And also, given that AP and UB are owned by the same organization, do you think UB was tainted, as well? Curious for people's thoughts.

Such cheating maybe. Many other kinds of cheating are usual since month. Its only a question what is cheating ? Guess 8 players that share there pocketcards each other and play in a team against the other 2 players are cheating also. exspecially if they use added a bot.

"Fortune's Formula" goes into a story about one of the characters who went to Vegas in the 60's, IIRC, with a team of others and some rudimentary equipment designed to assist in communicating card information to others on the team while playing at the blackjack tables. Online life imitating real life, I guess.

Only because the buyout was recent, and not a lot of people know about it. As long as the management is different then UB will be ok.

Pretty much the first step Absolute will have taken in buying out UB is to join up many of the departments.

They will have the same PR dept and they will have the same security dept - these are the two depts that failed so spectacularly with Absolute.

I would imagine cheating is pretty commonplace - across all the sites we are talking about a million of people playing at any one time and in that number you will always have cheats just like in life.

I cant really speak for everyone, but i believe they have the same sentiment, i dont ask that there is never any cheating on a site because there always will be - i simply ask that they detect that cheating as quickly and efficiently as they can and that when they detect it they deal with it.

Where Absolute failed for me is when they didnt detect this for a month, when they were told they instantly denied it, then when it was undeniably true they start making up stories about who did what and how.

the most recent online poker scandal
just serves to reinforce some pertinent facts
that have been with the game of poker
and quite possibly all of gambling forever.

If the stakes are high enough,
and if it is possible,
cheating CAN and WILL occur…

Of course, this applies online—
But also to brick and mortar card rooms
plush casinos and back alley crap games

If you gamble online or off,
without a firm grasp of this fact
of human history and perhaps human nature,
You are asking for trouble…

Incomplete information?

Obviously, to run a fair and straight poker game online,
you NEED to know what cards are dealt to every player on every hand
and you would HAVE to SAVE all this information for your own verification
of the hand results, winners and losers, stacks, etc…
and all this data-information WOULD and WILL be available,
as it is happening/generated, but to who?
Systems operators and administrators, yes,
so called ‘super’ account holders, yes,
obviously, if you own the company,
or are one of the chief
executive, technical, or financial officers,
could such information be withheld from you?
And of course, such information as 'all the hands of all players'
would be oh so lucratively useful to anyone in the games themselves.

Do you believe the homily
Everyone has their price?

Now I am afraid I don’t
really see a solution to all this,
and I am very sure it applies
not just to AP but to ALL the online poker and gaming sites
This is a clear and fundamental structural flaw of the online gaming world--the players must trust those who run the games--and while this may indeed be a rare incident at AP, the opportunities for cheating are inherent in the systems design.
And this is just one example of one way to cheat…insider collusion…

I won’t discuss too much
the ever increasing likelihood and existence
of the multiple account holders,
teams, or just friends, slow playing each other,
chip dumping, collusion, "prop" or 'house' players,
and other forms of ‘gaming’ the system.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that any two (or more) players
Working together via instant message, or telephone,
or by pre-arranged codes at a B&M
gives them a huge advantage in any game.

They are a fact-
They exist in the ‘real’ card rooms and casinos.
--Well, O.K. the multiple accounts don’t really apply….
But to what extent and degree?
And who would even know this?
Just the conspirators themselves…
And the ones who are caught…

Almost certainly the higher the amounts wagered
creates a greater incentive for
a larger percentage of cheating incidents occurring.
And just as most “teams” wouldn’t try to ‘take down’
a 3/6 limit table at the casino or
a freeroll online
doesn’t mean it can’t be done,
it just means that the same such efforts
are rewarded greater elsewhere
perhaps for practice..
Do teams ever practice?

And I am sure that the typical
“Isolated incident-nothing to worry about-you can trust us”
response that is even now
being repeated everywhere
by pundits and spokespersons
and experts and other “uninterested parties”
will more than likely work
its soothing magic before too long
and it will soon be back to business as usual
but the truth is that
some forms of cheating may be
all but impossible to prevent,
let alone detect…especially online

I am sure the “industry” wishes that whoever
Released these histories and related information
won’t do it ever again
But I think this sort of thing—
honesty—
should generally be lauded and encouraged
whoever blew this whistle at AP deserves a big fat reward

-ok but not at the table—

to really engage and enlist my trust,
this sort of transparency—the availability
of complete hand histories including observers and their ip addresses,
to everyone, especially the players themselves, must be mandatory.
after the fact of course…
somehow I doubt that this will occur

So what to do?

