pokerplayers underestimate variance, and typically view in it the realms of what they've seen(limidonks used to consider 300BB a full bankroll, then the 500BB downswings started showing up), a 5ptbb/100 winner could have a 200buyin downswing playing Agame the entire time(though doubtful anyone would actually maintain it), its unbelievably unlikely, but a non-zero probability

not sure if you guys saw the sklansky thread on google/googleplex and talking about the odds of stuff like hitting the powerball 100times in a row and what not

huge grinders might have 3million hands in their lifetime, but thats only 1000 3k hand samples, which isn't close to enough to see everything possible

so if this player hit the 1 in a 10billion superrun, obviously it will look like something is really wrong

yes, in all possible universes it is possible for someone to run at the absolute top end of the variance lottery. and of course this is not to be discounted.

but in this situation it is, in my opinion, more likely that foul play was involved. and therefore needs to be investigated.

i don't think any of the intelligent poker players concerned are underestimating variance. i think that those who are saying 'not likely!' 'cant happen!' are underestimating the probability that some type of cheating has taken place.

Perhaps he could just run like a god but then to quit 9/4 after not giving any back and never play again deleting that sn. When you put those 2 factors together it looks awful suspect.

Would UB have the HandHistorys still saved with all hole cards exposed ala AP? Is there any contact being attempted with any UB contacts besides the crappy general support/investigation?

It's ok to run that good for like 500 hands, but for so long especially against good players? I doubt that.

Isn't UB part of AP?

Just wanted to point out how ill CTS is if this guy turns out to be a SuperUser; 20 wins and 20 losses.

I remember thinking after a session with NioNio that he was either the luckiest donk I had ever played or a complete genius whose ability was just far beyond my understanding. I'll e-mail UB and try and get all the hand histories I played against him. If anything conclusive comes from this I sincerely hope he was just a lucky fish.

If I had to bet on it, I would say he's a cheater.

Those stats are pretty much impossible. They would have to be in the top 1/50,000 for his expectation.

And lets not be naive, I wouldnt be suprised if this hasn't happend on some other sites besides Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet.

A friend of mine who doesnt play much poker asked me if I thought anything like this happens. i told him about the AP thing. He then asked if i think its the only time its happened. I told him hell no. If you had access to hole cards and you never wanted to get caught go play 25/50nl , play 6 tables and win at 4-5bb/100 (which if you see hole cards is nothing, but could net you a solid 3 mil or so a year) and as long as you through some losing streaks in there noone would be any the wiser.

²

Look at his agression factors: they're very low until the river: where he has only two decisions left: fold or raise

Well this isn't true -- we've seen hand examples where this guy just simply called on the river when good.

if this guy was a cheater, he was much better than the AP superuser guy. As I've said before I don't know what to think, but I lean towards thinking something is fishy when considering ALL of the evidence, there is really not one piece of information that incriminates him.

I guess -what are the odds that some guy plays the best players on UB, runs at 60 bb/100+ over 3,000 hands playing 58/36 or whatever, makes some great plays, some horrible plays, doesn't run far above expectation, quits and withdraws his money, deletes his account, all around the same time another online poker site owned by the same parent company is experiencing the most infamous case of cheating ever seen in online poker?

tc

ok, at this point it's clear that there is enough suspicion to warrant a more thorough investigation. thankfully, I guess the evidence was presented in a more clear, deliberate manner in this thread, making others suspicious as well (as we saw in the last thread, only the players who had played on ub vs. nionio felt that way).

The bottom line is, while I didn't agree with ike in the last thread, he was right in one sense, individual hand histories aren't "proof" of anything (note we didn't claim them to be in the last thread, but whatever).

I could show you 10, or 100 hands this guy played and every one could be "explained away" in some manner or another. The point is this:

-Considering all the things we have:
1) his virtually never losing at a table unless he was sucked out on or tried to make a bluff and guy made a very tough call on him.
2) his playing an insanely loose preflop style and CRUSHING not just one player, not just two, but EVERYONE he played against.
3) in the 3k hands he is up 300k, and in the 5k hands we don't have right now, he MAINTAINED THE SAME WINRATE.
4) the timing of his disappearance right around the time the AP scandal broke.

*caveat: he wasn't a ridiculously stupid superuser like the AP guys. He didn't call down with T high. He just value-bet v. v. thin, made some "great" calls, and played very aggressive when his opponents had no pair (and he had a draw) and played passively with his draws when his opponent had a pair. However, I highly doubt we are going to see hands where he made insane calldowns like the T high calll down the AP superuser made.

I think the above 4 things alone make it worth investigating further.

What are the best next steps?
As far as I can think:
1) get the other 5k hands nionio played
2) analyze hands (although we know what we are going to see)
3) have someone contact ub support, hopefully someone respected and a frequent player on the site, someone who it's in ub's best interest to listen to.
4) increase awareness through blogs, 2p2 reports, etc.

Any other suggestions or next steps, or suggestions on how best to proceed?


fsuplayer: thank you for allowing the thread to stay up yesterday for as long as it did. it was your foresight that allowed this to come to light. you could have listened to the herd who said the thread should be auto deleted and killed insta.

