Official Absolute scandal thread

[Bombjack]

When no-one raised in a hand, he raised. The 7 hands he folded were the only ones where a significant raise occured before he entered pot. The reason there were significant raises before he entered the pot was because opponents were raising with JJ+.

Let's see... hand 1, hand 4, hand 5... that's 3 of the first 5 hands where someone's raised (without a big pair of course) to 4xBB and he hasn't folded. So much for your theory.

So what are the conspiracists left with? A handful of odd hands (some of which aren't odd at all) out of hundreds. So he folded KQ pre-flop when he had played almost every other hand?

How about the fact that he never raises someone when they have top pair or better, but always raises them when they don't? Care to explain how he wins every hand until someone flops two pair or a set, then immediately folds?

He was playing hands post flop when behind (there was one hand which he played where he had a low pocket pair, and went post flop against a player with a higher pocket pair - why, when he knew what his opponent had?).

You mean where he doesn't raise 99 pre-flop, and tries to hit a set vs JJ? How else would you play Nines if you knew someone behind you had Jacks?

Look at the big hands - he took big pots off of donk players who had weaker hands than him. He flopped a couple of sets. He played badly, for an extended period of time, and just never got hit. Big whoop, i've seen this happen over and over again.

What are you talking about? He plays every hand perfectly, given their hole cards, not badly. Please show a hand which he plays badly.

I was hopeful that this was going to be the proof the online poker is rigged, but the Hand history disproves everything that was assumed on 2+2 from the pokertracker stats.

I disagree - I think it's compelling.

 

[DaFrench1]

Seriously, I think you're clutching at straws. But whether he is or isn't cheating, I don't think seeing hole cards is happening. You'll notice that he re-raises anyone who bets after the flop, and usually as they are just continuation bets that haven't hit anything they fold. Another thing I picked up on reading the HH's is that when he does actually have a decent hand, trips, set or higher, he actually never bets it and checks it trying to get action. So he bets weak hands and checks strong hands. Sounds like a lot of players I see all the time.

Understand that I am trying to remain neutral in this and am only offering plausible counter-arguments based on the evidence presented. It does remain shoddy. Also people that have read my posts before will know that I DO think online poker is rigged, but I am actually more concerned with site operators rigging games than opposing players. Do you think that using a HUD or Poker-Edge or other such tools does not constitute cheating in some form? It does, yet for some reason that seems to be acceptable.

Bearing all that in mind, one other plausible scenario more along both our lines of thinking (because I am trying to look at both sides), is that actually it is Absolute themselves that manipulated the result of the tournament he won, because for whatever reasons they did not want to pay out the 30K to anyone. And that THEY have the account to see the cards and played it so the money stayed in-house. I find this far more plausible than a super hacker or such manipulating their software (and also fits nicely into what I believe anyway).

And I still think that Greycat and DoubleDrag were dumping, you can't win that many hands even if you could see hole cards. But whatever is happening you have to see that the original accusations remain speculative and neither of us can be sure what happened, I have read your counter-arguments to the HH's I presented and could easily counter them again, but I can't be bothered as it would just never end. You could just as easily look at loads of HH's in the tournament and ring game analysis section on this site and if you were of a mindset that whoever won the hand was a cheat you could just as easily find the same information, strange calls, strange raises, etc. And if you were of a mindset that cheating does not exist (which seems the standard response when someone does flag it) then it always seems easy to counter that too (i.e well he did have a 5% chance of winning so why are you suprised that he hit, it happens, etc etc).

Anyway, I don't play on Absolute and I don't intend to now because there is a doubt as to their integrity. But I think that everyone should always remain cautious and vigilant whatever site you are playing on, especially if you are playing with hundreds or thousands of dollars at a time.

That's my last comment on this post unless something new comes up.

 

[Bombjack]

You are wrong on so many levels. This has nothing to do with the usual "OMG my Aces got cracked RIGGED" scenario, and there is nothing dodgy going on at all on 99% of poker sites. Everyone who has taken the time to read through all the evidence thought it was rock solid before this tournament hand history came to light. The fact that we can now prove that this player played every hand EXCEPT when someone had a high pair just takes the whole thing beyond any reasonable doubt. Show me a hand history where he folds the best hand, or doesn't bluff when his opponent is weak, or tries to bluff when they are strong. There aren't any. Seriously, what more evidence could you possibly want?

