with all due respect to those who lost big to the "super-users"

[smokin-aces]

Ive been re-reading through the archives at 2+2 and some other sites about the absolute scandal (mainly out of curiousity), there are many players claiming to have lost 100K + to these scumbag cheaters, i can only imagine how frustrating and depressing that must be, it brings me to my question, how can these players putting 50K + on a table be so ignorant to put that much money into a site with no reputation/credibility in the first place? You could make the argument "innocent until proven guilty", but why not take the risk% out of the equation altogether and go to a more reputable/established site? Seriously the only site i would trust more than 10k on is pokerstars or FT, i would NEVER EVER EVER EVER put this money into a site with trashy easily exploitable software/horrible feedback and no good rep like Absoloute, i wonder what they were thinking?

I have also seen many players claiming that they are dead broke because of POTRIPPER/DoubleDrag etc, i can only ask where the BRM was? You would expect players at this stake to be a little more cautious, we at cardschat are using BRM with mere 3-4 figure BR's, these guys that were playing with 5-6 figure BR's you would think they would have stopped once they lost a certain amount of "big bets" or thought something was fishy?

Seriously even a donk would see that GRAYCAT/POTRIPPER are very dangerous players even after 1 observation, from this they would learn to stay away, i can only assume it was their sheer competetive nature that buried these players, if i was playing such high stakes i would make sure to observe my competetion before play, i would have seen how casually/consistently they were ripping the game and learnt to keep my BR the HELL away from these guys.

I dont mean this post to offend anyone that indeed lost a whole lot of cash to scumbags like AJ Green/Tom Scott, we can only assume/hope these pieces of mold get whats coming to them, until then i can only wonder how these top players could be so careless not to see what was going on before these fools had all their money

 

[vanquish]

they didn't know the site had "trashy easily exploitable software" ldo, it was just an inside job that no one could have seen coming. same could have theoretically happened at any other major site

 

[vanquish]

also nosebleed stakes players don't think "omg this guy is OWNING i better 'keep my BR the HELL away from [him]'". they think "i can beat this guy since he plays ridiculously LAG, he's just running unsustainably hot." it's not like they were faced with a clear example of an inside cheating job occuring (no one could have ever predicted this obv) and refused to see the obvious.

 

[smokin-aces]

You make good points but its still hard to understand how the high stakes players couldn't detect that his incredibly horrible play + incredibly abnormal heater + not-so-good site = something very fishy, you are right and it was a cause of the players being blindly guided by probability and waiting for him to drop it all at any second, i suppose its a case of being easy to speak in hindsight.
BTW it was predicted many times that it was a inside job, apparently Absolute management already had a dodgy rep (with poor customer service etc) before this happened.
Even though the actual cause of the super account had nothing to do with the crappy software (with the exception of them upgrading), i think the dodgy software (like cards appearing twice, instant hand history listing wrong cards etc) + the bad customer service/dodgy cashout refusals could have been plausible enough reason to not risk your roll playing there, all i can think of is that the pond there outweighed all of these negatives, nevertheless im sure those players with such large funds were wise enough to know the risk.

 

[OzExorcist]

I suspect that, just like there's fish at every level, there's people with poor BRM at every level too. Silly as that seems when you're playing $200-$400.

 

[smokin-aces]

I suspect that, just like there's fish at every level, there's people with poor BRM at every level too. Silly as that seems when you're playing $200-$400.

If this is true then i cannot wait for the day i am rolled to play in 200/400 and up

 

[OzExorcist]

Don't we all?

It's only logical though - if there were no fish in them these games would dry up fast.

 

[Pothole]

Anyone posting anywhere that they lost money or are now "broke" are liars. AP went through the logs of the 42 days that this took place and refunded everyone who played in a hand against Potripper, every tournament buy-in in which they played was refunded and all places were moved up and prize money altered accordingly. As mentioned above this 'could' happen at any site and after the goings on at AP it would probably go undetected as the protaganists would be much more carefull. I can think of many sites with lousy software and poor support. I don't know why peeps keep sticking it to AP, what about DGS that took everyones money, G2G, Wingows, Lucky Hog, BJO and others did it more than once.

 

[smokin-aces]

Anyone posting anywhere that they lost money or are now "broke" are liars. Absolute Poker went through the logs of the 42 days that this took place and refunded everyone who played in a hand against Potripper, every tournament buy-in in which they played was refunded and all places were moved up and prize money altered accordingly. As mentioned above this 'could' happen at any site and after the goings on at Absolute Poker it would probably go undetected as the protaganists would be much more carefull. I can think of many sites with lousy software and poor support. I don't know why peeps keep sticking it to Absolute Poker, what about DGS that took everyones money, G2G, Wingows, Lucky Hog, BJO and others did it more than once.

Apparently the biggest losses occured in cash games that went un-accounted for in the refund, also there were several aliases benefiting from account #363's abilities, these include : DoubleDrag, Graycat, Payup, Potripper and a few others, i seriously doubt AP looked into these other aliases seeing as "Potripper" was the one in the spotlight

 

[robwhufc]

You make good points but its still hard to understand how the high stakes players couldn't detect that his incredibly horrible play + incredibly abnormal heater + not-so-good site = something very fishy

They DID detect it, hence the investigation in the first place. This wasn't found by Kahnawake Gaming commission or any other body that was supposed to be protecting the players, it was found out by the players.

