER’s ten high, no pair, no draw held up to win the tournament.

Johnson was suspicious of POTRIPPER’s play. He contacted Absolute Poker, asked for the play be investigated and that the tournament hand history be sent to him. Absolute Poker responded that they’d looked into his play and could not find anything suspicious. They emailed Johnson the hand history in an encrypted Microsoft Excel file. Since it would be tiresome to go through the Excel file and because Absolute Poker had apparently investigated the play, Johnson didn’t examine things any closer for the time being.

In September of 2007, this thread was posted in the high stakes limit forum on 2+2 alleging suspicious play in the $150/$300 limit games on Absolute Poker. There were three players--STEAMROLLER, GREYCAT and DOUBLEDRAG--who despite playing what can be defined mathematically as a losing strategy, were crushing the games. Suspicious posters on 2+2 started examining hands that they had played against these three opponents. In analyzing the hands they found that the three suspicious accounts played most of their hands preflop and then were very aggressive postflop. The most suspicious play generally came on the river (the final betting round,) where seemingly every single time an opponent of the named accounts bluffed, they would be called down lightly or they would be raised and forced to fold. Every single time.

Once the data was compiled, it was thoroughly analyzed both on a hand by hand basis and by looking at the data as a whole. The following scatter plot was created by 2+2 poster Nat Arem. In the scatter plot VPIP stands for the percentage of hands in which a player put non-blind money into the pot preflop.

The red dot on the top right of the graph is alleged cheating account



Out of a sample of 5,251 players, the suspects were an unfathomable fifteen standard deviations above than the mean.

Convinced that these opponents had the ability to see their hole cards, players emailed Absolute Poker’s security department en masse, presenting the evidence and demanding an inquiry. They were completely stonewalled.

The available data had made the investigators nearly certain that STEAMROLLER, GREYCAT and DOUBLEDRAG were cheating, but the only way to have definitive proof was to see the cards that those three accounts were playing. Thankfully, every poker site has the ability to review a player’s hands for suspicious activity, so the posters in this High Stakes Limit thread called and emailed Absolute Poker’s security department asking them to look into the issue.

On October 12th, 2007, Absolute Poker finally responded to the allegations saying (note: emphasis is mine):
The posters in the High Stakes Limit thread were sure that there was cheating going on but, as one poster pointed out; “Well WE will really never be able to PROVE that these players are cheating…without further knowledge of their opponents hands”

The Break in the AP Case
After reading the thread about possible cheaters at Absolute Poker and reading Absolute Poker’s official statement, Marco Johnson came to believe that all of the suspicious play on Absolute Poker was unlikely to be a coincidence. He went back to the e-mail he’d received in response to his inquiry in order to take a closer look at the hand history.

Upon this second look, Johnson realized that the hole cards of all of the players had been included in the email, an alarming fact as no entity including the Absolute Poker powers-that-be should have access to that information (a fact confirmed by Absolute Poker in their official statement published less than twenty-four hours later). The text version of the hand history can be found in this thread. You can also watch the hands played out on a video replayer that was uploaded onto youtube. If you read the hands or watch the video, you will have no doubt that POTRIPPER had the ability to see his opponents hole cards.

Upon examination of this master hand history, the cheating could not have been any more apparent (even someone who doesn’t play Poker regularly can watch that youtube video and see there’s something extra-sensory going on). After the second hand of the tournament, from the 10/20 blind level to the 100/200 blind level in, POTRIPPER only folded preflop four times. Each time he folded, a player behind him held a big pair. POTRIPPER played the tournament perfectly for someone with knowledge of his opponents cards, raising whenever opponents had nothing and folding whenever they held a strong hand.

After analyzing the master hand history, it was not only obvious that POTRIPPER and the other players were cheating at Absolute Poker, but also that the cheater clearly had access to a superuser account (a term applied to describe an account that could see every hand on the table in circumstances where those cards would normally be hidden). It was now apparent that Absolute Poker knew about the cheating, was intentionally engaging in a cover-up, and had deliberately lied in their press release that was sent out just one day earlier.

