Posted on 10/18/2007 6:58:11 AM PDT by philsfan24
A few weeks back I blogged about allegations of cheating at an online poker site called Absolute Poker. While things looked awfully suspicious, there wasn’t quite a smoking gun, and it was unclear exactly how the cheater might have cheated.
A combination of some incredible detective work by some poker players and an accidental (?) data leak by Absolute Poker have blown the scandal wide open.
Some opponents became suspicious of how a certain player was playing. He seemed to know what the opponents’ hole cards were. The suspicious players provided examples of these hands, which were so outrageous that virtually all serious poker players were convinced that cheating had occurred. One of the players who’d been cheated requested that Absolute Poker provide hand histories from the tournament (which is standard practice for online sites). In this case, Absolute Poker “accidentally” did not send the usual hand histories, but instead sent a file that contained all sorts of private information that the poker site would never release. The file contained every player’s hole cards, observations of the tables, and even the IP addresses of every person playing.
Then the poker players went to work analyzing the data — not the hand histories themselves, but other, more subtle information contained in the file. What these players-turned-detectives noticed was that, starting with the third hand of the tournament, there was an observer who watched every subsequent hand played by the cheater. Interestingly, the cheater folded the first two hands before this observer showed up, then did not fold a single hand before the flop for the next 20 minutes, and then folded his hand pre-flop when another player had a pair of kings as hole cards! This sort of cheating went on throughout the tournament.
(Excerpt) Read more at freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com ...
If this is all true, I presume that the two cheaters are looking at potential prison time. I would also guess that if Absolute Poker continues to argue that nothing out of the ordinary happened, they will take an enormous hit to their profits. Online poker is a game of trust — players send their money to a site believing that they will be playing a fair game, and trusting that the site will send them their winnings. If there is even a little bit of uncertainty about either one of those factors, there is no good reason for a player to choose that site over the many close substitutes that exist. If I ran Absolute Poker, I would take a lesson from past corporate attempts at cover ups, sacrifice the cheaters, and institute safeguards to prevent this ever happening again."
The detail account of the story is here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12523924&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1) at 2+2 Poker Forum
ping
PING!
PING!
Cheating on an online poker site? I’m shocked, just shocked!
And there are STILL some people that wonder why the liberal socialists are IN FAVOR OF ON-LINE VOTING.....who is kidding who???
ping
This is no good...
There’s lots of cheating that goes on...Think of this.. group of people enter one table. They’re on the phone..they talk to each other so everyone know what each other has. The odds are they are going to win the majority of the time. They take the money and split it. This is the most common form of cheating on online poker sites.
The best bet if you want to play is just play the low betting tables, or just practice. You’re a fool if you play the higher end tables.
What?! Gambling is just a scam to sucker people out of their money?! Nobody could’ve guessed that!!
If you gamble at a casino {as I occasionally do} you are only recreationally retarded.
I've gambled for over 50 years, and in the long run, you cannot win. You can have fun, and you may win on occasion, but who do you think pays for the casinos?
The people playing games of chance where the house has a distinct advantage that over time can not be overcome?
No, I like to watch it on TV.
“And there are STILL some people that wonder why the liberal socialists are IN FAVOR OF ON-LINE VOTING.....who is kidding who???”
Online voting could be fine, just as could electronic voting machine voting, if implemented properly (the electronic machines are also a problem now). There needs to be a public database where:
1) Every person can check their own vote as recorded, via an ‘anonymous token’ assigned when you vote (given via a slip of paper or a printable web page, ie you’re voter e5hv820802a622kl332)
2) any entity can download the entire database of votes and tally them, to double check the ‘official’ results.
Of course, some form of ID would need to be required to vote (DL number or equivalent - fewer dead and duplicate voters). All software should be open source so it can be checked transparently for backdoors or malicious code, and built and run by anyone.
It is very easy to win at online poker. I doubled my initial stake at PartyPoker playing in the small stakes games. This was before the politicians saved me from myself with the port security bill. You do need to win more often than average to make money because the online casino takes a small cut from the winner's pot.
I presume that the two cheaters are looking at potential prison time.”
Commenters at the site are saying, who is going to prosecute the cheaters? The Chilean Govt.?
At a $1000.00 a seat buy in, I imagine someone will be interested in having a chat with the cheaters.
I love to play Poker of all sorts.
I would never even for an instant consider playing cards with people that I do not already know.
Far better to just go to Vegas, drink, and flirt with the cocktail waitresses. Much more fun, and your chances are about the same.
There was nothing wrong with paper ballots. When 10 % of the population has their ballot filled out for them, or is functionally illiterate, or votes again and again with no proof of identity or citizenship, you don’t need a computer to fix an election. Just ask Bob Dornan.
Happens in live games also. One of the poker magazines this month has an article on collusion. Shows how players can place their chips on top of their hole cards in a certain way to let their accomplices know what they have. Interesting.
You've done it now. Stand by to be flamed by the "poker is a skill, NOT gambling, and ranks up there with brain surgery" crowd.
BTW, I agree with you completely. Unless one is the house, gambling (especially lotteries) is just a tax on folks who can't do math. It may be fun in the short run, but don't expect to win in the long run.