And to everyone: I am not one to make wild accusations, but this guy's play, and more specifically his STATS seemed incredibly anomalous and suspicious to me, I know we posted hastily, and I made the wrong decision to ask trambo to include hands nionio lost, the reason being that i wanted to paint a picture of a "smart" super user.

jman: thank you for pointing something out to me that I hadn't realized before. When nionio had called the 4bet with j9, then called the shove on the 235 board v. aq, his call was actually not that bad (fairly neutral evish). I had pointed that hh out as an example of his purposefully spewing, but in reality, he actually didn't do that.

I seriously doubt that UB is going to go out of their way to help you with this investigation. If anything, they would try to keep this under wraps. If this is true, it severely undermines the credibility of online poker and could be very damaging to their business.

two slightly curious hands. obv nothing conclusive, but relatively interesting:

ez call:

mrwonkaman posts the small blind of $25.
XXPSAXX posts the big blind of $50.

mrwonkaman: 6d 5c
XXPSAXX: -- --
NioNio: -- --
Red Meat: -- --
PeppeB: -- --

Pre-flop:

NioNio raises to $175. Red Meat calls. PeppeB
folds. mrwonkaman folds. XXPSAXX folds.

Flop (board: Jc 7s 8s):

NioNio checks. Red Meat bets $275. NioNio calls.

Turn (board: Jc 7s 8s Kc):

NioNio checks. Red Meat checks.

River (board: Jc 7s 8s Kc 8h):

NioNio checks. Red Meat bets $975. NioNio calls.

Showdown:

Red Meat shows 9c Ad.
Red Meat has Ad Jc 8s Kc 8h: a pair of eights.
NioNio shows 6s 7c.
------


no need to valuebet:

wolfdog2121 posts the small blind of $25.
mrwonkaman posts the big blind of $50.

NioNio: -- --
wolfdog2121: -- --
mrwonkaman: -- --
trambopoline: Ah Ad
Johnny_Hustle: -- --
OhioFilmmaker: -- --

Pre-flop:

trambopoline raises to $175. Johnny_Hustle folds.
OhioFilmmaker folds. NioNio calls. wolfdog2121
folds. mrwonkaman folds.

Flop (board: Ts 5h 9d):

trambopoline bets $325. NioNio calls.

Turn (board: Ts 5h 9d 8d):

trambopoline checks. NioNio bets $1075.
trambopoline calls.

River (board: Ts 5h 9d 8d Ac):

trambopoline checks. NioNio checks.

Showdown:

trambopoline shows Ah Ad.
trambopoline has Ah Ad Ts 9d Ac: three aces.
NioNio mucks cards.
(NioNio has 8h 5c.)

snagglepuss

It looks like you suck. Deposit on Party, KingKong is a superuser there.

"Either you were in on it or you were two stupid to see it coming. Either way, you're out!"

pethie,

sorry like i said those hands are not the best examples, but make slightly more sense when taken in context from the series of hands played in the session.

in looking over some of the hands available at this point it seems that there are not going to be any smoking guns as there were with the potripper scandal on absolute. if cheating did occur, the person playing was clearly savvy enough to not do anything ridiculous as to draw attention to himself. he also was smart enough to still relatively frequently lose pots in many spots one would. it is going to be difficult to prove anything really at this point, though a full set of datamining would be helpful.

ultimatebet of course could aid immensely, but that is not likely to happen at all.

when i read the huge list of hands in the first post on this, i did not think they looked like superuser activity at all, just like a donk running hot. but since a number of ppl who have played him say that 'there was something up', then the situation most def warrants further investigation.

This is the part I don't understand...how do you know he maintained the same winrate if you don't have those "other" 5K of HHs?

Anyway, I have a high-ranking contact at the KGC who I'll try to bring this up with. By the way, the official audit report was due out before Xmas, but I'm told that it should be out in the very near future...so that'll be interesting to follow.

as i said in the other thread, i think its cause for concern. would be nice to see the probability of someone running this hot. like in the form of the cluster graph from the potripper fiasco with the red dot way up in the corner.

at this point my gut tells me such a winrate is beyond the realm of reality.

See avatar for clue as to how shocked I am.

mypokerintel (if anyone has contacts here please let us know) has him up at the same winrate for over 8k hands. mypokerintel obviously isn't perfect, so the other 5k hands may have come at lower stakes, etc. But it's clear he didn't win over the 3k hands we have and then lose the other 5k hands. He won at a winrate of approx. 60bb/100 (over all levels of play--so far we only have 25/50 and 50/100 hands), OVER 8K HANDS OF PLAY.

EZ $$$$$$.

seems legit too me?

What's the average # of players in the 3K hands shown in the PokerTracker screenshot in the OP?

Is he playing mostly HU or what?

LOL at these 2 hands

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.
----------------------------------------------------------------

he wasn't value betting on the river. he was obv bluffing. he thought it was the only way he could win. his opponent makes some ******ed call with K-high or something.

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.
----------------------------------------------------------------

here... he had the 3rd best spade remaining in the deck. only 2 cards beat him. he bets quite small for the size of the pot on the river (over $8k). his opponent makes an awful call with just 2 pair.

obv his overall stats are suspicious and i beleive he was cheating... but these 2 hands are not the best examples to use.