THE ABSOLUTE AFTERMATH
In summary, the Absolute Poker press release had stated that:

• ”We spent extensive resources thoroughly investigating and analyzing our players’ claims.”
• The result of our investigation is that we found no evidence that any of Absolute Poker’s redundant and varying levels of game client security were compromised.
• ”we have determined with reasonable certainty that it is impossible for any player or employee to see hole cards as was alleged. There is no part of the technology that allows for a “superuser” account”
• ”We base this finding on a thorough security check on a technological level, coupled with a thorough investigation of hand histories including those that did not go to a showdown”

Less than twenty-four hours later it was proven by the investigation’s collaborators that:

• It would be impossible to look at the players’ hole cards without immediately recognizing that POTRIPPER had a superuser account.
• Absolute Poker knew that their game security had been compromised and they tried to cover it up.
• Absolute Poker had planned on continuing to lie about the cheating and had no inclination to repay the players who had been stolen from.

The collaborators investigating Absolute Poker had provided proof of what had actually happened. They knew when the cheating had occurred and more importantly for our purposes, when it stopped. They knew how the cheating had occurred. The why should be obvious.

The last big question needing an answer was who was doing the cheating.

While inspecting the POTRIPPER hand history, some of the collaborators discovered that this file also contained the IP addresses and user details (including email addresses) of all players seated and observing the table. User #363 (which eventually was identified as the superuser account with hole card access) and POTRIPPER both had their accounts traced back to Costa Rica, the home of Absolute Poker’s servers. The e-mail address and IP address linked to #363 was the same as that of another observer using the e-mail address scott@rivieraltd.com, the owner of which was allegedly Absolute Poker co-founder Scott Tom.

Further investigations revealed that rivieraltd.com’s mail server IP (66.212.244.147) was allocated to Absolute Entertainment SA at Mohawk Internet Technologies data center (po12.dr4.kdca.mohawk.ca. Two hours after this discovery was posted on twoplustwo the DNS information at rivieraltd.com had been deleted. Tracks were being covered.

Mohawk.ca should also sound familiar to those of you paying attention so far. To refresh your memory:
The superuser account that cheated and stole money on Absolute Poker was being operated by Absolute Poker's founder and it also had direct ties to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and Ultimate Bet. It was no wonder why Absolute Poker tried to cover up the cheating.

More details on the technical side of the Absolute Poker investigation can be found in the posts made after 10/16/07 in this thread).

For more information about the Absolute Poker scandal please check the links in this section as well as the websites which have been created to discuss this scandal such as,absolutepokercheats.com, and AbsoluteDetectives.com

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY AT ULTIMATE BET

By January of 2008, many high stakes no limit hold’em players on Ultimate Bet had become highly suspicious of the playing styles and win rates of some players on the site.

Investigating the hands that these players played showed that they saw as many flops and turns as possible, they called bluffs with incredibly weak holdings, and they seemingly never lost. These players were employing what should be a losing strategy and they were playing in the highest stakes games on Ultimate Bet, yet they showed the highest win rates of anybody playing any poker game anywhere in the world (other than the Absolute Poker cheaters).

Their abnormal playing style of seeing many flops and turns along with their regularly calling river bets with extremely marginal holdings at an alarming rate of success, indicated a possibility that these players, like the players in the Absolute Poker scandal, had the ability to see their opponents hidden hole cards.

Ultimate Bet was informed about this problem within twenty-four hours of the creation of the HSNL thread on January 8th, 2008. The Kahnawake gaming Commission was notified soon thereafter.


Collecting the Evidence
After the Absolute Poker scandal it was clear that the poker sites were unwilling to regulate themselves and that the Kahnawake Gaming Commission was also uninterested with protecting the game. Frustrated by what seemed to be another major cheating scandal by a Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG poker site, posters on twoplustwo set out to find the truth.

While reviewing hands that they had played, twoplustwo posters 'trambopoline' and 'dlpnyc21' noticed that they had both lost significant sums of money to the player ”NioNio”. In only 3,000 hands against trambopoline and dlpnyc21 ”NioNio”, had profited an astonishing $300,000.

