Re: Absolute Cheating
I've been following this story from its infancy and am fascinated by it, as so many others are. I came out of the woodwork to give my $0.02 and see if I can add anything that would help the overall effort.
From Absolute:
[ QUOTE ]
However, a longer term review has shown that similar playing strategies have not resulted in the same results as these players achieved in the small sample of hands mentioned in the online discussion.
[/ QUOTE ]
I have to believe this is why the dumping occurred (and was likely orchestrated by AP, though we don't need to make this argument), so that they could make this claim.
For what it's worth, I wrote about this controversy to my mother, and this sort of language might be of some use for that reason. I like the summaries written so far (you can see that I stole from one of them), but I also don't like aspects of some of them (namely speculation about it being an inside job, about Seif, and the "bad players were able to beat good players" angle). Even the stuff about chip dumping, if written the wrong way, detracts from the core point that these accounts could see hole cards. Once we establish that, everything else will fall into place in time. If we don't establish that, Absolute wins at muddying the waters and largely gets away with it. We don't need to prove or even suggest Absolute's complicity if it's at all taking away from the strength of the "hole cards could be seen" argument. Anyway, it has factual errors (the ten high hand was a different tournament (?), I'm not sure about the total number of hands, I don't know about my uses of "always" and "inconceivable"), and it needs more statistics instead of just stating that it's impossible, but those things can be ironed out if it does turn out to be of some help:
Some introduction leading into the evidence, then:
[ QUOTE ]
It started with an analysis of the last 27 hands of the final table of a $1000 tournament on Absolute Poker, which was won by account "DOUBLEDRAG". On the four hands DOUBLEDRAG folded without putting money in the pot, his opponents had pocket aces, kings, queens, or jacks, the four best possible starting hands. On the other 23 hands, DOUBLEDRAG played and made perfect "reads", including calling a massive all-in bet with one card to come with just ten high, no draw, and because his opponent miraculously was bluffing with nine high, DOUBLEDRAG won the hand. Most importantly, through Poker Tracker, a widely used software program that records every hand played with an opponent and can be used to detect foul play, we find that over nearly a thousand hands in suspect tournament and cash game sessions, DOUBLEDRAG and dummy accounts soundly linked to him had a near-infinite statistic in what players call "river aggression". This data means that on the last round of betting (after all the cards had been dealt out and determination of the winning and losing hand was no longer subject to chance), the suspicious accounts always raised or folded: they never ever simply called a bet. Moreover, these decisions to raise or fold amazingly always turned out to be correct based on the other player's holdings. Acting in this way, the accounts won hundreds of thousands of dollars from Absolute Poker's other players.
While some players with aggressive playing styles will often raise or fold, it is unheard of to never call, and inconceivable to always be right with every decision on the last round of betting over this large of a sample size. The experts asked themselves, in what circumstances would it make sense to always raise or fold, and never to call? The simple answer is that in this situation, if you know your opponents' cards, then clearly you should raise (if you have the best hand or know your opponent's hand is too weak to call) or fold (if neither is the case). To every respected professional poker player who has analyzed the evidence and weighed in, there is only one explaination: Absolute Poker's security had been comprimised, and the player could see the pocket cards of everybody else, destroying the integrity of the game.
[/ QUOTE ]
Then perhaps a paragraph about implications, what now, etc.
As for statistics, how about the chance of him making his four open-folds/folds to a single preflop raise in the last 27 hands on the precise four times AA, KK, QQ, and JJ are out there? In other words, given that AA, KK, QQ, and JJ will be there on four of the 27 hands, what is the chance those will be the four hands he doesn't play by the random dumb luck AP says he is doing it by? This number is a bit flawed given the information the single raise provides him, though I would argue not all that far off: (4/27)(3/26)(2/25)(1/24) = 1 in 17,550, or 0.0057%. In and of itself not enough to prove anything, but as a side or intro to the main argument about psychic river aggression, compelling.
I'll end here and comment more on individual things to make sure this post doesn't go on longer than it already has.
|