If you don't want to listen to people who are actually familiar with the evidence, stick your head in the sand and pretend it didn't happen, that's up to you, it's not my mission to try to change your mind personally.

 

[Dorkus Malorkus]

It's a pretty endless source of amusement to me at the moment that several people who have stated they believe online poker is rigged to some extent (mainly based on their acute observations of "I never hit flush draws", "I haven't hit a set with my last x pairs", "Shortstacks lose more hands than they should in tournaments", or whatever) actually don't accept this HH and all the prior evidence as proof that something 'underhanded' has gone on.

It's very simple guys. Imagine he *can* see holecards and everything in the HH makes perfect sense. Imagine he can't, and, well, a 90/70 folding KQ in the CO when folded to doesn't make a lot of sense, nor do the majority of the other hands provided (the QT river 3-bet shove, the last hand T high call, etc etc).

 

[Bombjack]

Post from 2+2 - the plot thickens... some guy has been analysing the Excel file that was sent to CRAZYMARCO, and it contains IP addresses of people who were observing the tables.

Holy [censored], I think I found him and I'm like 99% sure this is not a coincidence. Skip to the bolded text if you don't care about the details.

I put all of the IP/email address lines in the following type of SQL table:

CREATE TABLE `ipinfo` (
`table` int(3) NOT NULL,
`date` datetime NOT NULL,
`action` varchar(10) NOT NULL,
`email` varchar(80) NOT NULL,
`userid` int(15) NOT NULL,
`ip` varchar(25) NOT NULL,
`port` int(8) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Then I ran the following query:

SELECT *
FROM `ipinfo`
GROUP BY `email`
ORDER BY `ip` ASC

It returned 267 rows.

Then in the IP range starting with 200, there are two guys with identical IPs. snagglepuss alerted me to these two guys earlier. But here's the evidence on one of the guys:

1. This guy "enters" table 13 at 2007-09-12 21:02:14, which is 2 minutes and 14 seconds after the tourney started.
2. Table 13 is the table which POTRIPPER was playing on
3. He never leaves the table, which means he was observing the table until at least 11:20 PM EST (at least, that's how I understand this)
4. His IP address is based in Costa Rica.
5. This is the most damning. He is user id 363 at Absolute Poker. That means he was created in the system very very early on. Most of these user ids are in the 6 or 7 figures.

I think this tells me that there was some sort of inside job going on.

I will withhold his IP and email for the time being.

 

[DaFrench1]

OK, so thats worth further comment (none of you believed me when I said the previous was my last anyway did yas).

Look, I don't know why everyone automatically takes someone for an idiot the moment that they suggest that things are not as generally perceived. I've never claimed a site is rigged because of any type of beat. Please credit me with more intelligence than that. I think it is rigged (or actually more skewed) because I take the time to think about things. And what I think is this:

Firstly, how does a poker site even get started? I mean Ok you set up your site, you get the software up and running on a server and then you market for people to download your client. But then what? the first guy is going to come on, see that hes the only guy on there and leave right? and it will continue. Plus what are you going to offer your clients? a single tourney? an s+g until things pick up? Even if you get 20-50 people on there at the same time there will still not be enough to generate the games and tourneys at the different buy ins and different times. So how do you get around this? Obviously you're going to have to generate some traffic so that people stay. You are going to have to give them the 'illusion' that they are on a site with plenty of action. So, how to do this? Well, either you pay people to play on your site, have them multi-tabling, etc. Or alternatively you can programme software to create the illusion for you, acting as players. There are loads of tricks they use to achieve this (like hosting loads of free-rolls and play money tables so you can announce proudly that you have x number of players playing at x number of tables).

But anyway, if you can achieve all this and get it up and running then your next priority is generating revenue. And the problem is that whatever method you chose to make your site appear busy can then be used to achieve this goal. Because you don't make money from free-rollers using their winnings, you get it from people depositing cash, the rake and blah blah is just to ensure that some of that stays, but at any time there will always be multiple times the number of money sitting in peoples accounts than is generated by rake, and that is the true value of any poker site, the money they are holding, and that is what they want to keep. And that's why I believe that online poker is rigged at its core. Because it always was.

