Pitbull Poker Scandal confirmed

Five players have been conducting studies over the past year on a gaming network called Pitbull Poker.

This is how it began. A player by the name of "yousmellfunny" created an account because of their bounty tournament that included TJ Cloutier. As this player built up his roll he decided to play cash games aside form his usual MTT's. As a very knowleged and respected amid the online games, He started to notice money missing off of players stacks.

As he further investigated the site was shaving money fom the pots when it was in the middle of the table. Obviously aside from the rake. He confirmed the numbers to vary from $.02 to $25.00, just disappearing into thin air. Than he sat down to see if it would happen to him. Lo and Behold it did. Here is an email he has forwarded to us with exchange conversation between himself and PBdave (the network manager). This email was written after many unseuccessful attempts to come to a conclusionwith live support, completely denying that ever happened.

From: ********************************
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 6:18 AM
To: Dave Brenes
Subject: Re: hello



Hello Dave,



Three days ago I was playing on one of your plo8 cash tables. As I was at the table two players were involved in a pot which both players ended up going all in.. It was a split pot and their money was returned. I was pretty certain one of the players was missing $25 and it was not because he was quartered in the pot. I thought I must have made a mistake so I ignored it and thought nothing more of it. Last night I was on the plo8 tables and I was involved in a pot which we both went all in. We both had the high str8 and was a split pot. He had $44 at the table I had $34 (approx) however I was returned only $24 and same with him. The other $10 disappeared out of nowhere. The two players I was playing with both agreed that my money just up and "disappeared" for no reason. I contacted live support and they admitted after giving them my hand history and such that they are aware of this problem. Also that I would be refunded my money later on sometime.

So in all I do not see how a glitch in a software can mainly be taking players money without permission or reason? How many players have been affected by this and gone unoticed? How is my money safe here? Why did I not receive any emails from management or support staff to be aware of this problem if they already knew?

Dave as we have talked over the past week you have taken note to my issues here with pitbull poker. Now this comes about another issue, this one more serious than the others. My own personal money being taken by your website out of nowhere is not a joke. I want my entire account tracked by whomever to make sure this hasn't happened before to me and to be retributed properly if so.

If you would like to speak further on this issue I will be available by phone at 2pm and there after at the number stated in my account.

I do expect a full explanation as to what is going on here.


his reply

From: Dave Brenes <dave@pitbullgaming.com>
To: **********************
Sent: Thursday, December 4, 2008 5:03:54 PM
Subject: RE: hello

******



I’m very sorry I haven’t called you, I will do it tomorrow morning as I am really looking into this matter with the programmers and is taking all of my time. Cheers!



Regards,



Dave Brenes

Network Manager

Pitbull Gaming

www.pitbullgaming.com

Phone: (514) 907.9324

Skype: dave.brenes


From: Dave Brenes <dave@pitbullgaming.com>
To: ****************************
Sent: Tuesday, December 5, 2008 1:38:08 PM
Subject: RE: hello

Hi *****,

We will be compensating all players effected by this issue. This is already taking place and all players are being looked over on the entire network.



Regards,



Dave Brenes

Network Manager

Pitbull Gaming

www.pitbullgaming.com

Phone: (514) 907.9324

Skype: dave.brenes



This is the very tip of the iceberg...and is going to have tonnes of evidence to show. Its too hard to just post it all here as it will take days of reading and people will not be attracted to such a list. So I will continue to post throughout the thread all of the evidence. Which will also conclude evidence of a very possible super using situation

Not only did they not shut the site down for repairs but they did not reimburse any of the players on the network except for the player found this flaw. PBdave acknowledged they knew about this in the past.


From: Dave Brenes <dave@pitbullgaming.com>
To: *******************************
Sent: Friday, December 5, 2008 1:43:17 PM
Subject: RE: hello

Hi ******,



Certainly December is a busy month for everyone, I hope you and your family spend some quality time together and enjoy these holidays a lot. The Omaha bug has been fixed and the new update will be released early next week, as we don’t release stuff on weekends since it is risky and we are still testing it. As for our RNG we have the iTech Labs certificate, so it should be fine. We will renew it next year to keep up to date.



