Official Absolute scandal thread

The infinite aggression factor means that they never call on the river, only bet/raise or fold. They apparently very rarely lose on the river.

Why that's interesting is because it means they play perfectly on the river - which is what you'd do if you knew exactly what the other guy had. Imagine having 10-high on the river. I go all-in.

Would you ever call a river all-in with 10-high?

How about if you knew that I had 9-high?

That's what's weird about this. They make bets and raises (and in rare cases, all-in calls) that make no sense - at all - unless they see their opponents' hole cards. Sure, they could be complete lunatics and simply be awful players.

But they never lose.

Bingo. How many years did Pete Rose deny he bet on baseball? About 15, until he thought that admitting to betting on baseball would get him back into baseball. Plus it helped him sell another book so he could continue to bet...on horses...

i have to admit this stuff really really makes me nervous i dont like to be suckered!

A further quote from my Absolute Poker rep:

I'll keep you updated..

Very interesting and most interesting of all is that the second response from the rep there is not actually a denial.

Complete speculation of course, but some sort of spyware which has been targetted at HS players which is sending screencaps would be my guess rather than a breech of the software itself.

Either that or the HS players have got someone watching their cards through a window on the phone to these idiots

definately that one. prolly got the camoflauge paint and clothes on as well as the binoculars too.

EXCLUSIVE CHEATING - See hole cards in ANY online poker

YouTube - Whats your take on this..??
Truth or fiction??

YouTube - EXCLUSIVE CHEATING - See hole cards in ANY online poker

This may or may not be the answer but there seems to be some type of correlation as they are playing heads up in the Video.

I'm a believer.

I will never play at Absolute Poker.

*possibly another stupid question*

If they're actually looking at hole cards, is it possible they're doing it using a third-party worm on the opponent's computer, rather than exploiting an administrator function on the site?

Easily possible, the demo could be faked too....but its just a way of showing off their new "scam" lol.

You run this "hole card hacks" program, get infected, then it auto-sends a nice JPEG image of your desktop to the programmer.

Then apparently you open the folder the images are being instantly sent to, and bam hey I can see your hole cards.

In theory thats what this guy is saying he can do, who knows? It probably does work, but it will only work with an idiot that has downloaded his virus program.

The reason it would work with any poker website is because it just sends a desktop pic, but... you would have to like... hunt players down, get them to DL the program, and when they find out it doesnt work.. they would delete it perhaps.. but what if its not gone... what if its still taking pictures of your desktop?

This wouldnt be ultra new or anything, my buddy and I used to play a video game online, and he would steal other players account info because he would ask them to download a program to "Increase their level" then they would input their account information into the "helper program".

The info gets keylogged and info was sent to his email instantly giving him complete access to the account, incredibly simple.

Quite possible, yes.

What I was referring to when I said "if this is true" would be the existance of a super user account.

Two things irritate me about this.

1) At least one of the offending accounts is still open as they conduct this 'investigation'. This is despite numerous hands (especially last night but also on occasions prior) that are blatant chip dumping.

2) As I said before, the fact that a sample size is small is not relevant as the results are so far from what would be expected.

I find it hard to take anyone seriously from a site who repeatedly insisted that AAxxx loses to 88xxx (or whetever it was, I forget exactly) in Razz, too.

It's possible, but as the hands in question occur against numerous opponents it's unlikely.

Plus you'd expect a hacker to have a certain degree of intelligence that some of these hands don't correlate with - not just from a 'how they were played' point of view but from a 'how can i cheat without getting found out' perspective. That's also why I don't buy into the theory on 2p2 that it's Mark Seif - he would be more careful about such things.

Jesus, I use Absolute Poker, not seen anything that scares me yet, maybe I am playing at to lower limit.

I get far more bad beats on PokerStars than Absolute Poker for some reason which I don't know

Because on Absolute Poker everyone can see your holecards so they always get their money in ahead obv.

Seriously, this isn't about bad beats.

If they can all see my whole cards, and still keep losing to me, they must be pretty dumb

The argument against it being spyware was mainly from the tournament that DOUBLEDRAG won (at one point calling all-in on a flop with two Kings and two hearts with T9 of clubs vs 92 of hearts). Since in a tournament you don't know who you will be up against, it wouldn't be possible to target your opponents with spyware.

Also, these accounts all play around 90% of hands pre-flop, so are playing against all opponents. If they had spyware installed it would only be against certain opponents, while these players are winning huge - way beyond what the world's best players have ever achieved - against everyone.

I've read through the evidence presented and there is no doubt to me that these players are cheating somehow. Whether or not this is due to a problem with Absolute's software is not certain, but it seems likely.

whilst i dont play on absolute this is very concerning, more worryingly perhaps is that if its true, proven and eventually accepted by absolute the damage this will do to online poker.
Will the publicity draw more cheats to online poker?
Will they be better equipped to avoid detection by avoiding tell tale signs that have tipped these people off?

Hopefully this may serve as a wake up call to some other sites to stay one step ahead of the game.

