Super-users identified on Ultimate Bet

I'm taking Ultimatebet off of my computer.

is that you Mark Seif?

I think if that were me that I could afford to play higher than 25 cent no limit holdem. I think I should be grossly insulted though just to be even jokingly compared to such a person, assuming that he can be referred to as a person at all.

why? he said pretty much the same thing that you did in trying to wash over the Absolute Poker issue by saying that it "could happen to any site". for a start that's incorrect as Stars for one doesn't hold the potential for a 'superuser' account, and secondly it's beside the point. it didn't happen on any site, it happened on AP (and now Ultimatebet).

i'm just curious as to why you're defending a site which contains prevalent elements of staff who are clearly (a) incompetent, or (b) corrupt.

How do you know for sure that Stars doesn't have the potential for those accounts? Are you taking the word of a corporate entity? We all know just how honest most of those are. Has it been confirmed by some independent agency? It's pretty obvious they are able to see all the cards at a table, they do it in the Sunday Million final table. What makes you think there's no ability to do that outside of that one tournament final table?

I'd like to be able to say for certain that there's no chance of any dishonesty at any of the sites I've played on. To be honest the collusion among players is for more worrying to me than the superusers since it happens at every level of play. AIM/MSN/YAHOO or whatever chats make it way too easy for them to exhange hand information.

If it did happen then acknowledge it, pay things back and move on after closing the holes. Nothing done on a computer system is going to be 100% safe from deliberate malicious behavior.

there's a difference between being able to replay an event with holecards up days after the event and having the potential for superusers. DUCY?

and yes, pokerstars have said their software doesn't have the capability and yes, i believe them. they've earned my trust over two and a bit years of playing there and never having had a bad experience or even heard of a bad experience from a credible source.

if you choose not to trust them, that's fine. it just amuses me that you've commented so positively on Ultimatebet, where superuser stuff has been proven, and yet have been somewhat more negative by impication about other, more evidently legitimate sites.

People will always find a way to cheat. They cheat at the casinos, they cheat online, we just have to take it and hope we lose our money fair and square.

Originally Posted by Josem
Hey folks,

A new picture for you to look at:



The point in the upper-right corner is the Ultimatebet alleged cheater.

Some facts about the graph:
-There are 870 "normal" players from a variety of sites and limits
-Each of those other players have at least 2,500 hands logged on them
-The graph is in big blinds/100, not PokerTracker's big bets/100.

-The mean bb/100 win rate is 1.528 bb/100
-The standard deviation is 14.08 bb/100

-The alleged Ultimatebet cheater is winning at around 10 standard deviations above the mean
-The confessed Absolute Poker cheater was winning at around 15 standard deviations above the mean

I think that 10 standard deviations is something in the order of winning a 1-in-a-million lottery three or four times consecutively - although I'd prefer if a maths expert could be a little more clear.

great research french1
we are starting to get some damning evidence here, i think with all this going on an investigation from an independent body is in order{ but not the same 1 that investigated the Absolute Poker scandal}

Hi everyone, this is trambopoline from 2p2. As you know ive been a pretty big part in this whole investigation. I am requesting one thing from this post, or your forum in general: PLEASE DELETE THE EMAILS THAT HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED TO BE FALSE. There is no need for this email, which has been confirmed 100% false, to be spread anywhere else on the internet. Follow the thread located on twoplustwo for the most recent up to date news.

Suspicious Plays on Ultimatebet 25/50 and 50/100 - Two Plus Two Forums

Hi sir, nice work thus far (although I must confess I haven't checked the thread in a few days).

I've edited the OP to remove the relevant e-mail seeing as it's been proven a fake.

It looks as though the "investigators" at 2+2 are still a few days away from sifting through the hand histories to provide conclusive proof, but the common theme on the thread is the close proximity of Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet's operations - not surprising when Ultimate Bet are owned by Absolute Poker!

I believe UltimateBet was purchased by Absolute Poker in the last couple years and existed on its own for quite some time before that (own staff, own software, etc). That makes the logical jump that Absolute Poker cheated and therefore Ultimatebet cheated a bit thin.

That's not to say there wasn't cheating in this case.

