ULTIMATE BET Silent About Insider Cheating Allegations; Millions Suspected Stolen
04-29-2008
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04-29-2008
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04-29-2008
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04-29-2008
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04-29-2008
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04-30-2008
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04-30-2008
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04-30-2008
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05-01-2008
, 01:15 AM
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, 06:31 AM
05-01-2008
, 11:09 AM
05-01-2008
, 01:36 PM
I will make a post in NVG but I believe that the first post in the thread is very important in making the case against UB and I want to make sure that we have everything that we want in there before the post goes up.
Should anything be added to this?
Mod Note: This thread has grown quite long in the 100 days since the first suspicions about cheating on Ultimate Bet were made public. If you decide to read the entire thread you will see that these allegations were initially scoffed at by a large number of players but, after hundreds of man hours were spent by members of this forum, enough data was compiled to prove with extreme statistical certainty that there was something highly illegal going on in the high stakes no limit games on Ultimate Bet.
Ultimate Bet is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises, the same company that owns Absolute Poker. In 2007 a whistle blower at Absolute Poker helped trigger an investigation that eventually proved that a "Superuser account" (an account with the ability to see the hole cards of his opponents) was created by Absolute Poker when the software was being tested and that corporate insiders were using the Superuser account in real cash games to steal money from customers. After initially denying the existence of a superuser account, Absolute Poker and Tokwiro Enterprises were eventually presented with enough evidence on twopustwo that they reversed course and admitted that insiders were exploiting their software to steal from the users.
Before the Absolute Poker scandal many people would call believers in a Superuser account "crazy conspiracy theorists" and we were all humbled when it was proven that corporate insiders were using software to cheat their customers. Now there is a serious scandal involving Ultimate Bet.
By January of 2008 high stakes NL players on Ultimate Bet had become highly suspicious of the playing styles and winrates of some of the other players on the site. In short, these players saw as many flops and turns as possible, they called bluffs with incredibly weak holdings, and they never lost. These players were playing a what would be a losing strategy for anyone who didn't know their opponents cards and they were showing the highest win rates of any person ever to play no limit hold'em in the toughest games on the site.
Ultimate Bet was informed about this problem in early January. They have done nothing.
I believe that it is important for online poker players to know about the cheating that is going on in many of the poorly run poker rooms such as Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. I encourage you to read this entire thread but since it is so long (and because there are a lot of low content posts) I will try to keep this first post updated with an accurate summary of this scandal. I also encourage you to not believe that these unscrupulous activities are an indictment on the entire online poker industry. Keep in mind that Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet are owned by the same company. They are also regulated by the same puppet regulatory commission. Most online pokersites are run with the utmost integrity and security. Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet are the exception and not the rule.
Below is a summary of events by poster 'trambopoline' who is one of the people who took the lead in investigating the irregular activity at Ultimate Bet. If it was not for his research it is possible that these cheaters would have never been identified.
Should anything be added to this?
Mod Note: This thread has grown quite long in the 100 days since the first suspicions about cheating on Ultimate Bet were made public. If you decide to read the entire thread you will see that these allegations were initially scoffed at by a large number of players but, after hundreds of man hours were spent by members of this forum, enough data was compiled to prove with extreme statistical certainty that there was something highly illegal going on in the high stakes no limit games on Ultimate Bet.
Ultimate Bet is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises, the same company that owns Absolute Poker. In 2007 a whistle blower at Absolute Poker helped trigger an investigation that eventually proved that a "Superuser account" (an account with the ability to see the hole cards of his opponents) was created by Absolute Poker when the software was being tested and that corporate insiders were using the Superuser account in real cash games to steal money from customers. After initially denying the existence of a superuser account, Absolute Poker and Tokwiro Enterprises were eventually presented with enough evidence on twopustwo that they reversed course and admitted that insiders were exploiting their software to steal from the users.
Before the Absolute Poker scandal many people would call believers in a Superuser account "crazy conspiracy theorists" and we were all humbled when it was proven that corporate insiders were using software to cheat their customers. Now there is a serious scandal involving Ultimate Bet.
By January of 2008 high stakes NL players on Ultimate Bet had become highly suspicious of the playing styles and winrates of some of the other players on the site. In short, these players saw as many flops and turns as possible, they called bluffs with incredibly weak holdings, and they never lost. These players were playing a what would be a losing strategy for anyone who didn't know their opponents cards and they were showing the highest win rates of any person ever to play no limit hold'em in the toughest games on the site.
