Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off

[pzhon]

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Kindly let me know if I have gotten anything wrong or left out something important.

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Before #1, many cash game players (limit and NL) were suspicious of the accounts Graycat and Doubledrag, which recently jumped up to high stakes play, and which played with a similar style. Both were extremely loose, and made almost no calls on the river. They did not seem to pay off any strong hands, e.g., after capping preflop, 3-handed, check-folding on a 225 flop getting 13.5:1 when someone had 55. They rarely folded when someone missed the flop. They won at an astounding rate. It was observed that their play was consistent with seeing the hole cards.

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1. A two plus twoer comes second in a tournament at AP and is supicious of how the winner played his hands.


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It should be noted that the winner played with a similar style to Graycat and Doubledrag.

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2. He asks for hand histories and AP provides them.

3. For the most part this tournament winner can be seen to be playing his hands almost perfectly GIVEN he knew most or all of his opponent's hands, but TERRIBLY if he didn't.


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While that may be true, it's really not the statement you want to make if you are trying to say that the hand history was evidence of cheating. There are a lot of terrible players, and almost any tournament winner's decisions are going to look pretty good on average, given the actual cards.

Even with a terrible playing style, though, Potripper would have to be extraordinarily lucky to fold at just the right times unless he could see the hole cards, far luckier than is expected even of a tournament winner. A quick count indicates that in 42 pots that were raised or reraised in front of Potripper, his 5 folds exactly corresponded to the 5 times someone had AK or JJ+, and he called the other 37 times. Some of his folds were when the player with the premium hand had not acted yet (someone else raised), so this wasn't just an amazingly good read of bet sizes and timing tells. Most of the calls were with trash hands like T5o which didn't block someone from having AK.

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4. The information provided by AP included stuff that is not supposed to be given out. This extra information was even more incriminating than the normally given out information would have been. It included the fact that there was someone who was observing the winner for a long time. And that this observer was known to once be a part owner of AP.


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Further, when this observer was not watching, Potripper made some extremely rare preflop folds.

It was not known immediately what the relationship was of account 363 with Absolute Poker. That information was not directly contained in the spreadsheet.

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5. AP has now claimed that the observer went from being an owner to a consultant.


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As far as I know, AP has not stated who the observer was or what his role was in the cheating. While the latest story from AP was that there was just one cheater, a consultant, that is far from the simplest explanation or from my perspective, the best fit to the evidence.

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6. The play of the winner made it so outlandishly obvious that he could see cards that one would think that he was hoping to get caught. Perhaps to discredit AP, perhaps for other reasons. If that wasn't the case, the guy had to be either an idiot or high on something. Because if he was just a poker cheat, he stood to win millions if he was less obvious about knowing the hole cards.


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Right, for definitions of idiot which include 99% of everyone, and the top 1% on a bad day, dealing with a subject in which one is not an expert. Suppose you don't play bridge, but have the ability to see all of the cards, and decide to use that to win a tournament. Would you know how to use the information to cheat in a way that is not suspicious to a bridge expert? I'd bet against it.

The complete hand history is convincing to just about all poker players, but it may not look out of the ordinary to someone who doesn't play poker but sees edited hands on TV. The cheaters probably didn't expect the complete hand histories to be shown. Stupidity looks far more likely than a desire to be caught.

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7. The information was disseminated to other two plus twoers and AP was confronted with the ridiculously obvious hand histories. But NOT the evidence about the observer.


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Actually, for about a month, AP received many complaints about those accounts that were not based on any information in the accidentally released tournament record. The suspicious accounts were seen dumping chips, too, and that was pointed out the AP.

In that month, the story AP told was that they had reviewed the hands, and found nothing wrong, and even that what appeared to be chip dumping (capping every street, and then folding to the last raise several hands in a row) was not actually chip dumping.

Now, it is a popular theory that the cheaters were responsible for those statements. However, as far as I know, AP has not declared which of its statements were not really by the "good guys" at AP, and they haven't apologized for their past intentional misstatements.