Now let me let you into something I learnt studying psychology, I used to play fruit machines in the UK. I think you call them slots in the US. What I learnt is this, fruit machines are based upon the theory of classical conditioning (I hope I remembered that right!), and derive from an experiment with birds whereby the birds would receive a seed (a reward) if they tapped on a pad in box, not surprisingly they learnt this skill quite quickly. Then the experimenters started messing with them, only giving a reward every two taps, then three, sometimes 2, sometimes 4. Then they stopped altogether and not suprisingly the birds continued to tap, what was surprising was how long they persisted in trying long after the seeds have been removed. Because the behaviour was conditioned by the chance of a reward. And fruit machines are developed on this principle. Now they have loads of attractive lights and features like nudges and bonuses and little sidegames, these are not only to keep the player's attention but mainly to give the illusion that there is an element of skill involved in the play, and people believe that there is a skill involved, but in reality the machine is programmed to payout a certain amount, and keep a certain amount, and will do just that. In effect you are a bird pecking at the pad and hoping for a seed. Because you got one before. Effectively online poker has the potential to be just as illusionary, you never really know, because you think that you are playing poker against people all accross the world doesn't mean you really are. All you are really doing is clicking your mouse and sending packets across the internet and getting responses. Deep, innit?

 

[Dorkus Malorkus]

Firstly, how does a poker site even get started? I mean Ok you set up your site, you get the software up and running on a server and then you market for people to download your client. But then what? the first guy is going to come on, see that hes the only guy on there and leave right? and it will continue. Plus what are you going to offer your clients? a single tourney? an s+g until things pick up? Even if you get 20-50 people on there at the same time there will still not be enough to generate the games and tourneys at the different buy ins and different times. So how do you get around this? Obviously you're going to have to generate some traffic so that people stay. You are going to have to give them the 'illusion' that they are on a site with plenty of action. So, how to do this? Well, either you pay people to play on your site, have them multi-tabling, etc. Or alternatively you can programme software to create the illusion for you, acting as players. There are loads of tricks they use to achieve this (like hosting loads of free-rolls and play money tables so you can announce proudly that you have x number of players playing at x number of tables).

lol, what?

Site is created, private beta testing ---> public beta testing ---> announcement of site opening date with juicy opening promo ---> word gets around ---> by opening time lots of people are interested and are playing.

Just because the poker site market is saturated to such an extent that the above probably won't work anymore, even given a huge promo (look at rake-free WPEX), doesn't mean that this was always the case.

Now let me let you into something I learnt studying psychology, I used to play fruit machines in the UK. I think you call them slots in the US. What I learnt is this, fruit machines are based upon the theory of classical conditioning (I hope I remembered that right!), and derive from an experiment with birds whereby the birds would receive a seed (a reward) if they tapped on a pad in box, not surprisingly they learnt this skill quite quickly. Then the experimenters started messing with them, only giving a reward every two taps, then three, sometimes 2, sometimes 4. Then they stopped altogether and not suprisingly the birds continued to tap, what was surprising was how long they persisted in trying long after the seeds have been removed. Because the behaviour was conditioned by the chance of a reward. And fruit machines are developed on this principle. Now they have loads of attractive lights and features like nudges and bonuses and little sidegames, these are not only to keep the player's attention but mainly to give the illusion that there is an element of skill involved in the play, and people believe that there is a skill involved, but in reality the machine is programmed to payout a certain amount, and keep a certain amount, and will do just that. In effect you are a bird pecking at the pad and hoping for a seed. Because you got one before. Effectively online poker has the potential to be just as illusionary, you never really know, because you think that you are playing poker against people all accross the world doesn't mean you really are. All you are really doing is clicking your mouse and sending packets across the internet and getting responses. Deep, innit?

I'm aware of all this, it's not news to me and it's not particularly deep. I'm aware of other tricks that retail outlets use to increase their profit margins too, in terms of things like specific shop layouts (keep all the 'boring' stuff at the back, put the exciting stuff at the front of the store near the entrance, put small 'convenience' items next to the checkout etc), salty fries (so you then are more likely to buy a drink), hoarding ice into said drinks, and so on and so forth.

Guess what? This all has nothing to do with online poker, so your entire post is completely irrelevant and based on nothing but unfounded speculation. Especially interesting is that we know for certain about these tricks that places pull, mainly through either infallible deductive processes or through stuff like disgruntled ex-employees spilling the beans. Isn't it odd, therefore, that we 'know' precisely nothing about online poker sites scamming people, Absolute aside (and even then it's not yet proven that they were in on it)?