Let me know if you need anything. Cheers!



Regards,



Dave Brenes

Network Manager

Pitbull Gaming

www.pitbullgaming.com

Phone: (514) 907.9324

Skype: dave.brenes

fine so far right? he admits to them knowing about it and will fix it.

this is where it gets bad. He did not reimburse any players, he did not shut the site down for repairs but allowed players to continue playing. The hand histories with the money factualities were deleted. We have hand histories to prove this as you will see over the next coming days.

Here are some PM traded with one of the 5 players after posting an email on 2p2 today.
Within 5 minutes of this person posting he was contacted by PBdave

I am not sure where your arguments come from, but Pitbull Poker has not scammed any player in any way if that is what you are implying. We are actually working to provide all the pertinent information to chesterboy so he can make all the analysis he wants to prove there is no illegal activity on our end.

Thank you.

Dave

the reply


Dave there is a handful of players that have been placed on your site since ``yousmellfunny`` revealed to us you were taking money off the tables. You didnt warn any players about this situation, you did not reimburse even half the players if any. We sat there, lost money to your `flaw`` and were never reimbursed.

pbdave vbmenu_register(&quot;postmenu_&quot;, true);
PitBull Poker Customer Support

Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 133


Re: From Pitbull Poker
what's your screen name on Pitbull Poker?
pbdave vbmenu_register(&quot;postmenu_&quot;, true);
PitBull Poker Customer Support

Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 133


Re: From Pitbull Poker
what's your screen name on Pitbull Poker?
pbdave vbmenu_register(&quot;postmenu_&quot;, true);
PitBull Poker Customer Support

Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 133


Re: From Pitbull Poker
what's your screen name on Pitbull Poker?

what's your screen name on Pitbull Poker?



lol please.....


FYI: yousmellfunny issue was resolved and no other player provided sufficient data to proceed accordingly. If you have more data please email me and we settled between you and the company.

We want to help our players and if you need more in depth review I'll be glad to do it with you.

Thanks

Dave


Of course his issue was resolved. What were you going to do.ignore his findings. It is not up to the player but up to you to reimburse those players. You should have done a thorough investigation, announced it and reimbures all players. Alot of players were unaware of it. yousmellfunny was smart enough to catch on, contact us, we all created accounts and had it happen to us. We gave more than sufficient time for Pitbull to contact us and reveal we were some of the players affected by this. We werent and you guys kept them money. Thats stealing and being dishonest


I'd be glad to sit down and go through your issue, send me your screen name and registered email.



Of course it was resolved because we work with the players that contact us to receive assistance.

Yousmellfunny issue was no longer reported or spotted afterwards, I'll be glad to look into your "findings" to further improve our capabilities of bringing a better service.

We are not interested in stealing, we want to rectify any issue that has occurred to our players. Please provide me with your screen name and registered email address.

Thanks

Dave



Dave that is not the point. Again, Your gaming network should have ceased all operations while this flaw was to be fixed. Hundreds of players were victim to this and you did nothing to reimburse them. 90% of them didnt even know it was going on. You guys did, and you did nothing to give back to the players.




this ^^^^ is just to rectify that dave admits fully and was fully aware of the shadyness

Another interesting finding which floors me.


Pitbull Gaming is a multifaceted company that is a leading developer of online flash poker and casino gaming software. They are an innovative company that supplies the online gaming. Pitbull Gaming operates Pitbull Poker, Pitbull Casino and The Flash Poker Network.

In all they regulate themselves nobody oversee's them.

man, i knew this site was a total scam. i think im the only idiot who actually deposited in this site.

lmao @ "Pitbull Poker": classy

now "Golden Retriever Poker" on the other hand = totally trustworthy

lol AG, i see what you did there.

