AP Visit: I'm going to Costa Rica

[PoorSkillz]

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I'm a bit puzzled by this. You WANT AP to survive?

I've just spent a little time going through KGC's gaming regulations, I can't imagine a more serious breach of the rules than to a) allow or fail to stop insider cheating and b) fail to keep proper gaming records. If those two offences don't lead to revocation of AP's licence then what does a girl have to do to get revoked around here?

Seriously, I can't see that your going to Costa Rica will achieve anything other than making you their PR agent and giving the company a better chance of surviving. I mean, really, why do you think they invited you?

If AP does survive, it basically means that the gaming commission have no teeth and this kind of thing can and will happen again.

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While I certainly can't speak for everyone, I think this represents the way a lot of people here feel. I mean, really, this makes 100% sense, doesn't it?

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I believe what he actually said was that he doubts AP will go down in flames, so if they are going to survive, he would like to make sure that they are the best they can be going forward.

The KGC has very little teeth. If they revoke AP's license, it will not put AP out of business.

This kind of thing can and may happen again.

Obviously, there are many things that could be learned on the trip, as previously explained in these never ending threads. There's no downside to a couple of the guys going down there.

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Yea. I'm pretty sure no one in the industry who can really do something about WILL do something about it. And if the players themselves largely don't care, then how the hell is a site supposed to be punished? The answer is that it's pretty much impossible to do so without a large number of people consistently going after a site and even if you do that, lots of players would still ignore you and the fish probably don't even care. 2p2 might help with something like that, but I am not convinced it would actually happen.

Anyway, that's just how I feel.

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Nat, I would have to disagree with the fact that a majority of the fish wouldn't even care. The problem is a majority of the fish still do not even know. Unless someone actively looks for news of the scandal on a discussion forum on 2p2 or pocketfives, they will not even know about the scandal or how deep it goes. And, correct me if I'm wrong, most fish don't read online poker forums on 2p2 or pocket fives. The story is not present in the mainstream media at all. That is why I still hold out hope for ESPN, whenever they finally get around to presenting that next article on AP, to place it somewhere on their homepage where the majority of the poker playing community who are still unaware will actually see it!

Giving in to Absolute Poker, trying to see them (pretend to)become a better company from here on out, is basically telling all the pokersites, "I give up! Go ahead and cheat us, do whatever you want, because there's nothing we can do about it!" I know that you're only doing this because you think there's no possible way of seeing Absolute Poker going down. But don't give up just yet. Because the worst thing that can happen to online poker is to see Absolute Poker survive this scandal, even if they truly become a clean, honest company.

[adanthar]

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Nat, I would have to disagree with the fact that a majority of the fish wouldn't even care. The problem is a majority of the fish still do not even know.

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I bet you couldn't find an AP table where somebody doesn't spam "AP cheated" at least once every couple of hours.

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The story is not present in the mainstream media at all.

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It was *the* headline at MSNBC, made the ABC News front page and was up there at Yahoo. While I had misgivings about giving interviews and trying to be a spokesman, I did it because I thought I'd do a decent job and because I really felt it would make a difference and force AP to cave.

On the one hand, I think I was successful - the media coverage was pretty fair and it *did* force AP to cave. On the other, the aspect of the coverage that made them cave - and don't kid yourself, the mainstream media were probably ~90% of the reason - was the threat of exposure. We still hold that over them, but what we don't have is the threat of a business failure, because it has now been very thoroughly demonstrated that the poker community is in large part made up of lemmings that will never quit AP in an organized manner. Am I discouraged by this? Duh. But at this point, it's time to look for Plan B, because Plan A, the threat of losing tens of millions, turns out to be hollow. I have no problem admitting that in public because they know it themselves.

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Giving in to Absolute Poker, trying to see them (pretend to)become a better company from here on out, is basically telling all the pokersites, "I give up! Go ahead and cheat us, do whatever you want, because there's nothing we can do about it!" I know that you're only doing this because you think there's no possible way of seeing Absolute Poker going down. But don't give up just yet. Because the worst thing that can happen to online poker is to see Absolute Poker survive this scandal, even if they truly become a clean, honest company.

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Eek. No, by far the worst thing is seeing them survive with Tom at the helm. That, I think we can still easily prevent. Trying to take them down now...for one, I never thought that should be a personal goal of mine or Nat's, because that job is much bigger than publicizing a breach. For another, I do think the company that is left behind is way more honest than the one that was there a month ago. But just as importantly, I have no idea how you'd manage to do that even if the scandal is on the ESPN front page for a full week. It simply never occurred to me that this thing could break as hugely as it did *and 95% of AP would still be there the next day*.

Among other things, I want somebody to go to CR because potentially finding a single clue to Tom being there might be the *only* way that AP would go down now. I don't see another one.

[PoorSkillz]

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Nat, I would have to disagree with the fact that a majority of the fish wouldn't even care. The problem is a majority of the fish still do not even know.

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I bet you couldn't find an AP table where somebody doesn't spam "AP cheated" at least once every couple of hours.

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The story is not present in the mainstream media at all.

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It was *the* headline at MSNBC, made the ABC News front page and was up there at Yahoo. While I had misgivings about giving interviews and trying to be a spokesman, I did it because I thought I'd do a decent job and because I really felt it would make a difference and force AP to cave.

