Latest cliffsnotes on Absolute soulreading.

[indianaV8]

[ QUOTE ]
Just sent this email to media@absolutepoker.com - the group responsible for issuing press statements. I recommend keeping the pressure on until they address this situation with something other than the form letter response.
[ QUOTE ]
Sirs,

Your company seriously needs to address the rumors going around the online poker community at the moment. There are very serious accusations about the integrity of your games and the fairness of your website. Do you have any plans to address these claims against your company?



I know many pokers players that are aware of the situation. Many will never deposit onto your website now because they feel the situation has been handled very poorly. Many current absolute players are withdrawing money from their accounts with no plans to return. Basically - Players are worried about playing on your site. Do you plan to address these concerns.



Thanks alot,

xxxxx

A past absolute customer.


[/ QUOTE ]

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Is it really the case that people are leaving the site? If I look at poker site scout, they don't have big decrease in number of players playing after the scandal. If people don't really leave (as it is written), this will stimulate absolute to continue to provide meaningfull response.

[Pinababy69]

I wondered if anyone had thought of contacting the Wizard of Odds, Michael Shackleford, and seeing if he would be willing to look at the evidence...both PT stats and HH's. I have zero clue if he would be willing, but if he was in agreement it could add a world of credibility to the case. Just a thought.

[flight2q]

That's good thinking Pinababy69. Wizard of Odds always does good work. However the analysis here is much more complicated than what I've seen him do gratis. The only way it wouldn't be complicated is if he just did a win rate likelihood analysis, or if he were given access to the dragcatripper hole cards. The latter obv isn't going to happen. The former can be done by several people here, if we can agree on a dataset and get it into PT. But it would be good if an established site like Wizard of Odds confirmed and publicized, because there are many more people here who think they know probability than those who actually do.

However, we are very unorganized, and people seem to have given up on the idea of putting together defensible proof. That's not a problem for someone just trying to get out a sensationalist story. But it is a problem for anyone thinking they could convince law enforcement to conduct an investigation, or to get more credible news outlets to do anything other than a fluff piece.

Even if you think law enforcement is just impossible, and news exposure is ill advised, I think it is really a community responsibility to lay out the evidence in a responsible way to help people make their own decisions about whether playing on AP is safe.

[apefish]

[ QUOTE ]

In includes also "official" response from Absolute ...

Why no one so far calcuated some probabilities based on the existing HHs? Having a single agreed "number" around can stop many of the speculations.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some of this was done in the bigger threads.
Much of it got bogged down in debate over standard deviations etc. Here is one relevant quote...


------- greeksquared attempts to help put the odds this is just a legit heater in perspective...

Quote: I have a masters in statistics and an off the cuff estimate I would give would be something like 10^20:1


That was in response to discussion I believe about doubledrag having won X amount of buyins in Y amount of hands playing at the stats he had been playing.


Absolute taking the line that no chip dumping took place makes sense from their end no matter what they did or didn't find.
If they admit there was a dump they have to question why.
And I'm pretty sure those clowns cannot come up with an answer for that question that they want to explain to people.

As people have said- either the accounts come back or they don't.
If they don't there is almost no rational explanation since Absolute claims now they have cleared them.

Anybody want to wager we see any of the suspected/"investigated" accounts again?


I'm holding off on any other speculative segments for these notes. I don't think it serves a good purpose at this point.
Having sifted thru the big threads several times I am more than happy to reply to questions that come up from people by quoting relevant short segments from the other threads when necessary.

[Josem]

i want to create a graph showing how out of whack the cheaters are.

to do this, i want to run a multi-million hand database through hold'em manager (since it handles big DBs faster than PT) and graph the output (i'll just use excel 'cause i have it accessible).


if anyone has some NL hand histories - of any stake, any site - can you please zip them up and email them to me at michael@michaeljosem.com? they can be old, and no data will be individually identifiable anyway.

i imagine the output will look something like this:



similar stuff will be done for other relevant stats (river AF, vpip, pfr)

[ikestoys]

bump b/c i do what i want

and this is too important to let drop

plz everyone do josem's request

[microbet]

I was doing very well on Absolute before the software update and not very well after it. I'm just going to assume I rule at poker and there are some cheaters who aren't making it obvious.

[Dan Druff]

In reference to the "superuser being absurd" statement by someone in another thread:

It is not at all absurd. Again, I have no proof that a superuser account exists, and there may very well not be one. HOWEVER, given that we have all basically accepted that cheating occurred of some sort, I still maintain that a superuser account is the most likely explanation.

Man-in-the-middle and/or server-side attacks sound more techincally interesting. While they might make a much more intriguing research subject than careless/malicious creation of a superuser account, the actual successful implementation of such attacks would be extremely difficult.

Many of you are incorrectly assuming that a superuser account would have to be funded with real money, or that such an account would have to be tied to the AP graphical user interface. Neither are necessarily true. It is very possible that such a superuser account could be a SEPARATE entity -- NOT a playable account, and not one that you log into via the AP GUI. For example, it could be accessed through a text interface such as telnet. It doesn't need to be pretty. It just has to work.

Note that, to my knowledge, the cheaters never multitabled. This could very much be indicative of a superuser account that can only monitor one table at a time -- perhaps some sort of crude debugging tool.

Take this scenario:

1) Cheater logs onto GRAYCAT account. This account is a regular AP account, just like yours and mine.

2) Cheater opens another window and logs into a telnet session to the AP "superuser" debugger. He sets it to report all cards dealt at the table where GRAYCAT is sitting.

3) Cheater refers to the telnet window before making any and all decisions while playing on GRAYCAT.

It's possible that the cheater even used a separate computer and/or internet provider to connect to the superuser account, thus removing later suspicion toward GRAYCAT.

Other factors pointing to a superuser account being utilized:

1) Cheating appears to have begun after the last major software update. This makes it more likely that the perpetrator is someone who had access to the inner workings of the software around that time.

2) Cheater seemed to have an urgency in winning the money quickly, rather than making it more subtle and far less likely to be caught. Perhaps this can be explained by dumb greed, but also could be due to a fear that the superuser account's usage might be found and the plan would be ruined. Cheater would have to win quickly and cash out in such a case, which appears to be his MO here.

Again, I have NO proof that a superuser account exists. However, it is laughable to state that a superuser account is "absurd" while leaning toward man-in-the-middle attacks (or other highly unlikely scenarios) as a more plausible explanation.

[cowpig]

Josem, can you provide instructions on how to export/zip my old PT database?

I'm sure I could figure it out (and will tomorrow if you haven't explained by then), but I think the lazies will be more likely to comply if you do.

[Josem]

[ QUOTE ]
Josem, can you provide instructions on how to export/zip my old PT database?

I'm sure I could figure it out (and will tomorrow if you haven't explained by then), but I think the lazies will be more likely to comply if you do.

[/ QUOTE ]

load up pokertracker

click on utilities menu

click on "export hand histories to a file"

set any relevant filters (maybe exclude your last month's play - although i'm not interested in any individual's statistics, the paranoid might prefer this)

use windows or winzip to compress the resultant text files

go to www.yousendit.com to send the file