Latest cliffsnotes on Absolute soulreading.

[mersenneary]

[ QUOTE ]

Well it took about 5 days but all the Absolute regs are back.

GG Absolute, you got away with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, so here's what's up:

1. Every p2p moderator and major online pro who has weighed in throughout these threads agrees with adanthar's conclusion.
2. We've gotten zero traction with the mainstream poker community and more visible pros.

There is a fundamental disconnect between 1 and 2 IMO. If 1 is the case, I don't see how 2 can be the end result except with a poor job of getting the message out there. I realize that bigger "names" in poker are a lot less likely to put themselves on the line and call out Absolute, but if the evidence is as strong as we know it is, we should be able to get more support on this from bigger pros who care about the general poker community. The fact that we have the (initially) less believable claim and the complicated nature of pokertracker statistics/bluffs that were called/fish got lucky/but he called against aces here/he lost a lot back making more crazy calls muddles things enough that to most of poker, it's going to come down to who is making the argument.

Maybe I overestimate the contacts the green names have. But has enough been done here? Maybe they don't want to be the first to say "Absolute Cheats", fine. How about something as soft as "The data collected shows extremely abnormal numbers, and those calling for an investigation are legitimate in wanting an impartial inquiry into these irregularities. I'm not sure what that inquiry will show, but I do know that this isn't a typical crackbrained poker is rigged theory. I hope this will be thoroughly looked into, for the integrity of the game and the good of poker as a whole"?

barryg1? Greg? [censored], shaniac? Is it crazy to think that there's a "name" pro out there who would want to help with this?

[Pokeraddict]

I've done my part. I've kept the discussion alive at Casinomeister and also alerted Gambling911 about the issues outstanding. Hopefully others can contribute to the spreading of the word as well.

[knappis]

[ QUOTE ]
How do you explain NEVER losing a river confrontation?

How do you explain NEVER calling on a river, only betting/folding?

How do you explain calling for tourney life with Thigh?

[/ QUOTE ]

Danny, It is not good for the cause that you try to twist everything to look like proof for cheating. To some extent you are excused because you are not alone. This thing has turned into something that has almost religious proportions with almost no crtitcal thinking and reasoning.

dragonystic has already pointed out that the "nevers" you are stating are false. I want to point out that a chip leader can't call for his tourney life.

Three tries, three wrongs.

[Lyrrad]

My suggestion would be to emphasize the number of correct river decisions in a row in a limit game. For example, say there is a 75% chance that a player is ahead if you're betting on the river. Then, if he makes, for example, 50 out of 55 correct decisions in a row, then he's several standard deviations away from the norm. This would be like rolling a 20 sided die 55 times and getting 16 to 20 50 times. The chances of the die being fair are very low. (I'm purposely overestimating the probabilities.) If there were examples of one of this player's long sessions, it could be shown how out of the norm it would be. Hopefully this example and analogy makes sense.

The evidence should be overwhelming in favour of this cheating, it's just difficult to distill the facts to convince doubters. It should be possible to show that each of the cheaters had several sessions that were a few standard deviations from the norm. The combination of all these events makes it almost certain cheating occurred. We're essentially looking at over 20 separate events that are several standard deviations from the norm. The union of all these events make it essentially certain that cheating occurred.

[knappis]

[ QUOTE ]
My suggestion would be to emphasize the number of correct river decisions in a row in a limit game. For example, say there is a 75% chance that a player is ahead if you're betting on the river. Then, if he makes, for example, 50 out of 55 correct decisions in a row, then he's several standard deviations away from the norm.

[/ QUOTE ]

I just tried your idea. Since I couldn't come up with a way to calculate the standard deviaion I used a bootstrap technique drawing 10.000 samples. The mean is ofc 41.25 and the standard deviation was estimated at 3.22.

The odds of 50 out of 55 correct descisions was estimated at 288 to 1

[ QUOTE ]
The evidence should be overwhelming in favour of this cheating

[/ QUOTE ].

These kind of assumptions are very common in this thread. I guess to few people bother to check the validity of these claims. The evidence is far from overwhelming.

However, I do think the model is too simple. All descisions don't have the same probability of beeing correct (how hard is it when you have the nut flush? or 23o that missed?). One thing to keep in mind also is that if this guy wasn't cheating he was running hot and part of running hot is having easy decisions.

[knappis]

I just want to add that i assumed normality whan I calculated the odds of having 50 correct descisions. It is the odds of having a score of 2.7 standard deviation above the mean.

[skillgambler]

i call sometimes on the river, although i might lose the pot.

for deception

[Dobedan]

If you want to make it public, try to import the HH from DD / POTRIPPER to the PXF- Hand Viewer/Replayer and film this funny session with Camtasia.
Fill in some comments and you should get a nice video from the "Lucky - Fish"

We all can read and understand a HH for sure - ähhh most of us - but I think if we make it public, it is necessary to show it, without many "difficult" Numbers.

[Drag]

[ QUOTE ]
If you want to make it public, try to import the HH from DD / POTRIPPER to the PXF- Hand Viewer/Replayer and film this funny session with Camtasia.
Fill in some comments and you should get a nice video from the "Lucky - Fish"

We all can read and understand a HH for sure - ähhh most of us - but I think if we make it public, it is necessary to show it, without many "difficult" Numbers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good idea! Then post it on U-tube with links on all major sites, in no time it will be a hit.

[Erasa]

Let me preface my post by saying I am not a pro; I don't play on AP - I am merely a low stakes player on PS ... Having said that, I have found this thread very interesting.

But there is something that I don't think have been addressed adequately; what exactly do we/you expect AP to do? Almost regardless of what the facts are, it seems like they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Let's assume that they have access to all hands (folded, mucked or taken to showdown) and all histories about all games (seems like a reasonable assumption) and they can indeed verify the stats that have been posted here - that still doesn't explain how it was done. If it is a bug in their code that is being exploited they obviously are not aware of it or it wouldn't be there to begin with. What are they to do while they search for it - shut the site down? And if they do find a bug, fix it and punish the players then what - to publicly even suggest that their system is written in such a way that a bug can be introduced that would allow exploits like these would most likely be the kiss of death ("if it can happen once, it can happen twice ...").

Another common theme that have been mentioned is to repay the players that have been "victimized" by this; that could be a very dangerous precedent for AP to start on if they don't understand how the cheating occurred. Imagine how many claims would be forthcoming if they starting paying out based "solely" on suspicious looking stats. Whats to prevent me and a handful of budddies to sit down; IM our hands to each other and skew the results as have been reported here. The "winners" quickly withdraw their money and the "losers" go to AP for reimbursement. Granted it would take more than 1 or 2 players to make it believable and it would take quite some effort, but I seem to recall that the losses have run well into 6 figures, so it would be worth it

Another potential problem could be blackmail (I certainly don't believe the individuals that have brought these "charges" forth are blackmailing AP, but what is to stop someone from attempting to do it this way); sure AP could state they are being blackmailed, but a) who has juridistiction - where would they take their complaints and b)just because they shut the accounts down doesn't mean the offenders can't open new accounts and be less obvious about it. Because of the current legal climate surrounding on-line poker in the US, online poker sites have to rely a favorable perception among players - if players started suspecting that some unexplained shenanigans were happening at a site and they weren't 100% sure AP could do something about it those players would take their business elsewhere ...

I apologize for the rambling on, but I guess the gist of my email is to ask the question; how should/would we/you proceed if you were Absolute Poker (and No; I am not affiliated with AP)? I think they are in an extremely tough spot with no obvious solution.

Just my 0.01 - 0.02 cents ....
Erasa