On the one hand, I think I was successful - the media coverage was pretty fair and it *did* force AP to cave. On the other, the aspect of the coverage that made them cave - and don't kid yourself, the mainstream media were probably ~90% of the reason - was the threat of exposure. We still hold that over them, but what we don't have is the threat of a business failure, because it has now been very thoroughly demonstrated that the poker community is in large part made up of lemmings that will never quit AP in an organized manner. Am I discouraged by this? Duh. But at this point, it's time to look for Plan B, because Plan A, the threat of losing tens of millions, turns out to be hollow. I have no problem admitting that in public because they know it themselves.

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Giving in to Absolute Poker, trying to see them (pretend to)become a better company from here on out, is basically telling all the pokersites, "I give up! Go ahead and cheat us, do whatever you want, because there's nothing we can do about it!" I know that you're only doing this because you think there's no possible way of seeing Absolute Poker going down. But don't give up just yet. Because the worst thing that can happen to online poker is to see Absolute Poker survive this scandal, even if they truly become a clean, honest company.

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Eek. No, by far the worst thing is seeing them survive with Tom at the helm. That, I think we can still easily prevent. Trying to take them down now...for one, I never thought that should be a personal goal of mine or Nat's, because that job is much bigger than publicizing a breach. For another, I do think the company that is left behind is way more honest than the one that was there a month ago. But just as importantly, I have no idea how you'd manage to do that even if the scandal is on the ESPN front page for a full week. It simply never occurred to me that this thing could break as hugely as it did *and 95% of AP would still be there the next day*.

Among other things, I want somebody to go to CR because potentially finding a single clue to Tom being there might be the *only* way that AP would go down now. I don't see another one.

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I don't know about the spamming on the AP poker tables, but that's good to know atleast, but I heard that all kinds of chat like that was being banned.
I agree 100% with you that mainstream media is the main asset at taking Absolute Poker down, and that they have been the main reason so far (besides you, Nat, etc.), but I still believe they can do so much more. I know it was a headline on MSN.com for awhile, that's where I first really heard about it. But how long was the headline really there for? A couple hours after I read it, I didn't see it on msn.com anymore. I never even knew abcnews.com existed until I read in this forum there was an article there. When I read on this site that an article was up on yahoo.com, I checked the Yahoo homepage and couldn't find it. And these 3 sources, along with the NY Times blog and the stashed-away ESPN article are the only mainstream media sources I have heard reported on this issue (I'm sure there's a couple others). And sure Cardplayer reported on it barely for like 5 seconds and with such an Absolute spin on it. I still believe most people, outside of these pokerforums, don't know about this and if they do, don't believe it's a big deal. If a mainstream media outlet like ESPN made this a big deal of this issue, it would definitely shape the mainstream's opinion on this matter.

Regarding, the worst possible case for poker, sure it's Scott Tom still running the company. But if Scott Tom is running the company or not, we'll never truly know. According to Absolute Poker, Scott Tom hasn't even been with the company for over a year (correct me if I'm wrong, but Absolute still hasn't retracted that claim) so of course he's not going to be running the company now! So if Absolute Poker is still up and running and claiming they are clean/honest, it is still entirely possible for Scott Tom to be running the company.

I don't disagree with Nat going to Costa Rica, but if AP is willing to pay him to go down there, I doubt he will be able to find anything resembling them not being a clean/ honest company going forward, whether that's the case or not. But, hell, might as well give it a shot!

[PoorSkillz]

Also, I forgot to add, I believe none of those articles reveal how deep this cheating scandal actually goes, but instead include Absolute's old story about a "geek" hacker who was angry at the company.

[SpaceSquirrel]

Those saying things like:

"AP will have a hard time bringing in new fish due to information being spread on all the forums"

are missing the key point that most fish don't read any poker forums. If you really want to hurt AP by chasing away the fish you may have to find another way to reach them.

One way to get the word out more would be to buy ads for http://www.absolutepokercheats.com
and/or
http://www.absolutedetectives.com

Wonder how much a low-budget spot during one of the TV poker broadcasts would cost. I don't know if I'm seriously suggesting doing so, but that would be one way.

Edit: I just noticed that Josem is accepting ads for his site ... see: http://blog.absolutepokercheats.com/...yers-from.html
not sure what pygmyhipo thinks w.r.t ads for absolutedetectives.com

[Phil153]

People are still underestimating our power to hurt AP traffic. Apart from putting pressure on affiliates to remove AP (most still list them), we can easily put together teams to notify the players on their play and real money tables. They would have to ban all chat to stop it. Since many people including fish play at more than one site, we can take teams to other sites where chat isn't banned. We can hit a lot of casual players that way.

These things (especially the affiliate stuff) will take a while to have an impact, but they will. I believe the long term effect of a coordinated campaign can have a significant impact on their traffic. Planet poker suffered badly from a far less dirty scandal.

[Jan]

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People are still underestimating our power to hurt AP traffic. Apart from putting pressure on affiliates to remove AP (most still list them), we can easily put together teams to notify the players on their play and real money tables. They would have to ban all chat to stop it. Since many people including fish play at more than one site, we can take teams to other sites where chat isn't banned. We can hit a lot of casual players that way.

These things (especially the affiliate stuff) will take a while to have an impact, but they will. I believe the long term effect of a coordinated campaign can have a significant impact on their traffic. Planet poker suffered badly from a far less dirty scandal.

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At the very least it's worth a try