I am finally going public with this as pitbull has been ignoring us for too long. I am posting this in the hopes that they willl give us the hand history data we need to verify or disprove our suspicions. I will try and keep it short and simple.

When playing on pitbull, mostly at 2/5 NL I believe I have faced superusers. Their play has the following characteristics:

-Play tons of hands out of position and outplay everybody.
-Donk bets with perfect accuracy. By this I mean that they will lead for 20% of pot when I have air, every time I have air. When I have a real hand they will check/fold. If I make a play at the donk bet they will call, and donk bet again on the turn for a small amount again, usually the same as on the flop.
If I have a draw they will do this too, but if I hit the draw they will check/fold.
-They dodge my real hands with perfect accuracy. The same players that never give me any action when I have top pair seem to have no trouble calling me with ace high when I have nothing. I know that this is a normal play and something I do too, but the problem here is that they are never wrong.

That basically sums up the style of play. I believe this to be the work of pitbull owners or employees. I believe this to be the case because there are tons of screen names I have seen this style from but they never stay long. IE you will see them one day, and the next day they are gone, replaced by another screen name that plays they exact same style. Only an insider could create this many accounts without getting busted.

Another characteristic they have: they nearly always buy in short, for like 40BB or so. And they sit there and donk bet like 80% or more and manage to never lose a buyin. I have played some of these guys a lot and never seen them lose their buyin. That is just not normal. They clearly play a losing style and manage to never lose, and outplay people OOP with perfect accuracy.

Another problem: someone I know was able to see his opponents cards during a hand. This means there are MAJOR problems with how hole card data is transmitted, and opens up the possibility that this could be the work of hackers. I still believe it is more likely to be an inside job on account of the large number of screen names.

As for myself, I have been a pro for about 7 years. I have played on nearly 30 sites probably and never once hance suspected this sort of thing before. I cashed out of pitbull a winner by avoiding the players with this style but have never felt more cheated in my life.

Other pros and serious players are going to be posting in this thread after I send them the link, that have experienced the same thing. When you post your experience please quote my post so that it can all be kept together in one post for simplicity sake.

All that we are asking from pitbull is for our hand histories in a useable text format so that we can convert them to a pokertracker or HM compatible format. I believe that this will demonstrate clearly whether or not there are cheaters. So far they have told us that this is not possible. However he sent the following email to a player that will be posting in this thread later. It was sent on Dec 17th.

The first email sent to me on the 17th December confirming he can and will send the HH's:

Hi Brent,

Sure, we can send you your hand history, please send me the specific dates you want to review so we can narrow down the specific range of hands you want to review. Cheers!

Regards,

Dave Brenes
Network Manager
Pitbull Gaming
www.pitbullgaming.com
Phone: (514) 907.9324
Skype: dave.brenes

Now he is telling me that it isn't possible to give us our histories in any other format that is available on the website, and happens to be useless. This is what he sent me:

Quote from PB dave:

You can pull hands from the system, we cannot request hundreds of hands from different accounts from the DB, it's an overwhelming task for the system

and:

You previously said:

“Any competent programmer could come up with a way to convert the data into a sendable form”

Even if it were as you think, our stored data is on an archive server, in fact on three, we simply don’t have the time and resources to spend on weeks of data mining to please demands coming from a personal hunch. You have access to your hand history through the site as any player, you may download the hands you want and need from there.

You also said “…it can't be systematically analyzed unless we sit there and manually enter them into a readable format that could be plugged in to a database”. The hands are in the format they are programmed to be displayed from the servers, that’s the only format we provide, you are in your right to request your hand history, but we have our right to decide what the format is to display as long as it is readable by the player.

End quote from PBDave.

Perhaps dave can explain to us what database they use that can store millions of HH's so that each individual player can retrieve them on their website but is incapable of being queried and giving a text output.

*

Edit/MH: See CliffsNotes post http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1085 for summary.

Pitbulls are known to be vicious animals...