Ultimate Bet was informed about this problem in early January. They have done nothing.
I believe that it is important for online poker players to know about the cheating that is going on in many of the poorly run poker rooms such as Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. I encourage you to read this entire thread but since it is so long (and because there are a lot of low content posts) I will try to keep this first post updated with an accurate summary of this scandal. I also encourage you to not believe that these unscrupulous activities are an indictment on the entire online poker industry. Keep in mind that Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet are owned by the same company. They are also regulated by the same puppet regulatory commission. Most online pokersites are run with the utmost integrity and security. Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet are the exception and not the rule.
Below is a summary of events by poster 'trambopoline' who is one of the people who took the lead in investigating the irregular activity at Ultimate Bet. If it was not for his research it is possible that these cheaters would have never been identified.
Quote:
About 4 months ago gaucho2121 (dlpnyc21) and I were looking through our databases. We both discovered a player by the name of nionio was winning ridiculous amounts in both of our databases.
He had an incredibly high vpip of about 60/40 and has the steady increasing aggression percentages that we saw in the case of Potripper and crew. His river aggression was obviously the most highest. In 3k hands he was up 300k.
We then started scouring though hand histories and came across a decent amount of fishy play. He was cold calling 3 and 4 bets like crazy and just playing like an absolute maniac.
He’d make very thin value bets and constantly snapped off bluffs at the right time. Basically his play was consistent of that of a donkey, not a player who’s winning 300k in 3k hands. So I turned to www.mypokerintel.com and looked at his stats. Well it said he was winning 57ptbb/100, or 114bb/100 over 8k hands.
We then checked his last played games (www.mypokerintel.comgive you a summary of anyone’s last 14 sessions). In those 14 sessions, he had 13 winning sessions and was up approximately 135k. His one losing session consisted of a mere 2k loss. And those were only his last 14 sessions out of 46!
What was even more incriminating was the fact that the last date he played on that account was 9/4, the same week the AP scandal broke. So I searched the name nionio on ulitmatebuddy, which is basically a search feature for ultimate bet players. It said his account no longer existed, which meant that his name was either changed or he had specifically emailed UB and requested for them to close the account.
Mod opinion: This is the first indicator that UB knew about the cheater. It defies reason that a red flag was not raised when nionio asked for his account to be closed. Any player who has as much success as he did in the highest games would have his account looked at. The fact that he had a statistically improbable winrate would have raised eyebrows. If anyone looked at his play it would be impossible to not know that there was something amiss. The fact that Ultimate Bet chose to not only do nothing about this cheating account that closed on 9/4 but also to not address their player base as a whole and that they chose not to notify the players who had been the victim of this grand larceny speaks damning words about the lack of ethics in their organization. It also raises suspicions that high level corporate insiders might have been involved in the graft.
Soon more and more UB players started looking through their databases and searching through www.mypokerintel.com for suspicious accounts. I mean if it was happening one 1 account why couldn’t it be happening on others? We actually came across several more accounts relatively quickly. These accounts included Flatbroke33, iLike2win, monizzzle, nionio, nopaddles, nymobser, nvtease, sleeplesss, stoned2nite, utakeit2,
and whackme44.
Here is a screenshot of their stats from mypokerintel.com
.
All of these players showed the same tendencies that Nionio showed. They had ridiculously high winrates, played the same funky 60/40/whacko style and all stopped playing around September 07. Also, 8 out of the 10 accounts had been closed or had their screen name changed. However, upon releasing these names in this thread (which was obviously being closely watched by UB at this point), the last 2 accounts were either closed or had their name changed.
We know this because within 24 hours they no longer showed up on ultimatebuddy when searched. These were some specific stats from these players….
The date next to their name indicates the last date they played on Ultimatebet.
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 sleeplesss
Nymobser = 9/26, 46.7 PTbb/100 over 899 hands - now deleted or name changed,
HOWEVER name was still active until I outed it in this thread earlier, it was then
deleted or had its name changed within 24 hours of the post
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,
HOWEVER name was still active until I outed it in this thread earlier, it was then
deleted or had its name changed within 24 hours of the post
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
After getting in touch with Nat Arem (N82 50 24) who helped immensely in the AP scandal, he was able to give me some very good info. 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.
