Absolute Cliffsnotes (Mod edit: AP thread, part 2)

[tongni]

[ QUOTE ]
I am still amazed and beyond disgusted at what I saw and heard very late last night/early in the morning at Absolute Poker...and I don't even know what to do about it. The irony of this happening the night after my "poker ethics" post is too much, also:

Anyone who has watched the 75/150 game there knows that Mark Seif (who is the site's signature pro and part-owner) has been extremely abusive lately of the other players when he's at the table.......always banning other players' chat in an instant and threatening account closure, etc. He has lost a lot a money at that 75 game (the resident pros consider him the big fish there) and it's been pretty obvious lately that it was starting to get to him more and more.

Anyway......stuckinpgh (my good friend Mike) is one of a handful of high-limit players who have managed to get under Mark's skin in recent weeks. It was evident that Seif was not fond of Mike and would tilt sometimes. Only this time, it turned out to be a lot worse than harmless trash talk.

Last night, Seif was actually having a good session for a few hours at the 75 table. Eventually the game mostly broke up, and it was just Seif and Mike heads up. After some see-saw action, Mike started to get the best of him again and was ahead maybe 4 or 5 k for the HU time, I'd say. At that point, Seif says something like "one second punk"....leaves the table.....then comes back about a minute later and announces "I'm ready to take you down."

Play then started again......and I saw something that I never have before in all my on-line poker play: obvious manipulation. Every hand was a complete dissection based on whatever Mike was holding (third pair was capped by Seif if Mike was behind or bluffing, for example.) About 10 or 12 k was basically stolen in 15 minutes (over maybe 100 hands), and here's the kicker: he was so pissed and beyond rational thinking that he actually wanted Mike to know what was going on! For example, Mike had K9 on one hand and flopped a boat. Seif was first to act after the flop, and FOLDED OUT OF TURN just that time. I had heard that Seif was having some personal problems, but who would've ever guessed that he could be capable of this. Between that possibility and the abuse that he's taken from the pros (in chat, $ lost, and pride lost at the tables), he must've finally snapped and lowered himself THAT much to get some revenge. We were simply stunned, and all Mike could do at the time was leave the game and withdraw the rest of his money (which he did get already.)


[/ QUOTE ]


Just wanted to add my own two cents. A while back, I played Mark Seif HU for maybe a week straight and won around 100k off him. Mark eventually dissapeared and stopped playing 150/300. He ended up coming back a few months later and absolutely crushing the games. As Baronzeus, Cogster, and a couple other people can recall, he was absolutely crushing the games. Every single time we played a pot together, he totally owned me. I think one time he checkraised me 6 or 7 times in a row on the turn when I was bluffing, but never when I was ahead. Eventually, I ended up losing around 120k or so in those games that went around Mark for two weeks straight, and just feeling very uncomfortable with the site in general, I cashed out the rest of my money and quit. I've never quit a site because I felt uncomfortable at it, but something about Absolute and Mark's play really felt wrong. After I quit, I remember other people mentioning to me on AIM that Mark was bragging that he "busted me from the site".

I'm going to look through my PT when I get home for any similar suspicious activity.