It is really aggrivating to watch you accuse them of cheating without posting the full email history. You've obviously left out some important information.

Either do this the right way or don't even try.

op u might want to check this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...1/index19.html

seems like u share common feeling about PB poker with guy named Rapala who has posted in that thread. check his post and u might send him PM, maybe u can find something out together. very last post by BCloud is interesting too. i personally would stay away from sites called pitbull poker. gl.

Pitbull has ALWAYS seemed really suspicious to me. I never liked them.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised. Do they let you use PT? Do you have all your HH?

OK here is my full correspondence with PBdave.

Hi Dave,

My email is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and my screen name is xxxxxxx for that $20. Thanks again, I appreciate it.

If you go to the pitbull section section of the xxxxxxxxx forums you will find a thread titled "suspicious hands" where we are discussing what we believe to be cheating on your site.

xxxxx our manager has been trying to contact you guys about this for about a week or so and hasn't gotten any response so we have been getting a little concerned.

BTW my brother is a security expert with microsoft and is getting some friends of his to take a look at your software to see if there are any glaring holes in security of transmitting hole card data. I'll let you know what they say when they get around to it.

Our main concern as you will read in the thread stems from a player having seen his opponents cards during a hand. This proves that at least in some cases the hole card data is sent places it shouldn't be sent during a hand. If you guys could clarify exactly how you transmit that data it would do a lot to help our confidence in your site.

Bryan






Hi Bryan,

Thanks for your PM, I have credited the $20 for you already.

I understand what you mean, and I'd appreciate if you can send me the link to the thread so I can take look at it.

As for the problem in data transmission I can tell you that our software has been evaluated and certified by iTech Labs, something not possible if there was a a hole on the process.

Finally, provide xxxxx with my email in case he wants to send in any communication. I can help to make it reach the people here.

Thanks!

Dave



Hey Dave,

Here is the thread: xxxxx

As for Itech, I believe they only certify the randomness of the RNG? One of our xxxxx was able to see someone elses cards during a hand so clearly there is a problem.

If you could address this thread on the xxxxx forum we would really appreciate it.

Thanks again for the $20.
Bryan


from pbdave:

I understand your point, but I am not ignoring you. xxx has been in communication with us too. Calm down, I will look after your request to go to the xxx forum, I have on my list of pending tasks, I will get there. Be patient please.

end message

That is a nice thing to say, but considering I sent you the link it is simply a matter of clicking it! That only takes a minute, and you can quickly get the drift of the thread. If you are too busy to read it let me sum things up for you in a concise manner:

1. We think that someone that owns or works for pitbull poker is cheating the players by using the ability to see our hole cards.

2. To investigate this further, we would like our hand histories sent to us in a useable format so that we can either confirm the cheating or to show that it is just our imagination.

Thanks
Bryan

Hi Bryan,

I already opened an account at the forum. I will visit you guys and post there regarding this matter.

1. No, that's not the case, such accounts do not exist.

2. You can pull hands from the system, we cannot request hundreds of hands from different accounts from the DB, it's an overwhelming task for the system.

Thanks!

from me:

The problem with the hands system available to us is that it can't be systematically analyzed unless we sit there and manually enter them into a readable format that could be plugged in to a database. Surely you have some sort of back end database that could be queried? If you could just provide the raw data we could sort it out without too much trouble.

I appreciate that you do not believe such accounts to exist, but my experiences and those of others have us convinced we are being cheating. I have played full time for 7 years on countless sites and millions of hands and have never experienced anything like the play on pitbull, and the same is true of my fellow players.



Bryan,

As much as I understand your position, the hand history requests are made through the system we put available for the players on the game.

I do not "believe", I know there are not accounts like that.

I am starting to feel you and your group of friends are turning this into a witch hunt, and I simply will not take part of it. I know everyone went crazy with AP's scandal and thinking now that every time they "feel" something might be wrong it has to be a super user account, but it is not always the case. In fact, that was AP's and UB's case, and that's it. You cannot think every poker site you suspect of has the same problem.