”NioNio” had an incredibly high VP$IP of approximately 60/40 (meaning that he put money into the pot preflop with 60% of the hands that he was dealt and that he raised preflop with 40% of his hands, abnormally high statistics for a winning player in these games). He cold called 3 bets and 4 bets at an abnormally high frequency and he made very thin value bets and repeatedly made what would otherwise be questionable calls against bluffs. Essentially, his play was consistent of that of a poor poker player, not one who was winning $300,000 in 3,000 hands.

NioNio's play was nearly identical to the play of POTRIPPER with one exception; where POTRIPPER would only raise or fold on the river, NioNio would on occasion call. It would eventually become obvious this served to make his omniscience less obvious.

Concerned about NioNio's play trambopoline turned to www.MyPokerIntel.com, a website which records all high stakes games that are played online, to gather more evidence.

MyPokerIntel.com provides a summary of anyone’s last 14 sessions. In those 14 sessions, NioNio had 13 winning sessions and was up approximately 135k. His one losing session consisted of a mere 2k loss. The stats on MyPokerIntel.com also showed that NioNio had beaten the games at a rate of 114 big blinds per 100 hands over the 8,000 hands that he had played. As a base of comparison, the absolute best players in the world strive to win 15 bb/100.

What was even more incriminating was the fact that the last date he played on that account was September 4th, the same week the AP scandal broke.

Below is a spreadsheet that lists NioNio's profits from each session that he played on Ultimate Bet;



NioNio had won over 600k in a mere 64 hours of play, a hourly rate of $9,687.96/hr. One of the ‘wow’ figures from this investigation is that the average American works 2088 hours a year, not counting overtime. If NioNio worked for those same 2088 hours he would have an annual salary of $20,209,668.48.

Ulitmatebuddy.com is a website which provides a search feature for Ultimate Bet players. When trambopoline searched for NioNio on Ultimatebuddy, he found an odd message stating that NioNio's account no longer existed. This meant that his name was either changed or that it had been closed.

In order for an account on Ultimate Bet to have a user name changed or for an account to be closed the owner of the account must personally contact the company and the security department process the request. This is the first indication that Ultimate Bet knew about the cheater several months prior to the January 8th post on 2+2.

As many of you know, when you cash out of an online poker site, the cash out must first be cleared through the site's security department. Major withdrawals from new players are examined with additional scrutiny.

It defies reason to believe that a red flag was not raised when a new player began beating the highest stakes games on Ultimate Bet at a win rate that was ten standard deviations over his expectation. But even if Ultimate Bet's security department was so incompetent as to not investigate NioNio's account while the cheating was taking place it is virtually impossible that they did not investigate him when he requested to have name changed and cashed out in September 2007 .

It is simply unfathomable that red flag was not raised when NioNio, the most successful Poker player in the history of the world, a guy for whom logging onto Ultimate Bet was like going to an ATM machine... and stealing the whole thing, abruptly decided a couple days after the Absolute Poker scandal became public that he wanted to close his account. The only rational conclusion is that Ultimate Bet had full knowledge of the cheating as it was taking place and deliberately allowed it to continue just like at their sister site Absolute Poker where the founder of the company was cheating and orchestrating cover-up.

After 'trambopoline' and 'dlpnyc21' showed beyond any reasonable doubt in the HSNL thread that NioNio was cheating, many more 2+2’ers began compiling their hand histories and searching through www.myPokerintel.com for suspicious accounts.

If it was happening with one account why couldn’t it be happening on others? Within a matter of days, posters on 2+2 identified a number of accounts as having highly suspicious activity. They all played the same 60/40/aggressive style that was shared by NioNio and the superuser at Absolute Poker and all stopped playing around September 07, 2007 when the Absolute Poker scandal broke. They also all had had success at a profit rate of several degrees better than the win rates showed by the best players in the world.

These suspicious accounts were:
Flatbroke33, iLike2win, monizzzle, nionio, nopaddles, nymobser, nvtease, sleeplesss, stoned2nite, utakeit2, and whackme44.

