A Seif Bet - for those who still believe a word he, or AP, says

[highhustla]

The problem isn't that Seif might have cheated.

The problem is that he assisted in the coverup of the known cheaters, who seem to be his cronies. He tried to help them steal. This goes beyond douchebaggery.

[HatesLosing]

But did Seif try to justify the plays AFTER being in possession of all of the hand histories and/or video? Because I can see him trying to justify a crazy play or two if he was going on knowledge of just those hands, but if he sees even the first 10 - 20 hands of the POTRIPPER tourney, he's smart enough to KNOW that the guy was cheating. In that case, trying to justify the plays is akin to lying/covering up.

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Here's Nat weighing in on Seif's chat comments about the potripper tournament.

To this day, Seif is STILL trying to sow doubt about cheating in that tournament.

He just posted on 2p2 that potripper may have ACCIDENTALLY clicked call at the end of that tournament instead of fold.

Give us a f'ng break Seif.

IT WASN'T AN ACCIDENT. IT WAS CHEATING.

You earned the title of LIAR with your comments about the potripper tournament.

It is not a big stretch from LIAR to CHEATER.

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I suggest you go back and read what Mark Seif wrote. He said he was assured by AP that seeing hole cards was impossible, an assurance which he believed, naive of him or not. Thus, he looked at the HH from the angle of trying to justify the plays, since he incorrectly believed that POTRIPPER couldn't see everyone's cards.

He even said he thought it looked suspicious. To the final hand, he said that there were "...possible, albeit rare, explanations." He never said a mis-click was definitely the reason for the call. He said it was a rare possibility.

He then finishes his bullet point #4 by saying he and the other player who looked at the HH were "mistaken."

Seif admits that his analysis of the HH was incorrect and that there was cheating going on. I don't know why you keep asserting that he is still trying to justify the plays.

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[LuckyMux]

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But did Seif try to justify the plays AFTER being in possession of all of the hand histories and/or video?

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Yes.

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Because I can see him trying to justify a crazy play or two if he was going on knowledge of just those hands...

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Agreed.

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...but if he sees even the first 10 - 20 hands of the POTRIPPER tourney, he's smart enough to KNOW that the guy was cheating. In that case, trying to justify the plays is akin to lying/covering up.

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Bingo.

[e_phemeral]

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AP claims the hole was created in June and it was first exploited partway through August.

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There is probably only one way for AP to regain the trust of most of us. If they are telling the truth about when the hole was "created," they can prove it by releasing the source code, heavily annotated by the developers, along with the source code for the exploiting software, also heavily annotated. Along with that, they would have to explain exactly who developed the exploit, what their role was in the development process, and how the exploit ended up in the hands of A.J./Tom/whoever. In other words, they need to tell the complete story, leaving nothing out, and show us the source.

This would, most likely, make the AP system too dangerous to play right away, so to stay viable AP would have to become a skin of UB, their sister poker site. It's a massive undertaking, but this is a massive scandal and it calls for massive measures. Only the source code will prove they're telling the truth, and from this point on, the burden will be on AP to prove they are telling the truth in anything they say.

My personal suspicion is that they are not telling the truth. The simplest explanation is that this super-account has always been there.

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Whether you believe that or not is another story. I don't think I believe it 100%, but I also don't really think this has been going on for years on a relatively covert level followed by a month or so of complete madness that was the most obvious cheating in the history of poker.

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I don't have a hard time believing this at all. It's easy to imagine that the super-account was used sparingly for a long, long time. The old claim about poker rooms never daring to cheat because of all they would be risking applies here. They had a gravy train going. Tons of money pouring in. Why would they risk all that? The answer is that for the most part, they wouldn't, even if they had the ability to.

But...people are people. Everybody's different. Every additional person who gets in on the super-user thing increases the probability that one of them, eventually, will start using it carelessly, even recklessly.

It probably started small. Maybe one of them got much bolder with the cheating than anyone had in the past and took down a good-sized bundle in one night. He might have spent the next week on pins and needles worrying that someone might have noticed his irregular play. When nothing happened and no one even mentioned it, he went, "Huh."