Regards,

Dave


Dave,

I have played on at least 30 sites for 7 years. Never once have I suspected cheating, except on wpx when I was playing with colluders. I have faced patterns of play on your site that can only be explained by my opponent seeing the cards. At least 10 other players have reached the same conclusion independantly. All of us are very experienced and none of us have ever accused a site of this before. A few of us have won over 7 figures in our careers. We know a lot about this game! Your site can only be exhonerated by sending us complete hand histories which despite what you say I know is possible. Any competent programmer could come up with a way to convert the data into a sendable form. It simply has to be in a decent database format considering the quantity of hands that it must contain. Of course if any site does not have competent programmers it is pitbull, but still this should be doable. Trust me that it is in your best interest to do this if you are innocent as we are going to plaster this all over the web if we don't get our hand histories. Your site already has a horrible reputation as is clear from your support thread. Quite frankly if you don't have the ability to do anything with hand histories it means that you guys have no ability to investigate collusion or other forms of cheating. You mention the AP UB thing and all that has taught us is that we have to be on the lookout for cheaters because not all sites can be trusted. If you can't give us any futher hand history info you look guilty as can be and I can assure you the internet poker community will see it the same way. Myself and the others that suspect cheating have been members of this community for quite some time and our opinions and accounts of our experiences on your site will carry a lot of weight in the minds of our fellow players. Please see what you can do to get these histories. I can assure you if you get them and everything looks OK we will happily continue to play on and support your site throught he xxxx program, and encourage others to do so.

Thanks
Bryan



Bryan,

This absurd hunt is getting out of proportion. Your tone and threats are less than appreciated and we frankly have not done anything to you or your fellow players to deserve this sort of treatment, unfortunately you insist in believing you have the right to treat a poker room as you please and as you see fit. I do not doubt of your first hand experience playing poker but intuition is not a subject of interest for regulatory purposes.

You previously said:

“Any competent programmer could come up with a way to convert the data into a sendable form”

Even if it were as you think, our stored data is on an archive server, in fact on three, we simply don’t have the time and resources to spend on weeks of data mining to please demands coming from a personal hunch. You have access to your hand history through the site as any player, you may download the hands you want and need from there.

You also said “…it can't be systematically analyzed unless we sit there and manually enter them into a readable format that could be plugged in to a database”. The hands are in the format they are programmed to be displayed from the servers, that’s the only format we provide, you are in your right to request your hand history, but we have our right to decide what the format is to display as long as it is readable by the player.

Another one of your comments:

“Trust me that it is in your best interest to do this if you are innocent as we are going to plaster this all over the web if we don't get our hand histories.”

Another empty threat… honestly we find no interest to siege war against players over threats that lead no where. If you have a formal and real foundation to complaint about our company you should find the proper venues to do so.

“If you can't give us any further hand history info you look guilty as can be and I can assure you the internet poker community will see it the same way.”

Just because you say something doesn’t mean it is real. Guilty is a judgment one can only make when can prove such guiltiness; otherwise innocence is the natural state.

With all that said, I will not pursue this subject with you anymore as I have given you all the answers accordingly.

Good day.

Thanks
Dave


Dave,

Fair enough. We obviously are gonna disagree on this. Lets take it to the forum so you can address everyone as I group.

Thanks
Bryan


there were a few messages regarding access to the private forum which aren't relevant so I didn't include them.

He promised a few days ago to post by the end of the day and he has been a no-show.

Here is the email exchange from the other player regarding hand history format:

From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:17 AM
To: 'Dave Brenes'
Subject: RE: PitbullPoker

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply. I understand your position of violating privacy if you sent me their hands. If you are able to send my hand histories then this would be appreciated. I know that I can see past hands on the website but using the site to quickly scan hands is slow and laborious so if you are able to send me a file with a couple hundred of my latest hands it would be great.

