Absolute Soulreading/Rigged thread #3

[FellKnight]

[ QUOTE ]
Every good player we know needs to come to this thread and assure everyone that it is clear that cheating has been going on because this is [censored] ridiculous. We shouldn't be arguing over whether or not they are cheating anymore, its obvious that they did. We need to gather more evidence though, not because there's not enough for a poker player to realize they cheated, but so its obvious to a non poker player that they cheated.

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Good luck with that. I'm not convinced it can be done. I mean, look at that blog entry. People who don't play poker immediately started talking about psychics and [censored]. People will always come up with ways to explain [censored] away.

I think the only possible proof you could provide would be to have them play the superuser account in real-time. HHs and statistics will never do for the masses. That being said, I don't think there is a player out there with 500k+ hands online that has read this thread and not been totally convinced that something improper was going on.

Fell

[Propster]

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I want to take a step back from this craziness and say something.

How can you be smart enough to figure out how to cheat and then use that knowledge in such a stupid way? (whether the person who figured it out is the person who was caught or whether he or she gave it to the person who was caught is debatable)

This is like figuring out how to cheat on the lottery and then winning it every week for 10 years. At some point, people are going to start asking questions.

All this person had to do was play a standard strategy at the highest level the site runs, while making (what appear to be) a few extra great bluffs and calls and they are rich.

The real question here is not "how could someone cheat?", but "how could someone cheat so stupidly?".

[/ QUOTE ]

A couple years ago, some dude figured out the sequence for the Keno in a Montreal Casino. It was generated by a computer and apparently, it had a common pattern that would repeat itself after thousands of rounds. Well after working on this for months, what that guy did is win it 3 times in a row with the exact 20 numbers...so yeah, there are stupid cheaters out there.

Also if AP isn't directly involved, a hacker could think he has to win the most while he can because his hack will probably get erased by the next patch. I really think it has to be a disgruntled ex-employee or a current one who will be looking for a new job soon.

[Gildwulf]

[ QUOTE ]
How can you be smart enough to figure out how to cheat and then use that knowledge in such a stupid way? (whether the person who figured it out is the person who was caught or whether he or she gave it to the person who was caught is debatable)

[/ QUOTE ]

technical knowledge /= poker knowledge.

Just because someone is smart enough to crack a tough security code doesn't mean they know how to use the information.

For example, think of bots...programmers can make the most elaborate code imaginable, but they need the poker theory behind it- ie. knowing what hands to play, understanding basic poker odds, knowing when to call as a %, when to raise, when to fold, understanding 3-betting light, understanding different types of players and their ranges, etc., usually done by consulting poker players.

[Lyrrad]

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i need more popcorn i guess...

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[ QUOTE ]
Results:
for 100 hand spans using 13400 hands the confidence interval (usually you use 90% or 95%, that means in 90% you will be below this win rate over 100 hands) is:
90%: 103.65bb/100
95%: 124.07bb/100
99%: 164.15bb/100
99.999%: 283.99bb/100
99.99999999999%: 480.77bb/100
or 1:10000000000000 or 1:10E14

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Interesting analysys. Good work. We need more of this.


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Minor nitpick: These are statistics based on actual good, presumably tight, play. If you based the winrate based on the play of the players in question, I'm sure the average win-rate would be negative, but the STD deviation a lot, lot bigger. It wouldn't change the end result, but instead of 1 in a trillion, it might be 1 in a billion.

[dpdawson]

[ QUOTE ]
technical knowledge /= poker knowledge.

Just because someone is smart enough to crack a tough security code doesn't mean they know how to use the information.

For example, think of bots...programmers can make the most elaborate code imaginable, but they need the poker theory behind it- ie. knowing what hands to play, understanding basic poker odds, knowing when to call as a %, when to raise, when to fold, understanding 3-betting light, understanding different types of players and their ranges, etc., usually done by consulting poker players.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree, but it doesn't take a poker genius to play a basic strategy and make a few extra good calls and bluffs. It's just common sense.

[ZOMG_RIGGED!]

Greed does funny things to people

[suzzer99]

Skill at hacking != skill at poker. They probably had no idea how easy it would be to detect. Or they figured Romnaldo would cash out their money before anyone caught on. Is Romnaldo still playing btw? He's probably the brains behind all this. If they let him cash out, they could be in on it.

[dpdawson]

Oh, and if someone was playing 90/60 at my table and killing it, I think I would be smart enough to sit out. Wouldn't this get real obvious, real fast?

[ChrisV]

As I commented on the Freakonomics post, it isn't at all clear that these guys cheated badly. We don't know the nature of the security hole they were exploiting. It could have been something that was likely to be noticed and corrected at any moment. Under those circumstances, hitting it as hard and fast as possible and trying to pull the money out quickly by dumping some of it to other player(s) would be the most +EV course of action.

[BrianBigNFun]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
technical knowledge /= poker knowledge.

Just because someone is smart enough to crack a tough security code doesn't mean they know how to use the information.

For example, think of bots...programmers can make the most elaborate code imaginable, but they need the poker theory behind it- ie. knowing what hands to play, understanding basic poker odds, knowing when to call as a %, when to raise, when to fold, understanding 3-betting light, understanding different types of players and their ranges, etc., usually done by consulting poker players.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree, but it doesn't take a poker genius to play a basic strategy and make a few extra good calls and bluffs. It's just common sense.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe the cheater just had no knowledge of programs like pokertracker and thought he could get away with it without the other players having a way to figure it out.