It took, as you put it, "the most obvious cheating in the history of poker" for us to notice it at all, and even then there was plenty of doubt and skepticism in the poker community. If that raw .xls file had not been accidentally mailed out, this whole story would have died a month ago and the cheaters would have gotten away with everything. Only the irrefutable proof in that file made this more than a thin accusation in many people's eyes.

There is a chance that AP is actually telling the truth about when the exploit was created. I don't believe they are, but they could be. There is, as far as I can see, only one way to remove all doubt.

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QFT. Great post.

[Daack]

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I suggest you go back and read what Mark Seif wrote.


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I read every single word he wrote, several times. He made several significant statements in that post. I wish for everyone's sake (including his) that he had said those things a month ago.

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He said he was assured by AP that seeing hole cards was impossible, an assurance which he believed, naive of him or not. Thus, he looked at the HH from the angle of trying to justify the plays, since he incorrectly believed that POTRIPPER couldn't see everyone's cards.


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For what it's worth, I have also been put in the position he is supposedly in. People I thought I could trust, telling me something that did not square with reality. It's not relevant here so I won't bore anyone with the details.

It is a telling measure of a mans character how he reacts in that situation. Seif is failing that test pretty badly.

He is smart enough to know, despite what anyone told him, that POTRIPPER cheated. Once he arrived at that conclusion, his moral obligation was to make sure everyone knew that.


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He even said he thought it looked suspicious. To the final hand, he said that there were "...possible, albeit rare, explanations." He never said a mis-click was definitely the reason for the call. He said it was a rare possibility.


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At this point in time, given what has occurred, someone in Seif's position posting that it is *possible* a misclick was responsible for the call is stupid.

We know it was intentional, he knows it was intentional, just f'ng say it, and cut the crap.


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He then finishes his bullet point #4 by saying he and the other player who looked at the HH were "mistaken."

Seif admits that his analysis of the HH was incorrect and that there was cheating going on. I don't know why you keep asserting that he is still trying to justify the plays.

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I don't think he is trying to justify the plays. He was before but he isn't now. The justifiable anger emanating from 2p2 and elsewhere finally got him to clear that one up.

It's a bit of a minor point in this whole drama, but it is my opinion that at a critical moment for him and for AP, he chose to lie about potripper.

[LuckyMux]

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It's a bit of a minor point in this whole drama, but it is my opinion that at a critical moment for him and for AP, he chose to lie about potripper.

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It's not a minor point at all. Unlike the deleted hand histories, Seif's comments about POTRIPPER - and Absolute Fraud - are permanently in the public domain.

And yes, they speak volumes about Mr Mark Seif, part-owner of AP (but not a spokesman, of course).

[Arnold_O]

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Enough of the 'there's not enough evidence to convict in a court of law'. THIS IS A POKER FORUM, NOT A COURT OF LAW.

It ain't going to a court of law, we know that. A dozen shell companies based out of Costa Rica and the erasure of incriminating data is making sure of it.

Had this all happened in the US (regulation, PLEASE), those servers and hand histories would now be in the hands of the Feds, and being recovered. Then we might have the evidence we so long to see.

What evidence do we have? We have a company that admits fraud at the very top. We have Mark Seif declaring he was Director of Operations in 2005. What's his role now? Good luck in finding out. According to his TV interview, he obviously still has a hand in management decisions - oh, but although AP press releases come via his blog, don't call him a spokesman...

He also lied in that TV interview (but hey, he wasn't under oath so it doesn't matter, right?). When faced with the allegation HE cheated, he doesn't even bother to deny it, but instead claims Nat has unequivocally said he did nothing wrong.

No, Nat hasn't. Ever. What's the convention about lying witnesses again? Is it along the lines of 'unreliable testimony'?

In the same interview, after saying that AP has paid back upwards of a million dollars already (seems too high if they only have two months of HH to go on, but hey), he blathers on about 'if' they've done something wrong. If!

Anyway, as I've posted myself before, there is indeed a Western convention that we presume innocence. My first post about Seif said that I was certain he was just in an embarrassing position thanks to misplaced trust (it's on Pokerati, responding to his audio interview). I no longer believe that.