I believe it was about October 14th that the hand history became publicly available, but AP was fielding requests for information (e.g., from Casinomeister) long before then. I don't know what information people put into their queries when they asked in the brief period between when the information Absolute Poker had all along was released, and when the KGC announced it would audit AP on October 17th, or when Absolute Poker officially admitted that there was a security breach on about October 21st. However, it appears that they were following online discussions, and the revelations about the connections with Scott Tom and AJ Green were posted on about October 16th-17th.

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8. AP replied that in spite of the suspicious hand histories, they were sure that no one could see the hole cards. They based this view on the fact that their engineers said it was physically impossible.


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The last sentence is speculation. In fact, I doubt that an engineer said that it was impossible, in context. AP said some things were impossible that anyone competent would know are not impossible, but at worst extremely hard or unlikely.

Mark Seif stated that he had seen the history with all of the hands, and had not found this to be convincing evidence of cheating.

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9. It is not known whether AP showed their engineers the hand histories, allowing them to apply Baye's Theorem before offering their opinion.


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Is it known whether the statement involved consulting the engineers at all?

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10. When the observer evidence became known, AP claimed that they investigated further and did indeed find the software glitch that allowed someone to see the hole cards. They claimed to have corrected that glitch.(Physically speaking. Not through the use of observing hand play.) And they reimbursed people for the incident and others they claimed to have uncovered. Many two plus twoers think that AP already knew that there was the glitch but wouldn't admit it until the observer evidence was made public.

11. We still do not know why someone sent out hand histories with extra incriminating evidence.


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This was not the only time they sent out the complete hand histories. This was the only example which appeared to have flagrant cheating in it.

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12. We still do not know why the cheater made things so obvious

13. We do not know the nature of the software tinkering that allowed someone to see the hole cards. Or whether something similar is scientifically possible on other sites.

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You're a fan of Bayesian analysis, so I hope you are analyzing which of the following scenarios is more likely, given what we have observed:

Scenario 1: Absolute Poker is an essentially honest company, at least from the perspective of players. They made some serious mistakes giving bad people access and responsibilities they should never have had, but they have fixed the security breach which allowed players to be cheated, and made the players whole.

Scenario 2: Absolute Poker is rotten to the core, and their remaining management is still fundamentally dishonest. Maybe they will be less obvious about cheating players in the future, but they can't be trusted unless there is a change of all senior management.

Of course, in both situations, the company would claim Scenario 1 is the case, so that statement tells us nothing. What evidence do we have which is more likely in Scenario 1 than Scenario 2?

There are several things I've looked for to reinforce Scenario 1 over Scenario 2, such as honesty about minor details and transparency, but I haven't seen them. The disputes with affiliates and contractors and the history of shilling and spamming don't help.

[forshure]

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This graph pretty much prooves it




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The one by itself on the left FGators?

[highhustla]

David,

Move #5 to the end, and then the chronology is correct.

The most notable thing about Mark Seif, is that AFTER the POTRIPPER master HH became available, Seif STILL claimed that he wasn't sure it was cheating (the last man on earth). He also posted Absolute's anonymous stonewalling press releases in his blog during this time period. Worth noting is that Seif has told many reputable 2+2'ers in person that he has a large ownership stake in AP.

The answer to this

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11. We still do not know why someone sent out hand histories with extra incriminating evidence.


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is most likely retardation, as the same thing has apparently happened before w/ requested AP hand histories.

[LiveNow]

this should actually be locked. No new info comes to light as far as i can see.

[VP$IP]

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this should actually be locked. No new info comes to light as far as i can see.

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There are still many players who do not know about this. Why take it off the radar screen?

[highhustla]

Who the [censored] died and made you mod? Verb tenses FTW.

[MarvinMartian]

at least pzphon summed everything up nicely.

[Jazzy3113]

The title makes you sound like you are a freaking dog and Mason is your owner.

Also, thanks for posting a crappy scaled down timeline. Thanks for your insight into the matter. I'm glad Mason gave you permission to write this thread.

[zen_rounder]

ONLINE SUFFERS 2+2 SELL LESS BOOKS, JUST A THOUGHT