There's a wealth of difference between a little psychological 'trick' and outright deception.

Anyway, we need to stop talking about the stupid general rigged crap and focus more on how much Absolute sucks balls.

 

[vanquish]

About the HH arguments people were making against him seeing hole cards.
What about the last hand of the tournament? How do you explain that? (Other than "he was trying to lose on purpose so people wouldn't get suspicious but picked the wrong hand to do it")

 

[9__10__Suited]

Ive thought the same about certain sites....do you thin the rake has anything to do with the way the cards flop?....it makes sense for the site to put 2 "big" hands against each other. ..as i was typing this reply. it happened to me in a .5/.10 nl 3cap game

i have <Jd 9d>
player to left <Kc 5c> Flop Qs 10c Kd player bets and I smooth call (mistake?)....the turn came Qd (already had the str8 and the Qd gave me str8 flush draw
so I make the cap bet and he calls...river Kh giving the other player K's over Q's and once again crashing the party...(happens a lot...that's why i play cap-)i understand this is a part of poker and it happens but ive documented many hands and I cant help but wonder if this is just a part of online poker??..




me (Ah 3h)
player X (7h 10h) flop Jh 5h 8h 3c 9h.... nut flush on flop got crushed by str8 flush on river....not only a huge rake but that's 8 out of 13 hearts in the deck..even worse it was heads up....i would have bet my next of kin on that hand hha (and thats why i play cap)

 

[Dorkus Malorkus]

this chart someone posted on 2p2 is pretty amusing. guess who the red dot is, lolz.

 

[vanquish]

I'm more interested in the dot on the bottom left

 

[Debi]

I'm more interested in the dot on the bottom left

That is me...

 

[Dorkus Malorkus]

That is me...

it's funny 'cos it's believable!

 

[Irexes]

That is me...

VPIP is too high

 

[Bombjack]

Pocket Fives is following Cardschat's bold lead (ahem) and has stopped promoting Absolute:

P5ers,
The past 72 hours have been really difficult for us here at P5s as things have gotten out of hand quickly in regards to the AP super-user situation. We have never faced a situation quite like this before; one of our trusted partners has been accused of serious security vulnerabilities, and the accusations appear to have merit. In fact, when this situation first came to light, our inclination was to dismiss it as another “online poker is rigged” post. However, after careful examination of all the facts presented, it’s just not possible for us to do that anymore.
Thereby, we have decided to indefinitely suspend any promotion of Absolute Poker, including site links, banners, and inclusion of future tournaments in the rankings. Please understand that this is not a conviction on our part; it's simply an acknowledgement that significant and meaningful questions have arisen about the security of their site, and until those questions can be resolved to our satisfaction, we don't feel comfortable encouraging our users to play there.
We're in the process of removing links and promotional materials--most of them are down already. Please be patient while we get this all set.
Looking ahead, we intend to work with Absolute Poker as closely as possible to get all the facts and decipher them from "Internet folk lore." In fact, we've been on several phone calls today with AP trying to find out what they know about this situation and how they’re dealing with it. We’ll continue to press them to try and find out more. They’ve also invited us to have full access to their office and systems, and we’re hoping to be able to use that access to find out more about what went wrong. Anything and everything we discover will be reported here on the site, and hopefully it will shed more light on the situation.
In closing, I'd like to say that we all want what you want---for online poker games to be safe, fair, and trustworthy. We hope that our decision helps us all in realizing that goal.
Best,
--Adam

I notice Cardschat still has links to Absolute in the Reviews section and occasionally shows banner ads for them - are these staying?

 

[OzExorcist]

I don't play on Absolute, I didn't have any intention of doing so before all this broke and I don't have any intention of doing so now or in the future either. So I've got no real vested interest here. But (correct me if I'm wrong), isn't this basically what's happened:

- Someone reported the players' actions as suspect
- Absolute suspended the suspect accounts
- No other suspicious players of this nature have been reported since
- Absolute claimed they've investigated and there isn't a hole in their security

I'm not sure what else they've failed to do? Getting a third party auditor to come in and check their systems would seem to me to be the only other thing they could do, so you'd be taking a third party's word about the security rather than Absolute's.