Okay -so if we believe all of this - and it is very compelling - what do we do? I have $164 on Absolute and have no intentions of continuing to play there - rarely do anyway. So do I:

1. Request a check and hope I get it (I bet a lot of people are withdrawing right now).
2. Play some tournaments (not high stakes lol) and try to win more and then request a check. (the real idea being to get practice since I may never see my money anyway)
3. Transfer it to my sister who is very poor, loves to play, but has no money at all to put in poker. This could last her a long time.
4. Transfer 60-70% to my sister and keep some so I can play with her to keep her company.

And what about Ultimate Bet? Aren't they now the same company? After the OFC challenge should we get away from there too? I have about $115 there and rarely play there either. Maybe I can use it to play blackjack with Nick lol.

I just got $10 from them, and am promptly donking it off so I don'thave to worry about this shit. never really liked Absoulte anyway....... the new Ultimatebet connection has me concerned though........

this seals the deal.. there absolutely is cheating going on:

New 9/17 update: We have the Potripper final table HH: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=beats&Number=12123790. At this final table, he open folded PF twice and folded to a single PF raise twice in the last 27 hands. Both open folds were with AA and KK behind; the folds made to a raise were when villains had QQ and JJ.

if anyone's not convinced by now, then you're either really hard headed or you haven't familiarized yourself with enough of the literature. there really is no doubt. this guy (POTRIPPER, DOUBLEDRAG, GRAYCAT.. all the same guy) plays NEARLY EVERY HAND, raise or not, yet somehow manages to only fold when AA, KK, QQ, or JJ are out.

there's also a similarly ridiculous limit hold 'em hand where he caps preflop and check-folds on a 522 board when his opponent has 55. anyone with the most remote clue in the world about high stakes limit hold 'em knows this makes COMPLETELY no sense

cheatin' going on, plain and simple. i really can't figure out if absolute is that incompetent, trying to be ignorant, or lying, but i hate them nonetheless

Come to think about it, about 6 weeks ago I received an email offering a program that would allow you to see the other player's hole cards at the table. I didn't click on the link to check out the program but I guess they must exist.
The responses from Absolute Poker almost look like the form letters you receive in the mail about health insurance and money loans. They all say the same thing but aren't directed towards a person's specific questions or needs.
I checked my account at Absolute Poker and found I have a grand total of $2.60 in it. I just might go and squander it on a couple $1 games and be done with them.
Does anyone out there think Absolute Poker is on the up-and-up?

There was a guy who joined CC who said he downloaded a program to see other people's hole cards.
He said it worked for one hand but didn't work at all after that.
PROBABLY DD PRACTISING FOR Absolute Poker LOL

I really don't want to think Absolute is involved here, other than that it seems to be happening at Absolute.

I'm putting a couple of post together and offering another possibility.

The offer to see other players cards via an email offer, or rumor or whatever, might have shown you other players cards for a hand or two, but more likely is that it installed a trojan horse, or some spyware which then told another program your hole cards.

The user of the 'master program' if he wrote it, would have written another to tell him when a group of these folks were sitting at the same table, and he would join.

He may have found that at Absolute it is easier, or maybe he is so familiar with Absolute Poker that he felt comfortable there.

Once a concerted focus is placed on that or those players who are suspected, spyware can tell exactly what goes on in that PC. I expect (and hope) at some time in the very near future an arrest will be made, or this player will drop off the face of the earth. An unrelated article in a local newspaper somewhere will announce that so and so was made dead in some heinous act in his own home and the perps were never found.

Ive been reading both this thread and the one on 2+2 with some interest over the last few days, and im starting to think whilst likely genuine, cant really be much more than Absolute being incompentant idiots. I mean, come on, anyone with any sort of sense holding this magic software dosnt go to town with it, or do they, I know if i was the one using it, i certainly wouldnt use it to call an all-in with 10high. Or open fold KK when i see my opponent has AA.

This whole thing smells to me more of an irked former employee out to screw over absolute,perhaps someone that had inside information about major flaws in the software, maybe it was him that put there for this reason ? This guy wanted to be found out, and managed it in a little under 200 hands. Im not gonna go for the stupidity arguement here, it just seems that there more going on here than meets the eye.

The site sucks more now that ever though. Its gonna take them a long time to get over this one, if they ever do.

Welp, it's in the news now. "Pokernews" to be exact:

Stick's Poker Blog: 'Superuser' Scandal Has 'Absolute' Reach

Still, its funny how absolute does little about this, its going to crush their reputation by saying how there is nothing wrong.

I gotta wonder what companies are run by chimpanzees, and which are not, im glad I only touch pokerstars, and fulltilt, pretty much guarenteed 99.9% safety.

RUNNER RUNNER </3


Also does anyone have the link to thread #3 on twoplustwo?

LOL @ what's going on recently with DD. (read thread - it's amusing)

2p2 is a life sucking black hole, aaaarrrrrggghhhh!

This is a very good point and having read more about this there is a lot that suggests that if there is something amiss that it is to do with inside info rather than spyware.

Facinating stuff and I'm sure huge implications for online poker one way or another. It does also demonstrate that it is possible to demonstrate a "rigged" theory with statistics and evidence rather than anecdote and false logic.

Well I'm playing on Absolute Poker now. Funny thing how no one is talking about this stuff at the tables.

About 98% of Absolute Poker's playerbase will know nothing about it.