Prior to January 8th, 2008, the day that the allegations were posted on twoplustwo, eight out of the ten accounts had been closed or had their screen name changed. Upon releasing these names in the HSNL thread, which was obvious was being closely watched by Ultimate Bet, the last 2 accounts were immediately closed or had their account name changed. This is known because within 24 hours they no longer appeared on ultimatebuddy.com when searched for. Just like with Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet's management was covering their tracks.

Nat Arem (N82 50 24 on twoplustwo) was able to give trambopoline some further damning information. From the contacts he had from the AP scandal, he was able to confirm 3 things;

• The NioNio account was changed to nymobser.
• The Nopaddles account was changed to sleeplesss.
• The changes were made on the same day.

The operator of these accounts would play high stakes no limit as NioNio. After they cheated someone out of enough money to inspire suspicion, the operator would then switch to the Nopaddles account. After they had exhausted the entire player pool by cheating everyone with both accounts, they again changed screen names and ran the same scam as nymobser and sleepless.

It should again be pointed out that it is standard procedure for an account asking to change its screen name to be scrutinized by a poker site’s security team. Looking at a single session that NioNio or Nopaddles played would be enough to show an almost imperceptibly small chance that the accounts were not cheating. It is simply beyond the realm of possibility that several insiders did not realize that these accounts were cheating when these accounts were investigated after requesting a name change in the middle of 2007. Instead of stopping the theft Ultimate Bet allowed them to change screen names and in doing so facilitated the cheating.

If you have a gmail account, you will be able to access this spreadsheet containing the playing statistics from all of the accounts in question. This is an incredibly damning piece of evidence;
Spreadsheet with the playing data from the cheaters at Ultimate Bet.

The detailed hand logs in that spreadsheet contain of all data from each session played by the cheating accounts. One can see the exact time each account played each session, how much was won and other pertinent info.

Looking at the times that the cheating accounts played one can observe instance after instance where one account would sign in, play a short session against a particular player, then sign onto a new screen name and play another session against the same player, making huge profits on each account. This was done in order to minimize the amount of hands that each account played against each high stakes player in hopes that the lack of data would keep the cheating under the radar. Once the two accounts had played all of the regular high stakes players they would be closed and two more accounts would be opened and the process repeated.

Here is a screen shot with some specific stats from these players:

.
The date next to their name indicates the last date they played on Ultimate Bet;

Flatbroke33 = 8/11, 65.5 PTbb/100 over 3753 hands- deleted or name changed.
iLike2win = 6/22, 37.34 PTbb/100 over 5545 hands - deleted or name changed.
Nionio = 9/4, 57.3 PTbb/100 over 8100 hands - name changed to nymobser.
Nopaddles = 8/31, 89.6 PTbb/100 over 1508 hands - name changed to sleepless.
Nymobser = 9/26, 46.7 PTbb/100 over 899 hands - now deleted or name changed. This name was still active when it was first mentioned in the HSNL thread, but within 24 hours of it being identified in the thread the account was closed.
Monizzle = 11/20, 38.51PTbb/100 over 2265 hands - deleted or name changed.
Sleeplesss = 9/22, 98.87 PTbb/100 over 1561 hands - now deleted or name changed. This name was still active when it was first mentioned in the HSNL thread, but within 24 hours of it being identified in the thread the account was closed.
stoned2nite = 6/30, 129.2 PTbb/100 over 777 hands - deleted or name changed.
Utakeit2 = 8/29, 45.41 PTbb/100 over 8046 hands - deleted or name changed.
Whackme44 = 8/20, 47.73 PTbb/100 over 946 hands - deleted or name changed.

For the 7 accounts out of 10 that we received detailed records on, their total take was over $1.5 million. It is still unknown how much the other 3 accounts stole.

Other than their one press release stating that a three month extensive investigation revealed that NioNio had "abnormally high winning statistics" (something that was proven three lines into the first post in the HSNL thread) Ultimate Bet has not made any public comments about these findings. Ultimate Bet has also largely refused to discuss this scandal with its players other than to say that their investigation is ongoing. Ultimate Bet has not acknowledged their involvement in the cheating.