I agree there isn't enough evidence to 'convict in a court of law' - but if this were actually GOING to a court of law, AP would have been raided and that evidence would be found. It's not as if AP is going to do or say anything that harms Mark Seif - he is a major stake owner, remember?

(There is also a Western convention that the likes of OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson will never work again. Just a thought.)

PS. Arnold_O: you a funny guy! Friend of anyone we know?

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i read almost all the posts on this subject, but there was so much that some of it gets confusing. i read mark seif's statements and some of it gets a little fuzzy.

assuming he had nothing to do with the whole thing then i think he acted in a logical way. i mean who wouldn't say the things he said to the public especially when you might have tens of millions of dollars on the line. but at the same time if i were him i'd be like, "wait till i get down to costa rica, i'm going to choke the living [censored] out of aj green..."

my first impression of mark seif and his connection to this is that he's innocent and had nothing to do with seeing hole cards based quite a bit on him being a losing player.

but who knows...

what i do know is that all hope is not lost when it comes to prosecuting a scumbag like aj green. when the gov't really wants to get someone they can usually come up with the means

[apefish]

To clear up some of the "when did Seif say what" aspect of this...
There is a point in the threads where Seif is playing in a tournament at Absolute and the Potripper win is up on pokerxfactor and youtube, and Mark acknowledges having looked at it.

It is at this point- when everyone else has come to the inescapable conclusion that it was clear cheating- that Mark Seif chose to state he remained unconvinced cheating took place after watching the video.

If you watch Druff's rawvegas clip - think of it in that timing.

Seif's clip at rawvegas went up after Absolute had already said "yeah there was cheating". Relisten to what he says.


edit: mux obviously I wasn't addressing you- I just happened to hit reply to your post at the end of the thread.

[Daack]

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It is at this point- when everyone else has come to the inescapable conclusion that it was clear cheating- that Mark Seif chose to state he remained unconvinced cheating took place after watching the video.


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This is precisely the point.

The timing of it all is crucial.

Seif admits that he watched 80 hands of the replay. He also says a "top pro" watched it with him.

There are not 2 intelligent people on the planet that could watch 80 hands of that replay and not be instantly convinced cheating occurred.

At that point in time Seif should have stopped everything he was doing, and started beating the [censored] out of AP's top brass to get an explanation for POTRIPPER.

If nobody could explain it to him immediately, he had to take drastic, decisive action to separate himself from the obvious cheating.

Instead, he chose to maintain the status quo AND publicly denied that POTRIPPER was clearly cheating.

It took more than a week for him change positions on this.

It was also only after people on 2p2 started hammering him about it.

It's tough for anyone to break ties with people they thought they could trust, it's tougher still when serious money is involved.

The thing of it all is, situations like these are truly once in a lifetime opportunities. That's one of the reasons it is so interesting.

It is extremely rare to be put in the situation he has been put in. It could've made him a hero. The players champion who helped take down a corrupt cheating ring.

History will be the ultimate judge, but at the moment it's not looking so good for Mark Seif.

[ThWi]

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There is probably only one way for AP to regain the trust of most of us. If they are telling the truth about when the hole was "created," they can prove it by releasing the source code, heavily annotated by the developers, along with the source code for the exploiting software, also heavily annotated. Along with that, they would have to explain exactly who developed the exploit, what their role was in the development process, and how the exploit ended up in the hands of A.J./Tom/whoever.

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In the absence of reliable information from AP this is speculation:

I think AP will have a very hard time fulfilling your request because I really don't think this is how it happened. There was no special code, there was no roque developer:

Developing special code, testing it (yes - even cheaters would have to test changes like this) and getting it released into production WITHOUT soooooo many people in the IT environment knowing about it is damn near impossible

Ockhams razor: What is wrong with the simple and very plausible explanation that an original developing or supporting account had the ability to see hole-cards (but not to play)? This explanation is supported by all available data. Ah - there is one thing wrong with the explanation: It implies this cheating could have gone on since AP started... but that, imo, IS the only thing "wrong" with it.