I don't think anyone has explicitly said "Absolute Poker are cheats so Ultimate Bet must be cheats". The problem that I have had from day one with this is that Cardschat has dumped Absolute Poker due to the superuser scandal, but continue to endorse Ultimate Bet, who are owned by Absolute Poker. The fact that Ultimate Bet happen to be the second company implicated in superuser accounts, is coincidence, but when they are licensed / regulated / checked by the same people that failed with Absolute Poker maybe not a huge surprise.

Seems like it's business as usual at both Absolute Poker and Ultimatebet, all pokersites have to do is wait out a problem for a few weeks, and it will disappear.

Once upon a time, I was a computer technician. A Network Specialist. I would troubleshoot systems. In the course of my duties I found it remarkably easy to get system access with complete admin rights. Usually the first thing I would do is to create a new user with complete admin rights. At the time my logic was that I wouldn't have to bother getting that access every time I showed up. Very few admin types gave it any thought. They gave me the access I needed and walked away.

I left that field 10 years ago, and have forgotten almost everything I would need to access those systems. I would guess it wouldn't take me long to blunder onto my old logins, but the point is that many folks could do similar things at opportune times. A worker sees the admins terminal connected and unattended, and it only takes a few seconds to create a new user with admin rights.

In some systems, even admin rights are not complete tho. Rights are typically not granted even to admins to change code, or system files, nor is complete access granted to system utilities.

The possibility exists in any and every system. I would be suspect of any system purporting to have no back doors. There is almost no way to guarantee such a thing.

Vigilance is our friend.

Ultimatebet issued this statement 2 days ago...

ULTIMATEBET INTERIM STATEMENT


Contact: Press@ultimatebet.com


Montreal, Canada (March 6, 2008) – UltimateBet (Ultimatebet), one of the ten largest online poker cardrooms, today issued the following interim statement with respect to allegations of unfair play on its site.

“On January 12, 2008, UltimateBet was alerted to allegations that a player with the online handle “NioNio” exhibited abnormally high winning statistics and was accused of having an unfair advantage during play. These allegations were made both directly to UltimateBet by concerned players and the KGC, and indirectly through several web forums. The allegations also included reports of suspicious activity concerning the deletion of the NioNio account and other accounts that may have been related to this scheme.

“We immediately launched an extensive inquiry involving an independent third-party expert to review hundreds of thousands of hand histories, all of which were promptly locked down and made available to this expert. The initial findings of our third-party expert confirm that the NioNio account’s winning statistics were indeed abnormal, and we have expanded the investigation to look into whether an unfair advantage existed, how such a scheme might have been perpetrated, and whether additional accounts beyond those of NioNio were involved.

“UltimateBet is in regular communications and contact with its regulatory authority, The Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC), and will continue to cooperate fully with that body.

“UltimateBet is determined to complete a full and thorough investigation. We pride ourselves on providing a safe, secure playing environment for our customers. The investigation has proven to be extremely complex and, therefore, has been more extensive and taken much longer than initially expected. We continue to aggressively pursue the matter and will communicate the findings of our full investigation to our regulatory authority and to our customer base as soon as practicable.”

This is pretty good news for us I guess. It makes it much more unlikely that Ultimatebet will try and let this 'investigation' ride out until the tension dies down so they can just sweep this under the carpet.

well for some time now some ppl have been very suspicious of this player, NioNio.Ultimatebet has just released a statement on what is going on so far
i think it is being handled much better than the way Absolute Poker scandle was being handled but we will see what is going to happen in the later stages

here is a link to an article about it Ultimatebet Makes Public Statement Regarding "NioNio" Allegations

here is a link to the statement released on 2+2 Statement from Ultimate Bet - Two Plus Two Forums

here is another thread on 2+2 where all the suspicion arose Suspicious Plays on Ultimatebet 25/50 and 50/100 - Two Plus Two Forums

tell me what u think about it? it seems like it is something big is abrewing

Yes, i have heard of things like this. People with scanners or some kind of device and can see the cards. They should be banned from poker for ever. It is not right cheating like this. Computer people cheating the system........hope they get some prison time and have to pay some major fines.

as i posted in the 2p2 thread, i look forward to the results of Ultimatebet's year long exhaustive investigation into whether bears actually do poop in the woods.

...another reason i stay away from those two....