I just finished playing a tournament at this site 5 minutes ago!
I have since deleted AP from my system
Why do you keep returning to FR, which you called a “circle jerk?”
Just luck?
Personally, I play because it is good exercise for my aged brain.
Has anyone found out how Jerry Yang cheated to win the WSoP in Texas Hold’em?
Which is the number one reason I would never play online poker. Poker and trust have nothing to do with each other. I want to see the cash in the pot and all hands above the table.
I challenge you to find a single player of poker on FreeRepublic who has stated that "poker is skill, not gambling."
Jesus hated the other players.
I think the factors may be like in backgammon; there is a skill set involved, but a degree of luck is present - no one can control dice.
Do you think luck enters into games such as poker?
I'm willing to bet you one dollar they show up on this thread.
Absolutely. But then I can't think of any competitive activity that luck is not a factor to some extent.
I will a similar dollar that they actually said that poker is a game of skill, not a game of chance.
I have the Absolute Poker program on my computer, but I prefer playing Poker Stars.
What the article didn’t say is exactly how the observer communicated with the cheating player. I am guessing by phone. So, the observer (who would have to be an AP insider to view the table) is probably relaying the information via phone, right? Phone records are easily obtained by the authorities.
Has anyone reported this officially, rather than simply writing about it? This would be a easy thing to prove.
You obviously don't understand the game of poker. It is very easy to be a winner when you play inferior competition. You actually have it backwards. Anyone can win in the short term, but in the long run, the best players will come out ahead, always.
“If you gamble at a casino {as I occasionally do} you are only recreationally retarded.”
Couple of times a year at the Conn. casinos is enough for me. You’re right about not winning in the long run regardless of occasional hits.
I tell friends that the real win in gambling is to simply break even. Dream chasers don’t want to hear that..
It never occurred to me that there was an HONEST poker game online. I thought they all were corrupt, off shore, and run by the same folks that want me to help them embezzle millions from the Ministry which they head in some far away African country.
I'm willing to call poker a game of skill. Over time, luck will have less and less to do with winning, and the best players will come out winners eventually.
the associated press is reporting that an investigation into ap poker is going on now.
i use pokerstars as well. interesting to see the winner of their main event was disqualified. i wonder what happened.
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/article/9944/poker-stars-wcoop-main-event-winner-disqualified
You know as well as I do they will say it's not gambling because their SUPERIOR SKILL and INTELLIGENCE makes it a sure thing over us lowly dummies who can't appreciate the wonderful intricacies of poker, blah, blah, blah.
Can I have my dollar now?
No, you're both wrong. It is wrong to compare poker to a game of pure chance like roulette. It is impossible for top poker players to lose in the long run when playing lousy competition.
Internet poker: Absolute insanity!
Never forget you’re always playing against the house.
One time in Vegas I joined a late poker game and was going along breaking even as we used to say in California; my wife had been walking around playing slots that other people were just leaving and got pretty hot and went over to the roulette wheel and put a few chips on number 19, I think, well, she got luckier still and came over to where I was sitting on the best hand of the night and was bragging about all her chips.
I talked her out of about half of them and bet my hand right up to the old ace in the hole moment and lost her chips.
I played a couple more hands and it became obvious that I had pretty much shot my wad so the conversation around the table among the other players turned to events of the day they had.
After about four or five exchanges of snippets of odd things that happened between them it began to dawn on me that these guys were all known to each other.
A couple of less-guarded comments later while I was nursing my drink and my shrinking stash one them just happened to say that he had caught one player counting cards at his table and had to kick him out of the game.
That’s when it finally sank in — I had been playing for three hours with dealers from various casinos who probably met like this every day to fleece some out-of-towner like me.
Darn slick, but a little less than ethical.
I went over where my wife was and started feeding the now starving slots.
They don't have to be on the phone, they could all be sitting at a picnic table in the park, using the local free wifi. They could be one person with several laptops...
They are publicly traded companies on a variety of exchanges with tens of billions of dollars at stake.
illegals are starting to get DL’s and many have them already, how will that stop them from voting?
I have changed nothing. All poker players know poker is gambling. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it.
They aren’t for democracy. They are for the illusion of “support”. When they lose elections, they claim that (A) voters were suppressed, (B) votes were manufactured, (C) that voters were lied to, (D) that voters were manipulated by hatred and religious superstitions.
When they win, there is NO questioning the results. There are “no irregularities”.
What’s that? Cheating at gambling? I’m shocked. Really.
That’s why I don’t even bother with the “for fun only” sites — for all I know, there are Java applets out there that will give away my hole cards to someone. So why bother.
OK. What is the house advantage over the player in poker? How do they achieve this statistical advantage. And what can a player do to reduce this advantage.
I talked her out of about half of them and bet my hand right up to the old ace in the hole moment and lost her chips.
What casino lets you add chips to your stack mid hand?
A couple of less-guarded comments later while I was nursing my drink and my shrinking stash one them just happened to say that he had caught one player counting cards at his table and had to kick him out of the game.
There is NO SUCH THING as card counting in poker.
I have a strong feeling your entire post is complete BS.
It’s always what you don’t know that’s important, isn’t it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.