Mod opinion: It should again be pointed out that it is standard procedure for an account asking to change its screenname to be scrutinized by a pokersites security team and looking at a single sessions that this player played would be enough to suggest a high probability of a Superuser type cheating program being used. To allow this user to have multiple cheating accounts that and to allow this theft to continue indicates that people within Ultimate Bet knew about and intentionally promoted this theft
Well theres no way it was simply a coincidence that 3 of our alleged accounts turned out to actually be the same account, just with different names each time. At that point it was 100% clear that Nionio was NOT the only cheating account operating on ultimatebet.
After receiving detailed records from of ALL of the play of several of the alleged accounts, it became even more obvious that not only were these accounts cheating, but they were almost undoubtedly being operated by the same person. Detailed spreadsheets were included for flatbroke33, ilike2win, nionio, mymobser, sleepless, stoned2nite, and whackme44.
If I could figure it out I would post it, but if you have a gmail account Im pretty sure you’ll be able to access this spreadsheet… http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik...x=39041ryzaemm .
Here is just Nionio’s graph
So Nionio had taken over 600k in a mere 64 hours of play then mysteriously vanished.
For the 7 accounts out of 10 that we received detailed records on, their total take was over $1.5 million.
The detailed hand logs kept track of everything from each session. I could see the exact time each account played each session, how much they won and other pertinent info. I had instance after instance where one account would sign in, play a short session then sign onto a new screename and play another session, killing his opponents on each account. Literally the time frame differences between one account playing and another starting was down to a few minutes time. At this point UB had been notified of the issue yet was (and still is) making little effort to communicate with the public about whats going on in this investigation. However I had been keeping in constant contact with Phil Hellmuth, the spokesman for ultimatebet. He assured me that UB is in the process of conducting a very thorough investigation. After a long silence by UB, they finally made a public statement regarding the situation.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...d.php?t=149078 .
That was 7 weeks ago. Basically that is one of the last updates of this whole thing. I have still kept in contact on with Phil on occasion. He still assures me that they are not sweeping this under the rug but even he cant quite account for the fact that its been nearly 4 months and UB has made little public acknowledgment of this huge scandal. I will continue to call Phil week after week until we finally receive compensations for the money that was stolen from us from those operating the site. I urge others to continue to email and call UB and pressure them to take action on the matter.
A random pic….
This is a graph made by Josem
The point in the upper-right corner is the UB alleged cheater.
Some facts about the graph:
-There are 870 "normal" players from a variety of sites and limits
-Each of those other players have at least 2,500 hands logged on them
-The graph is in big blinds/100, not PokerTracker's big bets/100.
-The mean bb/100 win rate is 1.528 bb/100
-The standard deviation is 14.08 bb/100
-The alleged UB cheater is winning at around 10 standard deviations above the mean
-The confessed AP cheater was winning at around 15 standard deviations above the mean
I think that 10 standard deviations is something in the order of winning a 1-in-a-million lottery three or four times consecutively - although I'd prefer if a maths expert could be a little more clear.
Mod Note: I believe that we can use the estimate that P=(1 - 1/(k)^2) where k=standard deviations. Since these results are ten standard deviations from the mean there is a
1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
chance that these results can be explained by variance.
If I have forgotten anything major please tell me
About 4 months ago gaucho2121 (dlpnyc21) and I were looking through our databases. We both discovered a player by the name of nionio was winning ridiculous amounts in both of our databases.
He had an incredibly high vpip of about 60/40 and has the steady increasing aggression percentages that we saw in the case of Potripper and crew. His river aggression was obviously the most highest. In 3k hands he was up 300k.
We then started scouring though hand histories and came across a decent amount of fishy play. He was cold calling 3 and 4 bets like crazy and just playing like an absolute maniac.
He’d make very thin value bets and constantly snapped off bluffs at the right time. Basically his play was consistent of that of a donkey, not a player who’s winning 300k in 3k hands. So I turned to www.mypokerintel.com and looked at his stats. Well it said he was winning 57ptbb/100, or 114bb/100 over 8k hands.
We then checked his last played games (www.mypokerintel.comgive you a summary of anyone’s last 14 sessions). In those 14 sessions, he had 13 winning sessions and was up approximately 135k. His one losing session consisted of a mere 2k loss. And those were only his last 14 sessions out of 46!
