Mark Seif responds 1/11/07. Most amusing!

[Shooz]

[ QUOTE ]
Going to play devil's advocate here (brace myself for the nasty posts about me...).

The one thing that doesn't makes sense regarding the 2/15/06 session is why would Mark Seif only cheat once, for 20 minutes? If he had the ability to see the cards, wouldn't he keep cheating, like AJ? If Mark had other suspicious sessions, it would be all over the web by now.

(FYI, I made a replied with a rather long post to Todd's post "My rebuttal to Mark Seif on RawVegas.TV" where I did my best to analyze the body language of both. My impression is that I found Mark's denial suspicious)

[/ QUOTE ]
possibly because he was tilted and got careless, much like the 10 high call for POTRIPPER

[highhustla]

We only discovered any cheating in the first place because it was the worst, most blatant cheating of all time.

The only sessions we've called into question are the ones where the behavior is blatantly suspicious, BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY EVIDENCE WE HAVE.

Just because POTRIPPER played like an absolute retard, and Seif allegedly open-folded a boat, doesn't mean that the cheaters had to play like unbelievable [censored] morons every time they cheated.

You seem to imply that every time a person cheats in poker, it is obviously "suspicious" to a casual observer?

Your question is the right one. But it's not devil's advocate.

[KCW12]

At this point, does anyone think releasing the HH (even if Seif is completely innocent) will help his reputation? I think it will just spur a wave of claims that the HHs are doctored and people will bash him even more. That sucks for him because I think he probably is innocent, but he handled the situation about as bad as anyone could possibly handle it. If AP really does have the HHs backed up somewhere, Seif sure didn't seem to put a whole lot of effort into getting to them considering what he had at stake.

[Synergistic Explosions]

[ QUOTE ]
The only sessions we've called into question are the ones where the behavior is blatantly suspicious, BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY EVIDENCE WE HAVE.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point. The fact is, we don't really know how much they cheated because if they did it with normal intelligence it's impossible to detect. Plus not having access to the HH's render any review moot.

At this point in time, we just have to accept the refunds AP sends out and be grateful.

[RikaKazak]

[ QUOTE ]
If Seif sues, there could be a counter-suit which involves revealing AP's ownership structure in court. They don't want that, and they don't want any more attention on themselves than they already have. Seif won't sue, so Todd shouldn't be worried. I really hope he does though.

[/ QUOTE ]

A lawsuit would be A+ reading while playing poker

p.s. Seif = DOUCHEBAG!!! sue me too please LOL!

[DanielM]

You have a point, Mark Seif is very smart and could cover his tracks better. I think patterns would reveal themself over time even if he limited his alleged cheating. Of coarse, without extensive, valid HH there is nothing to analyze.

[Craggoo]

Cliff notes someone?

[STA654]

I haven't been following this for a while.

Back when the Scott Tom name was just coming out the general sentiment was to leave Mark Seif out of it.

Has this changed?

[fraac]

[ QUOTE ]
Cliff notes someone?

[/ QUOTE ]
Mark Seif is part-owner of AP and was aware of fraud by AJ Green and Scott Tom as it occurred, though no proof has yet been found of him taking advantage of it.

[Weevil99]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Now I understand why he plays poker and doens't practice law much. This man should not be representing himself or anyone else in any serious matter.


[/ QUOTE ]
lol, QFT

[ QUOTE ]
I have been told that it is likely that Absolute Poker does have those hand histories

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, now that they've had time to be edited.

[/ QUOTE ]

They've had time to edit Seif's hand histories, but they haven't had time to edit the other billion.

If those backup tapes exist, they need to be produced, right now, and turned over to the auditors. Make backups of the backups, if need be, but those tapes need to be out of the hands of AP.

Once the auditors have them, they can contract a software firm to write a utility that will compile a complete HH database (maybe using Pokertracker) on every player who has ever played at AP. The purpose of the utility would be to go through the entire database and look for any statistical anomalies such as the one we saw in that scatter diagram for Potripper. Any account, or single session or tournament, that was flagged by the program should then be carefully examined by the auditors.

But those tapes need to be found and turned over now, while AP can still claim that they haven't had time to doctor them. The only thing they really have time to do with them, anyway, is delete any tournaments or ring games in which a cheater was playing (and cheating). They could use the same approach described above to identify them, erase them from the backups, and then make clean backups and hand those over to the auditors. The auditors would probably never be able to tell the difference. If they somehow noticed that a tournament was missing, AP could just say that tournament must not have been backed up. And there is probably no method that would enable the auditors to discover a missing cash game session.

But even simple identification and deletion would take time. That's why AP needs to give the tapes up right now. Not next week or next month. Right now.

There can be only one reason for delaying any further.

As for Seif, I really don't care much what happens with him. If he's guilty, I hope it's proved publicly. If he's innocent and his name is being tarnished anyway, well, his own actions brought that on. For trying to pretend that Potripper's HH was merely unusual rather than proof of cheating, for that one thing alone, he deserves to have his reputation as a professional poker player ruined. Either he really was so stupid he couldn't see what was obvious even to me, a complete poker novice, or he was lying to protect his company at the expense of all of its customers who were themselves victimized by that company.

I don't know if it's possible to defame someone like that.