Absolute Poker and Disney

[CalvinHobbes]

In July, I hit Absolute Poker’s bad beat jackpot for $162,628.21. In the following months, I was cheated out of a substantial sum of money at the AP high limit tables. I do not believe that Absolute Poker has sufficiently compensated me for my damages related to the cheating, nor do I believe that the company has repaired the breach of trust caused by the cheating and subsequent corporate response.

After several weeks of attempting to resolve my concerns via private communication with Absolute Poker, I have become convinced that the company will not take any further steps to repair the situation unless it is publicly pressured to do so. To that end, I have emailed the following statement to espnpr@espn.com:



Disney in business with poker cheats?

On October 19, ABC News(a division of the Walt Disney Company) reported the story of how “a network of professional gamblers turned amateur sleuths followed the money in what appears to have been a series of rigged online poker games” at the online poker Web site AbsolutePoker.com.(http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/sto...500&page=1) As detailed in the article, Absolute Poker insiders “stole between $500,000 and $1 million over a two-week period” and were only exposed thanks to the diligent efforts of online poker players who pieced together the clues for themselves in spite of Absolute Poker’s stonewalling and denials.

And yet, in a case of the corporate left hand possibly not knowing what the right hand is doing, ESPN(also a division of the Walt Disney Company) continues to air advertisements for the Absolute Poker.net “poker school” during its popular and ubiquitous World Series of Poker broadcasts. As detailed on their respective websites, AbsolutePoker.com (http://absolutepoker.com/media/aboutus.asp) and AbsolutePoker.net (http://absolutepoker.net/about-us/Index.html) are owned by the same company- a company that ABC News has exposed for cheating and stealing from its own players.

Can it possibly be Walt Disney Company policy to knowingly accept advertising money on its ESPN sports network from a company that ABC News has exposed as stealing from its own customers?



The Walt Disney Company highly values its good name and reputation, and in the scheme of things, the revenue stream of a minor advertiser like Absolute Poker is not worth the bad publicity of being associated with this scandal.