Absolute Soulreading/Rigged thread #3

[adanthar]

argh let's not get the NYT into this please.

Cardplayer is one thing, but we all know how a mass media piece on this would look like.

[crashjr]

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They all concluded that it was beyond improbable that POTRIPPER or DOUBLEDRAG knew what there opponents cards were

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This sentence should be taken out back and shot.

Instead, try "It was obvious to everyone that POTRIPPER and DOUBLEDRAG knew what their opponents' cards were."

Also, establish the credibility of your "peers" by saying "who are some of the best players I know. These players, besides being quite accomplished in the poker world, include professionals such as lawyers, engineers, [insert other professions of HSL 2+2ers here]."

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lol i'm an engineer, not a English major, take it easy [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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Sorry, I didn't mean it in a bad way, it is just that the rest of the post flows pretty well, then that monster of a sentence comes out. I am a lawyer and I edit drafts as a part of my work. Sometimes I forget that others have pride of authorship issues that I got over a long time ago.

Sorry if I came off too harshly.

[ikestoys]

any other changes?
For those of you who don't know me, I'm a 21 year old online poker player that has experienced a lot of success at Absolute Poker for the last year, making well into 6 figures, starting from 50 dollars. I did this not through luck, but hard work and determination to make myself a better player. Although I'm by no means the best online poker player in the world, there is no doubt that I'm in the top 1% of players online.

On a fateful night in August, I found what looked liked to be an extremely good game on Absolute. The player DOUBLEDRAG was playing almost every single hand he got preflop, a typical good player plays 20-25% of their hands. I play extremely loose, sometimes playing up to 40% of my hands. The problem with playing nearly 100% of your hands is that most of the time, someone is going to be starting with a better hand than you, so unless you catch better cards than your opponents or force them to fold, you will end up losing money. I can get away with sometimes playing 40% of my hands because I'm an extremely good postflop player, but I still end up losing some hands. DOUBLEDRAG literally never called a river bet when he had the worst hand. I was frustrated, but I thought he was getting extremely lucky and I'd break him later.

About two weeks later, in a tournament, the player POTRIPPER won a 1k buy-in tournament event on this hand:
Stage #896976330 Tourney ID 1883389 Holdem Multi Normal Tournament No Limit $4500 - 2007-09-13 01:43:49 (ET)
Table: 14 (Real Money) Seat #3 is the dealer
Seat 3 - POTRIPPER ($765740 in chips)
Seat 8 - CRAZYMARCO ($214260 in chips)
POTRIPPER - Ante $450
CRAZYMARCO - Ante $450
POTRIPPER - Posts small blind $2250
CRAZYMARCO - Posts big blind $4500
*** POCKET CARDS ***
POTRIPPER - Calls $2250
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
*** FLOP *** [4h Kd Kh]
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
POTRIPPER - Bets $9000
CRAZYMARCO - Calls $9000
*** TURN *** [4h Kd Kh] [7s]
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
POTRIPPER - Bets $13500
CRAZYMARCO - All-In(Raise) $200310 to $200310
POTRIPPER - Calls $186810
*** RIVER *** [4h Kd Kh 7s] [5s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
POTRIPPER - Shows [10c 9c] (One pair, kings)
CRAZYMARCO - Shows [9h 2h] (One pair, kings)
POTRIPPER Collects $428520 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total Pot($428520)
Board [4h Kd Kh 7s 5s]
Seat 3: POTRIPPER (dealer) (small blind) won Total ($428520) HI$428520) with One pair, kings(ten kicker) [10c 9c - B:Kh,B:Kd,P:10c,P:9c,B:7s]
Seat 8: CRAZYMARCO (big blind) HI:lost with One pair, kings [9h 2h - B:Kh,B:Kd,P:9h,B:7s,B:5s]

So what does that hand mean? It means that this player made a call with absolutely no hand and just happened to be right. Now, I'm all for fish getting lucky once in awhile, but this hand sparked more investigation, and what was found was truly disturbing. Hand histories from the tournament from multiple players were gathered and analyzed. It was found that POTRIPPER played exactly like DOUBLEDRAG. The only times POTRIPPER folded preflop was when someone else had AA, KK or QQ. POTRIPPER also never called a river bet when he was beat.