Think of this in terms of a brick and mortar casino - if someone's caught cheating they're run out of town, the casino says their security systems are working and everybody goes about their business. Is this that different?

 

[vanquish]

- Absolute suspended the suspect accounts

Not exactly. AFAIK only several accounts were closed, and DOUBLEDRAG was seen later spewing money talking about how he was just a bad player who got lucky and calling river bets with 9-high and such - hence my theory.

 

[Nick]

Officialy CC statement on the AP issue - https://www.cardschat.com/forum/sug...cardschat-com-statement-absolute-poker-96156/

 

[Bombjack]

I don't play on Absolute, I didn't have any intention of doing so before all this broke and I don't have any intention of doing so now or in the future either. So I've got no real vested interest here. But (correct me if I'm wrong), isn't this basically what's happened:

- Someone reported the players' actions as suspect
- Absolute suspended the suspect accounts
- No other suspicious players of this nature have been reported since
- Absolute claimed they've investigated and there isn't a hole in their security

I'm not sure what else they've failed to do? Getting a third party auditor to come in and check their systems would seem to me to be the only other thing they could do, so you'd be taking a third party's word about the security rather than Absolute's.

Think of this in terms of a brick and mortar casino - if someone's caught cheating they're run out of town, the casino says their security systems are working and everybody goes about their business. Is this that different?

But the theft really did occur, and this is obvious. Absolute need to keep working on it until they find out how it happened, and should be the ones at the forefront of the investigation and pursuing the responsible parties, not relying on a bunch of 2+2 posters to work it out from a spreadsheet they sent out by mistake. If I found money was disappearing from my bank account, would I be happy if the bank told me they'd had a look, but their vault door is intact and their systems appear to be OK, so end of story?

People have had hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen by the criminals responsible, so it's not like it's just going to be brushed under the carpet. Not only were Absolute incompetent enough not to find the problem, but they insult everyone's intelligence by saying nothing happened. Moreover, if they haven't fixed their leaks, this means anyone playing there could be subject to the same scam.

There's an excellent summary / theorised timeline of the operation posted here, which makes interesting reading. Some of it is conjecture but it sounds like quite a credible interpretation of the evidence.

 

[OzExorcist]

Not exactly. AFAIK only several accounts were closed, and DOUBLEDRAG was seen later spewing money talking about how he was just a bad player who got lucky and calling river bets with 9-high and such - hence my theory.

Ah. So they sorta-kinda did the right thing a little bit but not really. Gotcha.

I'm just intrigued about what it'd take to get players who've read about all this to trust them again.

 

[Dorkus Malorkus]

YouTube - Absolute Poker Superuser "POTRIPPER" Cheating (1 of 4)

 

[Genso Hikki]

Ah. So they sorta-kinda did the right thing a little bit but not really. Gotcha.

I'm just intrigued about what it'd take to get players who've read about all this to trust them again.

An honest and detailed statement about the allegations, the steps they took to investigate those allegations, and what factors influenced their final decision.

I downloaded their software last week and set up an account, but I quickly became aware of this scandal. In fact, a google search on this whole mess is how I found cardschat. I've read too much to believe the broad line of "we're aware, we investigated, and we're ok."

 

[nicoiko]

That is really funny (hmm is funny the convenient word) as i'm playing a rebuy tourney right now on Absolute Poker : have some $ there but not enough yet to withdraw.

And in the tourney chat everybody is talking about that issue .

Anyway Nick has done the good choice on stopping any bonus/promotionnal things with Ap.

Let's hope we can have a "we're sorry we will not do that again" message from AP. yeah I know i've always been a dreamer

 

[zachvac]

YouTube - Absolute Poker Superuser "POTRIPPER" Cheating (1 of 4)

Where is this from? How does whoever put this together know ALL the hole cards, including those who fold to the alledged cheater? Also if this is correct I did see one mistake, he raised PF with 84 with a JJ, QQ, and AK at the table. If he could see those cards, that was a very stupid play.

Also, some of the action is out of order, calls are taking place out of turn, which I don't believe is possible in online poker.

 

[vanquish]

Also if this is correct I did see one mistake, he raised PF with 84 with a JJ, QQ, and AK at the table.

Maybe he was instigating action so the other players would raise-reraise each other all-in? (To get them knocked out?) Though I haven't seen it yet, so I'm not sure.