What was even more incriminating was the fact that the last date he played on that account was 9/4, the same week the AP scandal broke. So I searched the name nionio on ulitmatebuddy, which is basically a search feature for ultimate bet players. It said his account no longer existed, which meant that his name was either changed or he had specifically emailed UB and requested for them to close the account.
Mod opinion: This is the first indicator that UB knew about the cheater. It defies reason that a red flag was not raised when nionio asked for his account to be closed. Any player who has as much success as he did in the highest games would have his account looked at. The fact that he had a statistically improbable winrate would have raised eyebrows. If anyone looked at his play it would be impossible to not know that there was something amiss. The fact that Ultimate Bet chose to not only do nothing about this cheating account that closed on 9/4 but also to not address their player base as a whole and that they chose not to notify the players who had been the victim of this grand larceny speaks damning words about the lack of ethics in their organization. It also raises suspicions that high level corporate insiders might have been involved in the graft.
Soon more and more UB players started looking through their databases and searching through www.mypokerintel.com for suspicious accounts. I mean if it was happening one 1 account why couldn’t it be happening on others? We actually came across several more accounts relatively quickly. These accounts included Flatbroke33, iLike2win, monizzzle, nionio, nopaddles, nymobser, nvtease, sleeplesss, stoned2nite, utakeit2,
and whackme44.
Here is a screenshot of their stats from mypokerintel.com
. All of these players showed the same tendencies that Nionio showed. They had ridiculously high winrates, played the same funky 60/40/whacko style and all stopped playing around September 07. Also, 8 out of the 10 accounts had been closed or had their screen name changed. However, upon releasing these names in this thread (which was obviously being closely watched by UB at this point), the last 2 accounts were either closed or had their name changed.
We know this because within 24 hours they no longer showed up on ultimatebuddy when searched. These were some specific stats from these players….
The date next to their name indicates the last date they played on Ultimatebet.
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 sleeplesss
Nymobser = 9/26, 46.7 PTbb/100 over 899 hands - now deleted or name changed,
HOWEVER name was still active until I outed it in this thread earlier, it was then
deleted or had its name changed within 24 hours of the post
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,
HOWEVER name was still active until I outed it in this thread earlier, it was then
deleted or had its name changed within 24 hours of the post
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
After getting in touch with Nat Arem (N82 50 24) who helped immensely in the AP scandal, he was able to give me some very good info. 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.
Mod opinion: It should again be pointed out that it is standard procedure for an account asking to change its screenname to be scrutinized by a pokersites security team and looking at a single sessions that this player played would be enough to suggest a high probability of a Superuser type cheating program being used. To allow this user to have multiple cheating accounts that and to allow this theft to continue indicates that people within Ultimate Bet knew about and intentionally promoted this theft
Well theres no way it was simply a coincidence that 3 of our alleged accounts turned out to actually be the same account, just with different names each time. At that point it was 100% clear that Nionio was NOT the only cheating account operating on ultimatebet.
After receiving detailed records from of ALL of the play of several of the alleged accounts, it became even more obvious that not only were these accounts cheating, but they were almost undoubtedly being operated by the same person. Detailed spreadsheets were included for flatbroke33, ilike2win, nionio, mymobser, sleepless, stoned2nite, and whackme44.
If I could figure it out I would post it, but if you have a gmail account Im pretty sure you’ll be able to access this spreadsheet… http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik...x=39041ryzaemm .
Here is just Nionio’s graph
So Nionio had taken over 600k in a mere 64 hours of play then mysteriously vanished.
For the 7 accounts out of 10 that we received detailed records on, their total take was over $1.5 million.
The detailed hand logs kept track of everything from each session. I could see the exact time each account played each session, how much they won and other pertinent info. I had instance after instance where one account would sign in, play a short session then sign onto a new screename and play another session, killing his opponents on each account. Literally the time frame differences between one account playing and another starting was down to a few minutes time. At this point UB had been notified of the issue yet was (and still is) making little effort to communicate with the public about whats going on in this investigation. However I had been keeping in constant contact with Phil Hellmuth, the spokesman for ultimatebet. He assured me that UB is in the process of conducting a very thorough investigation. After a long silence by UB, they finally made a public statement regarding the situation.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...d.php?t=149078 .