When the news of POTRIPPER came out, I immediately thought of DOUBLEDRAG and submitted my hand histories of that session to some of my peers who are the best players I know. It was obvious to everyone that DOUBLEDRAG knew what there opponents cards were. They all concluded that it was the only explanation for both players playing nearly all their hands, except when someone hand a monster preflop. They all concluded it was the only explanation for the fact they never called a river bet when they were beat, as this is extremely unlikely when you are playing so many hands.

So what is happening in response to this? Absolute Poker claims that it is investigating the matter, but many people do not trust the site to admit that someone was able to cheat on this magnitude, as it would hurt their business severely. The only way to make sure that Absolute handles this situation promptly and fairly is to escalate this story in the poker media and to keep harassing Absolute's security and customer service department. You may not have been cheated out of any money, but a strike this deep into online poker's integrity is bad for everyone and needs to be dealt with promptly.

[ikestoys]

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argh let's not get the NYT into this please.

Cardplayer is one thing, but we all know how a mass media piece on this would look like.

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what are they going to do? make online poker illegal?

[Janis N.]

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Ideaally all communication between the server and client should be encrypted across all network and internet connections. So if the network is compromised, they would also have to break that encryption. But it wouldn't surprise me if Absolute had some old, lame vulnerable encryption or something (I'm not an expert in that field).

[/ QUOTE ]As long as you gain access to the server's private key and network you have free reign in doing man-in-the-middle attacks thus intercepting all network communication. But I'm no expert in the field either.

It's tangential to the real discussion so if any of you want to discuss it further please IM me.

[Redgrape]

Ike,
There still can be some dumbing down. for example,
"POTRIPPER folded preflop was when someone else had AA, KK or QQ"

Could be changed to:

"POTTRIPPER folded preflop when someone else at the table had a top 5 hand"

no?

[suzzer99]

If the government really wanted to kill online poker, and had a clue, they'd be watching these forums and make sure to turn this into a big sensational story.

[FellKnight]

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argh let's not get the NYT into this please.

Cardplayer is one thing, but we all know how a mass media piece on this would look like.

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what are they going to do? make online poker illegal?

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With their track record you'll be lucky if you aren't named as the cheater.

Fell

[Gildwulf]

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Too complicated, Ike.

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what part? how would you change it... etc.

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-no hand histories
-no technical jargon, that includes preflop and postflop
i.e. instead of "every single hand he got preflop"-->"every single two-card hand he was dealt"
-don't make the river call the center of the evidence, I would zero in on the most incriminating piece of evidence which is the infinite river aggression. If properly explained it is the most powerful argument.
-I would just dig right in and get more to the point, instead of using filler stuff like "one fateful night in etc".

So the structure would be something like:

-establish that you are experienced, winning player and not a crackpot
-establish that other experienced, winning players agree with you at the highest limits
-explain the Doubledrag issue in a paragraph, mentioning the 10-high call as fishy. Explain that this in itself isn't enough to indict him, but when a number of opponents pooled their hands together, they discovered...
-the river aggression which is the smoking gun of the argument. It is crucial we explain this in 2-3 sentences why it makes NO sense and no regular player could possibly be that aggressive without knowing the hole cards.
-explain other stats (number of hands played and aggression) as well as other fishy behaviour (folding for one bet, limping in always when someone had a big pocket pair in the blinds when otherwise he is raising any two cards, chip dumping, etc)
-explain what absolute has done
-explain why this is inadequate
-explain what needs to be done to clear Absolute from any wrongdoing (audit, full investigation, etc)

Fin

[Gildwulf]

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As far as a possible media contact I would suggest Steven Levitt, the author of Freakonomics. He runs a blog through the New York Times.Freakonomics Blog He is obviously pretty high profile from the success of the book. More importantly he was also involved in the Pokernomics project Pokernomics Webpage

He even mentions pokertracker on the pokernomics webpage. He seems like he could be the absolute perfect person to condense the poker math down to a level that the mass media would understand, he has a ton of credibility and could pretty easily make a basic post on his blog that would raise the necessary red flag.

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this is an excellent idea, instant credibility too