Thanks and regards

xxxxxxx

Hi xxxxx,

Sure, we can send you your hand history, please send me the specific dates you want to review so we can narrow down the specific range of hands you want to review. Cheers!

Regards,

Dave Brenes
Network Manager
Pitbull Gaming
www.pitbullgaming.com
Phone: (514) 907.9324
Skype: dave.brenes


And after 3 months of what assume is putting him off pbdave sent this:

From: Dave Brenes [mailto:dave@pitbullgaming.com]
Sent: 17 March 09 11:41 PM
To:
Subject: Hand History


Hi xxxxx,

My deepest apologies but the DB Manager was never able to make room for your request since there was always something happening that prevented him to do it. The request is made, however we lost the DB manager and another programmer in less than a week, thus our organizational structure and the task load has been forced to be redistributed altering the course of requests and pending projects. I will give my absolute dedication to follow up on your request but I need to deal with an unexpected issue that is putting to wait all my tasks related to the IT department. I hope to give you more answer during the week. Cheers!


Regards,
Dave Brenes
Network Manager
Pitbull Gaming
www.pitbullgaming.com


He can post more details if you need them when he sees this thread but I think that covers it well enough.

Yes Rapala is the one who's email exchange I posted requesting hand histories. He will post here later I am sure. His hands are the ones I would most like to get from pitbull as there are so many more showdowns in LHE. If what he says is true and they never called him with a worse hand over 1k hands that is pretty incriminating at shorthanded LHE.

i don't get one thing about this pitbull poker. if they don't have in build system in their software that captures hand histories and saves them somewhere on your PC then they should send u hh's if you request it. is it possible that they actually don't save them at all?

You can access your hands online. However it is a horrible format and you can only get one hand at a time and it is presented in graphical format, using pictures to represent the cards. If you left click to view the source it shows you some java code(i think) and not any useable text. You would have to manually view each hand and transcribe it by hand. I'm not planning to spend 100's of hours doing this.

man that place sounds shady....

It wouldn't be that tough to write a script to grab all the hands, then parse it into a usable HH. More like 10s of hours. Assuming they didn't try to stop you. But there's ways around that too.

Unfortunately I wouldn't have a clue how to do that. Paying for 10 hours of programming wouldn't be a big deal though...

Well I charge $75/hr.

[x] brag

Heh I think I will wait and see if pitbull can be more helpful first.

Fairly standard for contract work.

yea if you're an expert in a niche of programming then contract work can easily command several $100s/hr

from the other forum:

Hi everyone,

I am Dave Brenes, from Pitbull Poker.

I'm sorry I haven't been here to post before, I know you were waiting to hear from me.

Regarding the issue with the suspicious play, I have seen this request more than once at different places, and I understand the nature of the request itself and why is it an important matter but I need to clarify something for you guys:

1. NO player on our software can see the other player's cards or the cards about to come. Plain and simple, it cannot be done.
2. Flash based software, it is not insecure or vulnerable to hacking. We have proved ours many times and not once it has failed.
3. Our engine has been certified by iTech Labs one of the most known auditors for random and fairness in gaming. This ensures the integrity of our games.
4. Any bug you find please provide the information through the proper venues and in the proper way. You can send me an email and provide as many details as possible of the bug, I will make sure it is reviewed and fixed.
5. Hand histories are available from the game, and that's how we provide them. We are not hiding anything, the hands are there. We cannot make large queries to our data base at this time as we have our hands on other priorities that demand time and work we cannot focus on data mining from archive servers.

I know there is been a lot of speculation regarding the situation, but if you suspect from a player please send me the player's user name, the table's name, date and time and if possible the hand number(s) and I will be glad to review it. It is definitely in our best interest to protect our players and maintain the security and integrity of our site.

Thanks everyone and let me know if you have further questions.

