Cheating at AP, updated cliff notes

[Vega33]

SIAP, but the Associated Press has picked up the story, though it doesn't appear to have been widely disseminated:

http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?S=7229669

[fjbourne]

http://www.ktvn.com/Global/story.asp?S=7229673

[metamath]

am i the only one who thinks this is doomsday for online poker?

[Vega33]

[ QUOTE ]
am i the only one who thinks this is doomsday for online poker?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think it's Doomsday, but you can bet that the Bill Frists of the world are going to enjoy a big round of "I told you so's." I'm also concerned by the fact that the federal regs implementing the UIGEA have yet to be released. Assuming there was some debate in DC about how stringent the regs should be, this certainly won't help our cause any.

[derosnec]

dumb question

what is so great about digg? like what happens when story gets on front page of that site?

[ibluffoldladies]

[ QUOTE ]
dumb question

what is so great about digg? like what happens when story gets on front page of that site?

[/ QUOTE ]

a kitten dies.
Seriously, both of the poker stories are now in the top ten, and on Digg, it's very rare to have two similar stories in the top ten. People are very interested in this scandal.

[FatalError]

[ QUOTE ]
can we at least get the t-shirt thread back up in MTTC or tournament circuit? these shirts need to be done before foxwoods

[/ QUOTE ]
Will do

[lacky]

[ QUOTE ]
They already have suffered, and will continue to suffer, regardless of how this concludes.

This whole thing made them look both stupid and dishonest on so many levels.

You guys are living in a dreamworld if you think AP will admit to a superuser. They won't. They might as well turn off their servers and shut down if they admit that. Perhaps doing so might be the best plan of action for those of us at 2+2, but it would be suicide in regards of how it would relate to the casual poker player. If AP admits, "Yeah, there was a superuser", every donkey who lost money on the site -- all the way down to the $.02/$.04 games -- will attribute their losses to being cheated by a house account. It would be a complete disaster for them.

We have to find a compromise here, if we want any sort of resolution.

If you're not going to be satisfied with anything but a complete mea culpa on AP's part, you'd have a better chance waiting to see flying pigs and hell frozen over. You ahave to look at this from a realistic perspective, and what we can honestly expect and not expect from this.

Let's be serious, guys. The return of the money would mean far more than just a goodwill return of funds. If AP determines that they will suffer MORE from doing the right thing than their current platform of denial, then they will continue down the road of denial.

Why do I think lightning won't strike again? Everyone will be watching. Everyone will be suspicious. This whole thing almost brought them down once. Trust me -- if they get themselves out of this, there's no way they will ever risk this happening again. Even if security wasn't competent enough to catch this initially, you can bet they will make the necessary adjustments now.

[/ QUOTE ]

In all honesty Dan, Absolute died in my eye's the second they released the statement that they had thoroughly investigated all hands and all accounts and found no wrong doing. That was unforgivable in my mind. They didnt have to admit to a superuser account, or anything else. All they needed to do was conclude their investigation, State they found wrongdoing, freeze accounts, refund wronged players. If they want to see how it's done have them read stars handling of THEVOID mess.

What is killing absolute isn't that some account, backdoor, hack, whatever could have taken place. Nothing is perfect, it could happen anywhere to anyone. What killed absolute for me is there security team looked over all the evidence we are looking at, and found NO wrongdoing, or found wrongdoing that the management ignored.

thats it, they dont get my play. Anything they do from here forward is irrelevent to me. I hope everyone wronged gets their money back, and I hope they are then wise enough to withdraw it and deposit it somewhere that has a sucurity team and management that actually investigates and corrects cheating.

[Greg Miller]

[ QUOTE ]
Slightly OT:
I read that AP owns UB, but does this mean UB could be compromised as well? The software is different, but how safe should UB players be feeling in light of this scandal? I have some money on UB, so I'm a bit concerned.

[/ QUOTE ]

AP owns UB, but UB is a skin of the Excapsa poker network, which used to be owned by UB. Excapsa was spun off into a separate company and taken public. After the UIGEA, public companies ran for the hills, so a private company (apparently the one that owns Bet21, which owns another Excapsa skin) bought Excapsa out. A number of people have said that that company is somehow connected to AP/UB, but it's not really clear (from what little I've seen in public sources) whether that's correct and what the relationship might be. It's all hearsay and anonymous sources and posts that reference other posts.

If AP doesn't own Excapsa, there's little chance that their ownership of UB would be a problem, since they wouldn't control the systems on which the network runs. Nor would they control the software.

If they do own Excapsa now, it *could* be a problem. But it's not clear when/if the people who appear to be involved broke ties with AP, so it's not clear if they were even still with the company when it acquired UB and (maybe) Excapsa. They may have never had any access at all to anything UB-related, even when they worked at AP.

This is all made more unclear by the fact that we don't really know how the cheating was done. Some people have speculated about "superuser" accounts created for security and/or debugging purposes, and the presence of 363 lends some credence to that theory.

So the short answer is "We don't know, and we won't until AP comes clean."

[EDIT: Any updates/corrections/further details on the AP/UB ownership situation would be appreciated]

[Josem]

[ QUOTE ]
dumb question

what is so great about digg? like what happens when story gets on front page of that site?

[/ QUOTE ]

lots of people read the story.

to put it in perspective, here's the traffic report for www.absolutepokercheats.com

Thursday, October 11, 2007 (249)
Friday, October 12, 2007 (187)
Saturday, October 13, 2007 (193)
Sunday, October 14, 2007 (946)
Monday, October 15, 2007 (2,885)
Tuesday, October 16, 2007 (10,248)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 (17,651*)


*Oct 17 is not yet over at the server recording visitor numbers