How many time have we heard Keep away from these pissant sites for fear that they might bite you in the ass, well it looks like this dog is biting.

i played there for about a month and the site sucks, hope it burns down to the ground. Good work.

Wow knew something was going on.
I played on there for a while but hated the site so I stopped playing oin there.
Glad I did now.

I only play on pitball for the frequent free-rolls, which is handy when you inbreated and dont want ruin your BR.

I dont trust that site either, a few of my friends have expressed this opinion.

wow i think i would be going over there heads to complain about this and try to get them shut down they make enuff money from gamers without stealing it

Wow that is really something. I actually started a pitbull account yesterday just for there many freerolls. The freerolls are also lame. Such as the whole site from what i can see. I know i wont be depositing into that site ever. Thanks for the info

A friend of mine deposited money into this site, he said it was the worst poker site he has ever played on. I told him about this Pitbull scam, he said he will never play there again. Thanks to forums like this where this kind of chit can be revealed to save online poker players a lot of money. Shame on Pitbull!!!!

Incredible... These kind of problems suck, because they may also hurt other rooms and online poker in general, because players involved may be really suspicious after such scandals!

Another thing. That is of very serious importance is:


transmitting card data is unecrypted


do a traceroute on the pitbull poker domain
all of those IPs listed have your card data

In english...it means your cards can be seen by other users on the same server as the site : example: employees at the table etc etc.

You're cards are not protected by security measures..and are vulnerable to super using

QFT

And to think I was actually considering playing there and seeing how I did before depositing, but you saved me the trouble. Thanks for the information. also - lol @ Golden retriever.

Didn't this site already go belly up once all ready? I thought this site closed along time ago.

I quit playing there a long time ago. I was playing 50nl, 3 players at the table. i was involved in a hand and had a flush draw, all i remember was it went to the river and the pot was like 30 bucks, i pushed all in with 25 more bucks on a missed flush draw, i had J high, The guy snap called me with Q high. I mean a snap call. I never made a deposit there and after that i never would and i stopped playing there. Its one thing to make a hero call with a middle pair, but its another to be snap called by a guy who has Q high. lol i was so pissed. I wrote support and got no reply. F pitbull poker.

more problems from a unregulated site...I've not played there but this is another reason for a player country of origin regulation/oversight system or board of officers with the ability to address the problems and glitches of the software and enforce sanctions or levy fines and reimbursment to players when these or other types of scams/problems occur.

i built a scroungy little br from nothing over there in their fr's. i played maybe..20, 25 15 cent sng's...where the rake is 50%, yuck. the play was so bad, you couldn't play smart and expect to cash, they seemed like luckboxes. the blinds went up every 10 hands, not by clock. you start with 1000 chips and the blind structure is mean enough that you really miss that extra 500 chips you'd traditionally start out with.

i also played in at least 2 games where i was sure there was collusion, most notable was one in which we get down to the last four ppl, and 3 of them continuously chip dumped to each other. i got lucky and had suited AK and QQ two hands in a row and managed to knock one of them out, in which i was harrassed with names from the remaining two for stealing that guy's money. luck ran out at that point not too much after. it did feel good to at least deny one person. i do recall looking back after the game and thinking of some funny hands earlier on which i'd just written off as donky play.

also noticed a lot of regs in those cheap sng's, which is normal, but none of them were very friendly at all...which detracted me from wanting to play in them any more.

i don't have much money on there, i'm sure at some point i'll find a creative way to donk it all off. they do have 3 card poker in their casino, haha, that's a fun game, i'm not sure what your long term odds of actually winning are though

This is the exact situation that came about that got our team into the super using. We had a complaint from a player from our team that he pushed all in with 7 high and he got called by 10 high. It was about a $275.00 pot. The pot was $80.00 than on the river our guy put in his last $100....and the guy called $95 or something like that. That obviously right there, that one situation was going to shoot up some red flags.