Seriously the only site i would trust more than 10k on is PokerStars or FT, i would NEVER EVER EVER EVER put this money into a site with trashy easily exploitable software/horrible feedback and no good rep like Absoloute, i wonder what they were thinking?

Why Pokerstars and Full Tilt, and not Absolute? The only difference is that Absolute have been found out, and the other 2 haven't. If anything, Absolute should have been the safest, as they had taken over Ultimate Bet so should presumably have gone through some form of due diligence.

This is a minor blip for online poker, as long as people can deposit, withdraw and play, 99% of players have no real interest in the legitamacy of a site. Absolute Poker are still there, the superuser account at Ultimate Bet has barely caused a ripple (Cardschat is still happily supporting the site).

The new scandal is on the ongame network, where one player had numerous runs of 30+ straight H2H SnG wins (including runs of 65 and 81 straight wins). Clearly this is impossible to achieve other than by collusion, but OnGame didn't spot it (even though it was over a v.large number of games, and they even had a SnG leader board(which he was on). Again, the only people protecting players are other players, that is the cold hard fact of internet poker 2008.

 

[Pothole]

quote " A fool and his money are easily parted ". I think that if I had lost every session against the same player in the amounts they are talking about I would be requesting hand histories and reporting it to support just like Crazymarco did. Wasn't sure if you could do this with ring games so I just tried it and you can.

 

[KidFlopadelic]

You would expect players at this stake to be a little more cautious, we at cardschat are using BRM with mere 3-4 figure BR's, these guys that were playing with 5-6 figure BR's you would think they would have stopped once they lost a certain amount of "big bets" or thought something was fishy?

I disagree with this assumption, most serious online players seem to assume that fat rolled players playing high stakes are serious, informed players. This just isn't true. At every level, there are sharks and donks. I personally know of a guy who won a load in the lottery and threw a big chunk of it online and donked it off in a week...JUST FOR KICKS! And then he went on his merry way....

I doubt this is a rare occurence, especially in relatively RICH America! Remember that Americans make up 80% of the whole online poker pool...take that for what it's worth!

I'm sure there are more than a few well rolled suckers out there who are ripe for the rippin, and even more of the shady businessmen who are involved in the completely unregulated online gambling industry that count on these guys to drop in for some FUN once in awhile...

 

[gns2003]

Man. I play UB (albeit micro limits) and have not seen an obvious problem. I sure hope no one decides to try and steal my pennies. LOL. It would take lots of them many days to get 'em all...

 

[smokin-aces]

i seriously doubt the stream runs so thick in high stakes games, anyone playing without BRM would be bust too quickly, im sure there must be some exceptions (rich ass millionaire's who dont care about the cash), unless you are fortunate enough to get one of these on your hook im sure its safe to say your facing some serious competetion.

Im sure that no sane person would be playing in the highest stakes games without have extensive knowledge of the game, anyway i rail these games a lot and from what ive seen its generally full of decent/advanced players.

When i said that i cant understand how the players didnt catch on to the scam i meant catch on before they were all down 100's of thousands, i suppose tilt must have been somewhat of a factor in most of the losses.

After re-thinking it i actually am not confident with a huge roll at Tilt only because of their affiliation with the "Kahnawake Gaming Commission", truth is i never will be 100% confident at anysite until all of this is regulated, but i can say that i am surely 99% confident at PokerStars.

Why not Absolute? Because even before this scandal there were doubts about the management, its really not that hard to see these things coming though after rethinking i really cant pin blame on anyone for thinking pre-scandal Absolute was reputable especially with tards like Phil and Annie promoting it.
There are many reasons why i would trust a highstakes roll on PokerStars one of them being i personally know ppl who have been playing there with large rolls and they have never had any problems with the legitmacy of the site, sure on rare occasions you may experience a cash out delay but generally highrollers are willing to accept little things like this as long as the sites are good for the cash and the management/software have good reputation.

 

[Pothole]

Interesting that you should mention that you are 99% confident with PokerStars, yet feel non-confident with FT because of their affiliation with the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. FYI, in excess of 50% of all online poker sites are run through servers located on the Kahnawake Reserve and are operated bt the Gaming Commission, including PokerStars.

 

[smokin-aces]

I stand corrected, was unaware of this, i suppose ill have to stand by my initial statement that i can never be 100% confident until its all regulated and no longer run out of shady locations like Rica. The problem is its possible for fraudsters to escape prosecution, this makes that dangling carrot look all the more tasty, doesn't all of this come down to asshole politicians? wouldn't be suprised if there was some bribery involved

 

[Makwa]

Interesting that you should mention that you are 99% confident with PokerStars, yet feel non-confident with FT because of their affiliation with the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. FYI, in excess of 50% of all online poker sites are run through servers located on the Kahnawake Reserve and are operated bt the Gaming Commission, including PokerStars.

I think Stars has moved offshore to Cyprus from Kahnawake recently, they are no longer listed by the commission, last I checked.

As much respect as I have for the Mohawks and their move to online gaming, there is no independent commission for the sites running from there -- and there are hundreds of them!

In any case, even if Stars has moved away, that does not mean that they are 'regulated' or overseen by any independent body.

Essentially were are in the lawless wild west phase of online gaming, there are no guarantees, and Wyatt Earp has not arrived on the scene yet.