I’ve been quiet on the whole POTRIPPER/Absolute Poker-scandal because, quite frankly, I haven’t had anything worthwhile to say that someone else hasn’t already said and usually more eloquently than I would have. Slowly, though, a pattern has emerged; a pattern of how little this matters. How this, as we say in Sweden, was a storm in a water glass.

This becomes especially clear after looking at the user numbers for Absolute Poker (I have no idea what the format of Bill’s page will look like for you, for me it’s a complete mess - although it’s readable in Google Reader which is what I usually do), where it appears that Absolute’s numbers are up a few months after the scandal. Of course, online poker is still growing, generally. That AP is up doesn’t mean that people have actively moved TO them, just that the player base has grown and that AP has gotten a share of that. But why do people play there at all?

I don’t think it’s because people “approve” of the way Absolute Poker has handled this situation, or that players have forgiven them. I think the answer is much easier than that: Players don’t know and/or players don’t care. Let’s face it, most people aren’t like you and me. They don’t read blogs, forums, books and spend every waking hour on the internet. They don’t know who Brandi Hawbaker is, or how much money Bryce Paradis won last year. They log on to play poker and may never find out that there’s been something fishy going on at Absolute Poker.

But these aren’t the people that surprise me. I know of them already. What surprises me is that there are actually board reading people who know very well what took place at AP but still play there. I presume that they’ve decided that it doesn’t apply to them; that they don’t play high enough stakes for it to matter or that whatever has happened is now taken care of and is actually less likely to happen again because that particular hole is now effectively plugged at AP. These are valid points; the large majority plays at small stakes and is fairly uninteresting as a potential target for a complex cheating operation that would do much better at higher stakes.

It’s probably also true that AP is working pretty hard to minimize the risk of this ever happening again since once is never and twice is a habit. If something similar should happen again, no one will ever trust them. Right now, they still stand some chance of redemption.

The problem as I see it, though, is that by continuing to play at AP, people are in effect saying “it’s okay, don’t worry about it.” Like it or not, we’re consumers and we vote with our money. By taking your business to AP, you’re giving their actions a stamp of approval which may set a dangerous precedent.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not suggesting that because AP didn’t lose many customers that Poker Stars is now going to think “hey - that seemed harmless. How about we open up a security hole in OUR software!” No, what I’m worried about is the fact that the power of the threat of losing customers had until now not been tested. Since many of these poker rooms are “offshore” and therefore by many peoples’ standards unregulated, the danger of a scandal may be the largest incentive to keep clean and honest, because a scandal would spell ruin for a poker site in such a highly competitive market.

But what if the market doesn’t care? Why should a poker room spend money on internal security reviews, hire professionals to try to crack their software, develop more intricate and more accurate collusion detection software, etc? Why not just spend that money on marketing instead?

And that’s my concern. Not that poker sites will willingly open up security holes or encourage hacking their sites, but if the money they spend on security today is an insurance that a major security flaw will not cost them their entire customer base, and it becomes apparent that they won’t lose many - if any - customers from such a scandal, then the people within their organization that raise their voices in favor of security will start being heard less.

This isn’t going to be an overnight change, of course. But I worry about a gradual decline in online poker integrity as a result from less money spent on security. I hope I’m wrong.