So bang we are like this has happened to us where we got called queen high and J high and stuff. So investigated an awful lot of date and found exactly what I posted above.



transmitting card data is unecrypted


do a traceroute on the pitbull poker domain
all of those IPs listed have your card data

In english...it means your cards can be seen by other users on the same server as the site : example: employees at the table etc etc.

You're cards are not protected by security measures..and are vulnerable to super using



That almost blew me off my chair when we found this out. I was baffled beyond belief that they left our cards available to be superused. Unreal how they are even allowed to operate. But they run out of Costa Rico where they dont need a license or to be regulated. Amazing...simply amazing.

Ya we found there to be tonnes and tonnes of colluding. Just crazy amounts of it. I dont have proof of this but I am almost 100% certain one scam they use, is the have employees playing at the tables and superusing everyone. Think about it. They dont protect your cards from the encryptor for the soul purpose of what exactly? Do look at peoples cards. Which we have proven.

Just close your account when your done. They can advertise to others how many so called members they have. Trying to gain the trust of others and saying "hey we have tonnes of players here, come play". Meanwhile those tonnes of players have left but havent shut their account down. Than they cant brag that "you and others" arent on their members list. Than their list shrinks. They have no paper to wave around. They shut down.

agree.....to atleast some outside form of regulation for christ sakes.

So now we have come up with a whole wack of evidence. Who do we give it to .....the gaming commission that regulates them.....o wait....

All we can is expose this information to the poker community and the gone in flames.

I would like to add on their website, they completely mislead people with their certificates and how they are licensed. Nice to see them false advertising to try and make customers feel comfortable.

well i can't imagine they'd have 3 employees sitting in a 15 cent game...but i did get the feeling it was 3 or 4 losers who figured they'd give it a go with sharing their hands with each other, and it was probably the 1 time it came close to working. especially with a blind structure and starting chip stack like that. a standard raise midway through a sng if you're playing tight damn near is halfway your stack, you're pretty much pot committed to the hand no matter what.

in a sng, what would you consider a success rate of collusion with 2 ppl involved, 3ppl, and 4 ppl? with 4 ppl left, and 3 ppl saying everything in chat but what hands they had but damn near close, it was pretty tough 3 on 1, i thought i did well to remove one. it seemed like they were playing my game early on, only they'd take it a step further, premium hands only, and were willing to go as far as a few blinds left before a fold, then a chip dump to get them back in the game. it generally, in my opinion, wouldn't work at pitbull because half the ppl in a sng play every hand, haha, but i guess it did this time

so i will discount pitbull employee's all trying to reem lil 'ol me for my 15 cents (none of which i ever deposited); but it was a game that was one of the last i played there. i was all ready sour on the trash talk beforehand

after what we have all figured out, who knows what they would do.

Ok, You don't have proof, that makes this funny..
1 No hand history, to even back this up
2 you just said you have no proof
3 How much did you lose.
4 why are you the only one saying this.
5 why would they do cheating, at such a low level.
6 Who is we?????
7 there has not been any reports, of them taking peoples cards numbers, and buying items with them.

Oh and every poker site has some bugs, in it..

When is the wider poker community going to demand proper regulation of the industry to protect the interests of millions of small-time online players worldwide?

At the moment all we have are the assurances of the poker companies that they operate honest and fair systems.

And, in Pitbull's case at least, those assurances don't appear to be worth the webpages they are written on.

Ill assume this is a pitbull poker employee or representative.

Just to clarify this way more information is posted on two other poker forums. Pocket5's and 2p2. The 2p2 one has 40,000 views and almost 1,000 comments.

lol nice try though. The poker community is well aware of this.

As for posting all of the rest. Its really is unneeded because people seem content with the information that has been provided already.

This is a great thread. I have been playing freerolls on the site for the last few months and was considering depoisting a few bucks. I'm gonna stay away from them now.

Has anyone noticed an unusual amount of foreign chatter on the pitbull site lately? A few of the freerolls I played had 2 or 3 people speaking in what appeared to be polish in the chat room, although I wasn't entirely certain.