To this date the perpetrators of the Absolute Poker scandal have not been charged with any crimes. It is unknown if Ultimate Bet has filed charges against the people responsible for this multi million dollar theft or crimes related to the cover-up of these crimes.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Out of the hundreds of online poker sites, the only two sites to ever be caught exploiting a superuser account to steal from its customers are both owned by Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG and licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

The players on Ultimate Bet were victims of a serious crime: grand larceny facilitated by a company that operates virtually outside the law. I hope that the efforts spent investigating and publicizing this story will help the victims of these crimes find restitution. I hope that this story will also highlight the need for independent regulation in the online poker industry.

Please use this thread to discuss the the best way to convince Ultimate Bet to come clean about their involvement in this theft and to provide restitution for these crimes. Please also use this thread to discuss the best ways to ensure that a scandal such as this one does not taint the game of poker occur ever again.

Steven Ware





I hereby grant the right for anyone, including all members of the media to take excerpts from this summary and/or to republish it in part or in whole as long as the work is properly cited and credited to its author.

Once again I would like to thank the dedicated people who spent hundreds of man hours that investigating this scandal, most of whom had no incentive for doing so other than a desire to preserve the integrity of the game that they love. Special thanks to Gary Wise for helping me edit this summary.




















================================================== ========
__________________________________________________ _______________

Mod note: This is the original first post in this thread. An allegation of suspicious play by poster Omniheart:


This is his pokertracker stats and the people he beat over 3k hands. This is all the hands from gaucho, trambo and mrwonkman. It would be great if CTS, Raptor, Boosted, JMX and Arbian or whoever played against him to send me the hands he is involved to make clear.



1) Value Betting A9 high
Hand #45623277-463 at Waterbury (No Limit Hold'em)
Started at 30/Aug/07 15:16:37

NioNio is at seat 2 with $52357.
arbianight is at seat 5 with $13389.
The button is at seat 5.

arbianight posts the small blind of $50.
NioNio posts the big blind of $100.

NioNio: -- --
arbianight: -- --

Pre-flop:

arbianight raises to $300. NioNio re-raises to $900.
arbianight calls.

Flop (board: 8s Jd Qd):

NioNio checks. arbianight bets $1800. NioNio calls.


Turn (board: 8s Jd Qd 4h):

NioNio checks. arbianight checks.

River (board: 8s Jd Qd 4h 2s):

NioNio bets $5400. arbianight calls.



Showdown:

NioNio shows 9h Ac.
NioNio has 9h Ac 8s Jd Qd: ace high.
arbianight mucks cards.


Hand #45623277-463 Summary:

$1 is raked from a pot of $16200.
NioNio wins $16199 with ace high.
----------------------------------------------------------------

2) More sick value bets

Hand #44558824-288 at Ann Arbor (No Limit Hold'em)
Started at 19/Jul/07 05:52:12

mrwonkaman is at seat 0 with $7440.
CloseUrEyes is at seat 1 with $14341.
piejay is at seat 2 with $7623.
NioNio is at seat 3 with $32271.
maxEmus125 is at seat 4 with $20971.
elpanchito is at seat 5 with $10647.
The button is at seat 0.

CloseUrEyes posts the small blind of $50.
piejay posts the big blind of $100.

mrwonkaman: 6h Jh
CloseUrEyes: -- --
piejay: -- --
NioNio: -- --
maxEmus125: -- --
elpanchito: -- --

Pre-flop:

NioNio raises to $350. maxEmus125 folds. elpanchito
re-raises to $1200. mrwonkaman folds. CloseUrEyes
folds. piejay folds. NioNio calls.

Flop (board: 5c Js As):

NioNio checks. elpanchito checks.

Turn (board: 5c Js As 9s):

NioNio bets $2550. elpanchito calls.

River (board: 5c Js As 9s Ks):

NioNio bets $4300. elpanchito calls.



Showdown:

NioNio shows 8s 5h.
NioNio has 8s Js As 9s Ks: flush, ace high.
elpanchito mucks cards.
(elpanchito has Jd Kh.)