Quote:
Statement from Ultimate Bet
Hi Everyone:
We just received this from Ultimate Bet and they asked us to post it. So here it is.
Best wishes,
Mason
ULTIMATEBET INTERIM STATEMENT
Contact: Press@ultimatebet.com
Montreal, Canada (March 6, 2008) – UltimateBet (UB), one of the ten largest online poker cardrooms, today issued the following interim statement with respect to allegations of unfair play on its site.
“On January 12, 2008, UltimateBet was alerted to allegations that a player with the online handle “NioNio” exhibited abnormally high winning statistics and was accused of having an unfair advantage during play. These allegations were made both directly to UltimateBet by concerned players and the KGC, and indirectly through several web forums. The allegations also included reports of suspicious activity concerning the deletion of the NioNio account and other accounts that may have been related to this scheme.
“We immediately launched an extensive inquiry involving an independent third-party expert to review hundreds of thousands of hand histories, all of which were promptly locked down and made available to this expert. The initial findings of our third-party expert confirm that the NioNio account’s winning statistics were indeed abnormal, and we have expanded the investigation to look into whether an unfair advantage existed, how such a scheme might have been perpetrated, and whether additional accounts beyond those of NioNio were involved.
“UltimateBet is in regular communications and contact with its regulatory authority, The Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC), and will continue to cooperate fully with that body.
“UltimateBet is determined to complete a full and thorough investigation. We pride ourselves on providing a safe, secure playing environment for our customers. The investigation has proven to be extremely complex and, therefore, has been more extensive and taken much longer than initially expected. We continue to aggressively pursue the matter and will communicate the findings of our full investigation to our regulatory authority and to our customer base as soon as practicable.”
# # #
Statement from Ultimate Bet
Hi Everyone:
We just received this from Ultimate Bet and they asked us to post it. So here it is.
Best wishes,
Mason
ULTIMATEBET INTERIM STATEMENT
Contact: Press@ultimatebet.com
Montreal, Canada (March 6, 2008) – UltimateBet (UB), one of the ten largest online poker cardrooms, today issued the following interim statement with respect to allegations of unfair play on its site.
“On January 12, 2008, UltimateBet was alerted to allegations that a player with the online handle “NioNio” exhibited abnormally high winning statistics and was accused of having an unfair advantage during play. These allegations were made both directly to UltimateBet by concerned players and the KGC, and indirectly through several web forums. The allegations also included reports of suspicious activity concerning the deletion of the NioNio account and other accounts that may have been related to this scheme.
“We immediately launched an extensive inquiry involving an independent third-party expert to review hundreds of thousands of hand histories, all of which were promptly locked down and made available to this expert. The initial findings of our third-party expert confirm that the NioNio account’s winning statistics were indeed abnormal, and we have expanded the investigation to look into whether an unfair advantage existed, how such a scheme might have been perpetrated, and whether additional accounts beyond those of NioNio were involved.
“UltimateBet is in regular communications and contact with its regulatory authority, The Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC), and will continue to cooperate fully with that body.
“UltimateBet is determined to complete a full and thorough investigation. We pride ourselves on providing a safe, secure playing environment for our customers. The investigation has proven to be extremely complex and, therefore, has been more extensive and taken much longer than initially expected. We continue to aggressively pursue the matter and will communicate the findings of our full investigation to our regulatory authority and to our customer base as soon as practicable.”
# # #
A random pic….
This is a graph made by Josem
The point in the upper-right corner is the UB alleged cheater.
Some facts about the graph:
-There are 870 "normal" players from a variety of sites and limits
-Each of those other players have at least 2,500 hands logged on them
-The graph is in big blinds/100, not PokerTracker's big bets/100.
-The mean bb/100 win rate is 1.528 bb/100
-The standard deviation is 14.08 bb/100
-The alleged UB cheater is winning at around 10 standard deviations above the mean
-The confessed AP cheater was winning at around 15 standard deviations above the mean
I think that 10 standard deviations is something in the order of winning a 1-in-a-million lottery three or four times consecutively - although I'd prefer if a maths expert could be a little more clear.
Mod Note: I believe that we can use the estimate that P=(1 - 1/(k)^2) where k=standard deviations. Since these results are ten standard deviations from the mean there is a
1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
chance that these results can be explained by variance.
If I have forgotten anything major please tell me
05-02-2008
, 01:30 AM
05-02-2008
, 05:08 AM