Ever since I funded my 1st online account,
because I felt the plausibility of fairness
may and might be remote at all but the lowest stakes,
I have never been a large depositor of funds
into overseas accounts of unknown origin and uncertain ownership.
This, to me, is just common sense.
Nor have I played at the higher stakes or huge prize pool tournaments--
save for the occasional satellite win—
Sure, I buy in for small stakes forum stuff,
and the occasional low limit rings, mtts and sits.
Sometimes I have won, but most I have not…
And sometimes I have gone broke and reloaded but
I would never willingly
risk financial ruin online or in a casino….but that is just me…
I can’t really say I personally have been cheated.
But the real kicker is –I can’t prove that I haven’t…
Just like the sites can’t prove all or even any of their games are square….


the near constant shilling of the online poker world
and other not uninterested parties,
which will no doubt increase exponentially after all this,
and the resultant affiliate driven “skin explosion” that can only
maximize the risk I am playing the same person in two seats
won’t persuade me now, and I am not sure
how I could ever be convinced
completely to ever deposit ANYWHERE again.
But because I love to play
I might…but not for a really good long while

For those of you who doubt
that there is cheating in poker-
Both online and off-
I recommend the sobering Richard Marcus book “Dirty Poker”
To those of you who wonder about the ‘friendliness’ of your local home game
I recommend the hilarious “How To Cheat Your Friends at Poker” by
Penn Jillette (yes of the illusionist duo/BS hosts) and Mickey D. Lynn

good read lazrus, thanks.

am I the only one that read this as spoken word/rap?

I did too. Just disappointed that there weren't any rhymes.

No. At least not if you define cheating outside of the parameters of multiaccounting and maybe some collusion/softplaying. Those have been not unheard of (at least at the very high stakes) for a long time/forever at every site.

On the 'seeing hole cards' kind of cheating though, I think this is probably last for awhile situation (edit:. Unfortunately every $10 NL player who lost a race with AA vs 27o is coming out of the woodwork claiming that there is some sort of legit chance his opponent could see cards to come.

...MUCH MUCH MUCH more common than most of the ostriches who make up 99+% of the on-line fish-tank would ever be willing to consider...

Short answer = yes.

Long answer = most definitely, yes.

And in all seriousness, this was from a group of old frat buds from little old SAE, Montana Beta Chapter! My old stompn grounds. all we did there was drink, smoke weed, and **** chicks. can you even comprehend whats been going with the REAL smart guys. have you ever read any of Ben Mezrich's books. i can't wait to read his next one on how the cal tech, or mit guys took online poker for tens of millions of dollars year after year. but that book won't be written for atleast another 10 or so years. trust me--this whole AP thing is nothing but a "needle in a haystack" as far as online cheating goes. a couple of extra lines of code to open a back door to view hole cards-NO PROBLEM

Cheating can happen in brick and mortar so it's certainly possible online. I don't think these type of cheating events, high profile and for big stakes, happens a lot though.

I do think automated "bots" are possible and probably likely, but they have yet to invent the true "end game" piece of software that can always win in the various situations, so I'm not worried too much.


Simple fact is someone trusted with security blew it. It's gonna happen over and over again. No different online than in real life. But it's no reason to think _your_ game is rigged when you lose.

Personally I don't think it was as "easy" as people like to believe. From everything I've read it looks like multiple machines were compromised, specifically ones that send card information to clients. Knowing that this system was designed to be "hacker free" I doubt this was a walk in the park. But it's definitely a leak. If a server that knows _all_ hole cards is compromised, what can you do?

IMO this is why the software that runs these sites needs to be opened sourced. There will be leaks found by the public and fixed. Not hidden away and brushed over by corporations worried only about the bottom line.

I'd disagree with jakpanda. I would have been difficult for outsiders to pull this off, but it wasn't an outsider. It was somebody living in the CEO's house. I think it is more likely than not that it has been relatively common on Absolute for a while and wouldn't have come to light, but for the cheater getting slack.

Wow.
I guess there are still people that are buying the AP explanation.
Are there still people that believe that this was somehow done by one person only?
One dude magically found a way to do it without anyone at AP knowing?
Do you also believe the magic bullet theory that killed JFK?

You would think that of all people the poker players would be the hardest to manipulate....

In another life I was involved in computer forensics. It is not difficult at all for someone on the inside to pull this off. Operative word == someONE.