Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobo Fett
As for proving things that can't be proven, I don't know that I agree. Why is it unprovable? There's been very little effort, at least publicly, to gather evidence from multiple posters. That's how it happened with Cereus - players started pooling their stats and finding abnormal winrates. Those winrates were then shown as being extremely far from the norm, and they were off to the races.
Cereus superuser existence was definitively proven when UB provided millions of hand histories showing all of the hole cards. Something that drastically changed their current environment. Prior to that all they had proven was an abnormal win rate existed, which isn't the same as proving a superuser exists (eg: DERB). But this was proven by pooling millions of hand histories, ignoring that this information pooling is a tos violation...
For American players, today's current environment consists essentially of 3 places to play: WPN, Bovada, and Global.
Global provides no hand histories at all. Pooling information is impossible (ok, technically it's not impossible, but it certainly requires some rather serious violations of tos to obtain the information).
Bovada provides excellent hand histories, assuming you have all the software to use them. Except they don't provide player names. So good luck using all of your virtually worthless pooled information.
WPN provides a hand history. Except it will only provide you with the hole cards of your opponent in those instances where your opponent went to showdown and happened to have the best hand. Which is enough to prove that your opponent wins when he has the best hand, but it's very little proof of anything else.
It would require many times more WPN hand histories to get us to the same state that we were at with Cereus, prior to UB providing those wonderful hand histories to definitively prove a superuser exists. And a similar number of hands played by the reg's, against the superuser would be required to prove anything with your abnormal win rate theory.
This means first that, today's superuser would have to be just as stupid as the Cereus superuser and play hundreds of thousands, if not millions of hands with the same group of reg's, without ever changing his account name. Then, all of those regulars would have to be willing to play, at minimum, tens of thousands of hands each, with that superuser. Then all of those reg's would need to pool all of their information, thereby sharing their own strategies directly with their opponents. At which time, they'd all be broke, and still likely wouldn't have definitively proven anything beyond plausible suspicion.
It's a completely different poker world today, compared to the days of the Cereus superuser. Win rates today are a tiny fraction of what they were in 2009. Player pools are a tiny fraction of what they were in 2009. Reg to rec ratio's are a tiny fraction of what they were in 2009. Sharing information today has a much higher relative cost than in 2009. Providing the hand histories that would be enough proof of evidence to make suspicions plausible would cost a modern player more than his annual salary, if not his entire career as a WPN reg. No one gives up their strategies today, except the few who decide to retire, and sell those strategies for one final profit from the poker community.
Without a drastic change in the current environment, similar to what happened with Cereus, nothing will ever be proven. I don't ever expect that anyone will receive hand histories like were provided by UB. If anything is ever proven today, it will be because the superuser himself provides the information, either intentionally to prove how smart he is, or somehow unintentionally when someone else discovers him irl. Until then, nothing will be proven beyond plausible suspicion. (Edit: This paragraph was poorly written, it is of course only my opinion, it wasn't meant to imply that it's undeniable fact.)
Which brings me back to my original point, which was that imo, the evidence for plausible suspicion has already been provided when someone like Joe Ingram states that in his opinion, he plays against superusers. (Edit: And I should have written in the other post that this is the best evidence we can possibly
expect as opposed to have.)
Last edited by krcmdc; 04-30-2018 at 09:56 AM.
Reason: added the "edits"