Cheating at AP, updated cliff notes

[HeavensDevil]

One possible solution involves tar, feathers and maybe open flame.

It's Costa Rica isn't it?

[Josem]

Dugg: 962

[whangarei]

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You guys are living in a dreamworld if you think AP will admit to a superuser.

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I would find it odd if their software didn't have such a "superuser" for testing purposes.

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Why do I think lightning won't strike again? Everyone will be watching. Everyone will be suspicious. This whole thing almost brought them down once. Trust me -- if they get themselves out of this, there's no way they will ever risk this happening again. Even if security wasn't competent enough to catch this initially, you can bet they will make the necessary adjustments now.

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This is not the kind of analysis I expected from you based on your prior posts. The only reason we are aware of this is because of a combination of some very astute observation from those who got ripped off AND some very foolish use of the superuser ability. Replace foolish use with smart superuser play, and this could easily happen again and go unnoticed.

If this was a rogue programmer, I think AP could have survived by revealing all and preventing it from happening again. But come on, this is apparently the founders and leaders of the company, I don't see how AP survives.

[traxamillion]

Looks like Mark Seif is playing in the 1k tourney on ABS in 2 hours. I guess hes not trippin about any superusers.

[KurtSF]

Good point Patty. How do you "settle up" with someone who was eliminated from a tournament by 363 & friends? Or who was eliminated later after 363 took a chink of their stack?

[whangarei]

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Druff-

...

In this rare instance where the online community can make a direction changing impact on a rogue site you are satisfied with a reset to the status quo of 6 weeks ago?

Seriously?

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QFT

[traxamillion]

And if Scott Tom or whatever isn't running the company anymore; who is? What stake does Scott Tom still have in Absolute Poker (or this AJ Green dude)

[Johnny#5]

Sweet. The Levitt article and the Digg page are on the second page when you Google "Absolute Poker".

http://www.google.com/search?q=absolute+...art=10&sa=N

It would be sweet to get these on page 1.

[fnord_too]

I'd just like to thank Dan Druff for the work he has done on this. No one should be giving him grief for trying to get his and others' money back. In the end, I don't think that will affect anything except it closes the door to the cheated players trying to litigate (which would be a challenge to say the least).

[w_alloy]

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1. This is not an isolated incident. There has been cheating in the past, there will be cheating in the future. Whatever the outcome is here, this statement is true. What we can do, and need to do, is take the course of action that minimizes the longterm cost of high stakes cheating. I believe this requires some admition from Absolute of a security breach. Allowing them to deny the cheating won't discourage future cheating, and may actually encourage it.


I mkae a living from the constant flow of money entering the pokonomy, which is generated by generally stupid people. This is also where Absolute makes their money, but some people tried to make extra by cutting into our take as well. This will never stop completely, but more blame and cost for Absolute in this case will lower how much of our edge cheaters attempt to take in the future.

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All these points are true, but I still think people like you and I would be better off if this story doesn't get any bigger than it is.

The reason is that I think the amount of cheating this is likely to stop is far less than the amount of money potential fish that are now scared would have brought in.

How much money has cheating cost per year over the last few years? A few million per? How much money do new fish bring in every year? A few hundred million?

If the affect on cheating is a 50% reduction and the affect on new players signing up is a bit under one percent, we are worse off.

I think this is a case of people over valuing a dramatic newsworthy event with quantifiable affects (cheating) and undervaluing the reduction of an underlying factor which is much hard to quantify, which of course is just human nature.

That's not to say bringing attention to this isn't the moral thing to do, that's a whole different subject though.