Regards,

Dave Brenes
Network Manager
Pitbull Poker
Pitbull Casino
Pitbull Partners


So basically they are too busy to prove their games are fair. To make it simpler I challenge them to simply get us the 1000 hands of LHE Rapala played. I am willing to let those hands stand as the evidence that there is cheating or not. 1000 hands should be doable even for a ridiculously busy site like pitbull.

AP scandal part 3 in dis thread.

Very interesting.

It's in their best interests to provide hand histories and the longer they dodge this issue then the more harm they are doing to themselves as a company.

I for one will not be depositing any money on their site and no doubt anyone else reading this will be of the same opinion.

Well, that wraps it all up then.

haha.

Yup close case. You gotta take their word for it.

One of our props claims to have seen an opponents cards during a hand. The 3rd player at the table said he could see them as well.

This means that he is either lying or this is a major problem with how they transmit hole card data.

I was blocking out all the prop references in the exchange I posted, but then I remembered pbdave openly discusses using props in another thread. So no big deal I guess. The other forum I am mentioning is the propping forum.

I played at Pitbull late last year and early this year. I played 2.5-5 to 10-20 NL, but mostly I played the 5-10 NL game.
The following things I found suspicious at pitbull.
There were several players that all played a very the same style. Its a difficult style to describe, but basically they all kept the pot small at all times by min rzing pf and betting small %'s of the pot later on. I didnt think much of it at first but after I began to get suspicious when there were so many different guys that played the same. In addition they would all make small donk bets oop when I was weak. They never made these bets when I was strong. Also I could never or rarely get them to call a big bet with the worse hand on the river.

Something was just not right on PB. I've been a pro for over 10 years and won lots on many different sites. I had never played players with this horrible style and not be able to beat them.
Another thing I found odd on PB was my ability to get a game so easy. I often would open a 5-10 NL table and wait. On very small sites you often wait a long time for someone to sit down with you. Yet at PB someone would almost always sit with me within 5 minutes. The same was true of 10-20NL. Now this is a very small site that rarely had big games going so I found this odd also. When these players sat down they always played the same style and I never beat them.

Ive never thought I was being cheated on any other site. I am 99% sure Pitbull poker had cheaters when I was playing there.

pigbot

ok, let's see if i have this correct:

some of you are million dollar winners.

yet you expect the site to do it? the format of the HH was set before you deposited. if you did not like it, you should not have played. the onus is on you and your millionaire buddies to plug in the info.

but wait, you don't even have to, because along comes suzzer99 who is respected and known to be super competent. she says the task is not that daunting.

ok, cool, you agree that paying for 10 hours is well worth it. i mean, you are about to blow open a new superuser case, so 10 hours is a small price to pay, right?

suzzer quotes you a VERY reasonable price considering that many programmers won't even read your spec sheet for this tiny job.

you reply, Heh, i'll wait for pitbull. so now you are waiting for a site that has not given you what you want since december, yet there is someone here that can have you answers by the weekend. why would you think pitbull will be more helpful?!? you have come across as an extortionist, plain and simple. he has offered 100% TRANSPARENCY, BUT YOU DON'T LIKE THE FORMAT OF THE HH??

do you realize how utterly stupid you look? also, imho, you have made dave seem reasonable and competent. most of the sites would ban you after your first spam/threat to them. i find it an absolute ****** riot that you claim to have millionaires in your group of victims, yet between all of you you would rather wait months and months more while pitbull restructures to find out if they are going to even help at all? this notion alone makes your claims 100% redonkulous.


yes it is suzzer, yes it is.



@ all. this sounds like a losing player with a hunch. he has been beaten down silly at this site and he screams superuser? i find OP to be one of the biggest kooks to post in the zoo in ages. i really don't think OP knows how ridiculous this thread is, and how childish his behaivor and communications have been.

@ op, i can ASSURE you that if the board thought for one second that there was something fishy here, this thread would have blown up like every PROVEN major scandal has. there are zero respected, established posters on yout side itt. it is not because they don't care about superusers, it is because your op and subsequent statements have zero credibility based on what you have presented here.