Hand #44558824-288 Summary:

$3 is raked from a pot of $16250.
NioNio wins $16247 with flush, ace high.
----------------------------------------------------------------

again? really?

neither of those hands look like superuser play at all

What are you trying to implicate here? A hole card reader? Lol

i think the stats are pretty abnormal, the hands themself im not so sure.

Looks to me like a good player, not a superuser.

Why can I see HSNL turning into a 'I THINK I FOUND A SUPERUSER' forum very soon? **** guys, people run hot, it happens.

OP,

This has been posted in multiple forums. The ptbb/100 is amazingly high, but the hands themselves have not convinced anyone. I don't think that you coming on and re-posting some of the evidence is going to help the cause.

I agree that from the stats it looks like someone that can see hole cards. At the same time, I don't think that the hands look all that strange. Part of the problem is that everyone assumes innocence until proof comes up...and nionio (from what I gather) is done playing. AP originally said that the superuser hands proved nothing. And he was bad at what he did. Here, we either have someone very good at cheating, or someone on a very hot run who changed his name.

wtf? bad op for tardiness plz

those hands are just ******ed and def start the thread off poorly, but w/e.

Ok,
So trambopoline (well respected hsnl player/poster) and myself created the original thread about Nionio.

I will post the highlights from the original thread. To be clear, trambo and I believe we were victims of a superuser who could see our cards. Others believe there was highly highly suspicious play/winrate/stats from Nionio on ub from the period of july-september. We have around 3k hands during which time nionio was up 300k. This alone would be a massive heater for anyone at 25/50 and 50/100 but what's more surprising is that he played another 5k hands (which we do not have right now but know he played based on mypokerintel) at THE SAME WIN RATE. This means that potentially he took over 700k out of the games. He brutalized all the best and winngest players on the site. If you want more hand histories, email omniheart or myself or trambopoline. The most damaging evidence so far is the HU session vs. trambo, where he plays "perfectly" (in the worlds of trambo), floating/raising every time trambo tried to bluff/folding when trambo had good hands.

He is up massively v. myself, trambo, arbian night, whee, cts, basically any respected 2p2er he destroyed. For a LOT of $.

Yes it's possible he was on some kind of insane rush over 3k hands, and perhaps even over 8k hands. He didn't play as perfectly as he could have, he made some suspicious plays that might suggest he was smarter than the AP superusers (who won at a much higher winrate 500bb/100 as opposed to 60bb/100).

He wins at 60ptbb/100 over 64 hours of play while paying a 60/40 style and he only had ONE losing session (where he lost 2k), the rest of the time winning hugely. I am suggesting he was a "smart" super user in the sense he did not abuse it completely (he lost some hands--where he just called with strong hands that wouldn't make "sense" to fold, etc.). He didn't win every hand. He made some very ridiculous preflop cold-calls (each time the opponent was airing out), and his aggression factor is very high on the river as compared to elsewhere.

So far on 2p2 these posters have said he beat them for a lot: myself, trambo, scratchy1, tempest122, cts, mynameizgreg, etc. He also destroyed arbian night as you can see from the stats.

The fact that a random player who plays 60/40 who has a super passive style then comes alive on the river destroyed the best players on the site almost never losing a session (unless it was a suckout or a bluff where someone made a very tough call on him) is pause for concern. When you combine that with the fact that he won over 300k in 3k hands and won at the same rate for 5k hands which we don't have access to rihgt now is even more pause for concern.

Then there is the question of his disappearance. Around 9/4 (around the time the AP scandal broke), he just mysteriously stopped playing on Nionio. The account actually no longer exists (we don't know when it ended but nionio would have had to email ub for the account to no longer exist--if you try typing it into ultimate buddy, his name doesn't come up). He never gave any $ back, he just didn't play on that name anymore and the account was closed. To me that's the most suspicious thing of all.