This seems to be popping up more and more lately. Quite frankly I have to wonder if there are more people out there that are just more intelligent than these guys on how to cheat properly. If I had a superuser account I would probably put myself on some losing streaks just to keep people from suspecting that I was cheating. If a player did this then they could continue to keep a steady income for an indefinate period of time with vitrually no suspision...especially if they stayed away from the high end games where very few players can afford to play. How much money do you think an intelligent cheater could make playing 5-10 limit hold em on any of the major sites if they just took 1 week out of every month or two and lost say....20% of their winnings for the previous time period back? I bet that a player who did that could pull 7 figures out of the game before anyone might catch them. Also...for the guy who said that these cheaters should go to jail...The official policy of the US federal government is that online poker is illegal so if they are going to put cheaters in jail then they are going to put the rest of us in jail as well. As far as banning these players from playing there is no possible way to do that. As soon as you ban a player then he can have a new "online identity" with a new bank account and be playing the very same day. We used to make fun of people who said online poker was rigged but now it seems that maybe not all of those people were crazy.

Ahh we all know that if phil hellmuth wrote a email hed be cussing out the superusers/Donkeys thats busting the best hands phil loves to cuss people out

Again I will take a less paranoid position.

In the big scheme of things this is actually a good thing. I know it does not bode well for current online players, and legitimate concerns exist. But think 10 years down the line, when online gaming is more secure than the U.S. Military. It will be because these 'holes' were plugged in what we all have to realize are still the early days of online gaming.

It could spell the end of Ultimatebet, or Absolute Poker. I sort of doubt it. The folks with the most experience dealing with these problems are now at AP, and UB. I hope the companies, and personnel are not bottled up about the investigations, and remedies. Of course some specific actions should be bottled up, but the world is fairly comfortable with the notion of trade secrets. Generically speaking we the gaming public should be as informed as we absolutely can be.

I really don't doubt that in the not so distant future, similar problems will show up at most of the other sites.

Still not evidence of "rigged". Cheating?? Of course.

First time ever that cheaters in gambling are uncovered? Of course not.

Part of the post I didn't quote covered level of cheating. Top level cheaters are the ones being uncovered and details released - because it is "NEWS". Cheaters at all levels are being uncovered at most sites on a regular if not daily basis. "Collusion" and other forms of cheating just aren't "BIG news". Billion/million dollar armored car heists make the world news, not penny-ante shoplifting events.

If you are a serious gambler, you should know that cheaters are ALWAYS possible. It's the nature of cash gambling. Play smart, stay alert.

There will never be a guaranteed 100% secure, straight-up online anything, if humans are involved.
Take online poker for what it is. The best thing you could do is try and play where your least vulnerable. High stakes thus far in the online poker world doesn't seem to be a good place to find yourself.

Wow would love to hear what you didn't like about Ultimatebet cash games. This post is kinda like reading a review of some powertool that says:
"This tool is a piece of crap" But then there is no justification for the comment.

I doubt this will hurt me at the low stakes I play lol.

But, Personally I like Ultimatebet cash games. They have 10 seat tables so even if there are a few people sitting out, the blinds don't come around as fast as they do on Pokerstars or FullTilt.

There has been a lot of discussion on this forum, here and elsewhere, about the relative merits of
blacklisting Absolute, and continuing to promoye Ultimatebet and schedule regular CC events there.

Wothout makong judgements on either side of the discussion, after giving the matter serious consideration, I'm currently out of Ultimatebet."What's sauce for thew goose", etc. Too bad really,too, I've always enjoyed playing there, and cashed in 2 of the last 3 CC money added events I played there. But, I'm out for now, my Ultimatebet account contains 85 cents.

I'll be interested in the final results of their "extensive" investigation, and hope it doesn't get swept under the rug. I don't say I'll never go back, but I do say for now I'm sitting them out.

i told u guys that online poker is rigged

^^^ why do u waste our time with this chit?

Superusers =/= rigged

lol

And I thought maybe there was some new info when the thread's just being hijacked for 'online poker=rigged' v 'online poker=no you just suck'

Speaking of Ultimatebet superuser, has there ever been any official explanation from Ultimatebet that anyone's heard about, or are they just hoping this will go away if they pretend it never happened?

And PokerStars, life's rigged, as so far everyone's failed at it and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future (at least until they figure out how to make backup copies of us.) Worry about that before you worry about whether poker's rigged.