Scratcy1 made this post:
Times i had AA

a raise he folds before it gets to me
i raise bet flop he folds
he open folds
HU he raises i reraise he calls I flop top set and check every street to him he checks behind every street
HU he raises i reraise i bet out he raises we get it in i have top set he has flush draw +gutshot

KK
I raise he cold calls there is a squeeze i 4bet he folds
He raises sb i rr bb he check folds flop
3 handed i raise all fold

QQ
He raises i rr j35 rainbow i bet he calls turn he check folds
he raises i call i flop set he check calls drawy board then check folds blank turn
He raises i rr he folds
HU he raises i rr k73 flop check check turn K he check folds
I raise he folds
I raise sb he folds bb

JJ
I raise he calls we both flop sets and get it in i have half buyin
He raises i reraise i bet k45 flop he calls turn T he folds
HU i raise he calls i flop set on drawy board he check calls then check folds turn
I squeeze after he cold calls button raise all fold
I raise he calls q78 flop he check folds
I raise he calls q54 he check folds
I raise all fold
He raises i reraise from blinds aq9 all diamonds i have no diamond i bet he minraises i fold
Button raises he cc i reraise all call kkq flop i bet he shoves i fold

So i had AA-JJ 23 times. We went to showdown twice when i had top set HU vs his gutshot flushdraw and when we both flopped sets. Other than that there was never any money put in past the flop. The two times the flop was awful for me i got raised.

I looked through some of my other ak aq aj etc hands and i don't have too many where i continuation bet but most where the flop is bad for my hand i get raised or overshoved.

I hit sets 6 times he saw the flop every time the only $ he put in postflop was when he had second set and check called the flop one other time.

A little update.

I just checked all of my continuation bets against him. I may have missed a few but here is the summary for what its worth.

Times he folded :23

What I had:
>= top pair or a good draw :13
Pair worse than top: 3
Overcard gutshot :2
Overcards: 2
Air :3

Times he raised:14 and some of these were massive overraises

12 of the 14 times I folded and the best I ever had was 2nd pair on a monotone board.

2 times I could call his raise when he had middle set and I had top set and the other time heads up I had top set and he had a gutshot flushdraw and we got it in on the flop in both.

So no he didn’t play perfect but a majority of the time I couldn’t call a raise he raised and almost all the times I could he didn’t except when he had a really big hand. He also donked into me more than a few times when I had air. He did call a fair amount when i had hands but almost always check folded the turn if he didn't hit.

edit: if u want u can correct my part where i mistakenly said gutshot flush draw when it was a straight flush draw... and the 6 times he donked on me i had air... and that seemed to be the case for other players hands i saw too... there may be an exception i just havent seen it yet


Here is some info from mypokerintel:
Limit Date Hours $ Won
$50 9/4/07 .16 2720
$50 9/3 .50 4470
50 9/2 3.48 -1,902
100 8/31 .15 2087
100 8/30 1.32 32,112
50 8/29 .13 1793
50 8/24 .58 6746
100 8/17 .28 15585
100 8/15 .7 10719
50 8/12 2.35 2915
100 8/7 1.2 38997
50 8/6 .16 2519
50 8/6 .21 1617

Any other evidence or argument to support this position would be greatly appreciated.

At this point, I think that means more hh. Omniheart is aggregating all the hand histories.

This is a very sad thing to admit, and yes, it is "bad" in some ways for online poker if people read that there are superusers out there. But I'd rather force the sites into having integrity (ala AP) than anything else. To me, UB customer support is so bad that I don't see a chance of any recovery. I'm merely wondering what happened, and would appreciate any hsnl'ers who played with him could come forward with hh/experiences v. nionio or any others who would offer to analyze the hands.



Thanks,
dlpnyc21

yes you're right. these hands don't look "superuserish." he never called down with T high correctly. However, if a superuser with half a brain played he could easily do things this guy did. He could play insanely loose preflop, and cold call any bet with any two if he was up against unpaired cards, and he could also get insanely aggro with draws when his opponent had no pair and play draws passively when his opponent had a pair (both of which he did). This guy won a ridiculous amount of $ with no showdown, suggesting, as was noted in trambo's hu session, that this guy had an amazing sense of "timing" to know when his opponents had weak hands.

If someone would like to review/analyze the entire 3k hands that we have, PM omniheart, who has them.

But to be blunt, the players who actually played v. nionio are all incredibly suspicious (cts, trambo, myself, whee, scratchy1, etc. etc.).

here is what cts posted:

ok i remember this guy now, i lost a boatload to him

seriously this has happened to me on ub like 5 times where i have suspected i was playing against someone who could see my hole cards (i have never been suspicious of this anywhere else, and it's not something im worried about at all when i play usually)-- i have never posted anything bc i didnt want to scare anyone, but seriously some of the hands i have played against rando 90/60s that rape me for 10 buyins and i never see again are absurd. and ubs HH is so screwed up i dont have most of the hands, ill check when i get back from pca and post if i have anything interesting.

and fwiw one other v reputable hsnl player not in this thread has shared similar thoughts with me.

i have been very careful who i play/how much action i give on ub lately

The
plot
thickens
.

NioNio ~ iNo,iNo ~ i know, i know ~ i know what you are holding

taylor caby's post on the old thread:

i don't think this is conclusive proof. i think the fact that he quit the 4th (is that the day the AP news broke?) and that his account is gone now is the most damning evidence.

first, as was pointed out, what rich fish leave up 100k+? next, why would they actually close their account, especially after going on one of the biggest heaters a 68/60 player has ever seen?

i'd like to think about it a little more, and reserve judgement until i see some more hands and/or evidence (timeframe w/AP, possibly hands he's played a long time ago, etc)

tc

Guys,

I don't really lurk or post here much anymore but this reminds me of one player I played against who played "perfectly" for a lot of hands at 25-50ish ago. I've been playing seriously for almost 3 years now and many of you know me as fairly realistic/not conspiracy theorist and this was just absolutely crazy the calls/plays this guy made.

I think he played me on 2 screen names - weffers and printscreen though i'm not 100% about the second one because it was so long ago. Hopefully one of you can come on and say that it was you and I will admit to being owned. But I was convinced I was cheated at the time and disregarded it because I felt I wasn't being honest with myself. These threads bring back the memory of this guy.

I don't want to make a big issue of it. But perhaps one of you can PM me and say it was you or others can check their PT database for this guy.

NioNio, nine nine in greek, hellmuth's favorite hand, who is sponsored by UB... dun dun dunnnnn

posted by snagglepuss on the old/deleted thread:

If you give any one of the smarter people I know from 2+2 this capability, they would be able to obviously decimate all games and pretty much 100% avoid any sort of detection. AJ green and company obviously went about it horribly. This guy, assuming foul play, could have fallen somewhere in between.'

fwiw i've had 2 sessions i remember on ub vs complete randos (raptor/craigmarq sweated one) where for days afterwards i thought something was off. I don't think i've ever felt this of any game on any other site. It scares me that cts says this also, and makes me want to look into some ub stuff. When i get back from australia i'll be requesting all my ub hh's and pokertrackering them etc. but that will be a little over 2weeks. Btw dave/craig if either of you remember that guys name post it here.

durrr,

ub will not be able to comply with your HH request, so that won't work. fwiw i think there is something wrong here, and will be going over the hand histories myself to get a better overall picture of what may have taken place.

Ok, im going through all the hand histories and am going to post the ones i think are strangest. The problem is in order to convince alot of you, you would have to read the whole HH log of my heads up sessions vs him and im not gonna post the whole thing here. If you want it, pm me or omniheart and we'd be glad to send it out. Anyway, here is the poker ev graph of the 2300 hands i have on him. Note the 72k won at showdown and 124k won w/ out showdown

http://img210.imageshack.us/my.php?i...iographlp2.png

dlp, plz refrain from simply quoting people's opinions from the old thread. i wanted you to start a new thread when you had more/better organized evidence, not to just repost the same stuff.

I think that to make a strong case, you need to explain this.

How does that graph diverge from what is normal? Can you post the equivalent graph of your play over a similar span of hands?

Well basically the graph was posted to show that he wasnt just running like God, like many other people suggested. He ran a mere 20k above his expected equity which is not that much considering he was up 195k total in my DB.

filtering the position stats in the DB for 4+ handed, he was a massive winner out of the blinds over the sample. which of course is ez game when you can call lots of raises and play relatively perfect at will.