Absolute Poker Scandal: An Inside Job

[Josem]

Cliff's Notes: The Absolute Poker cheaters are part of an inside job - either a rogue employee (bad apple) or rogue company (bad orchard).


Long Version:
1) During a tournament played by cheater 'Potripper,' the person who ended up coming second ("Marco") thought he was cheated. He emailed Absolute, and they sent him a hand history file - an XLS file.

2) Marco opened up this file, it seemed all gibberish to him, and he didn't think anything of it.

3) First Absolute Poker scandal blow up - PT screenshots, etc. Graphical representation here: http://www.absolutepokercheats.com/vpipvbb.jpg

4) Fortnight passes

5) In passing discussion, Marco mentions he has this file. He shares it with a few people, including N 80 50 24(pokerdb.com maintainer, maker of The Poker Film, part owner of Bluff Media) who analyses what is in this file

6) Nat (N 80 50 24) & 2p2 poster Snagglepuss discover that this file is a complete hand history for the tournament - showing every table, and all hole cards of every player.

Hand histories here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...e=0&fpart=1
View Video here (free registration required)


7) Big excitement over #6

8) In further analysis, Nat + Snagglepuss discovers that this file contains IP addresses and user details (including email addresses) of people observing the table

9) In #8, they discover user #363 is observing PotRipper's table the whole time

10) At the start of the tournament, for the two hands that user #363 is not observing the table, Potripper folds preflop. He doesn't fold another hand pre-flop for 20minutes, when he open-folds with KK held by a player behind him.

11) The IP address recorded for user #363 tracks out to be a user who uses email on an Absolute Poker server hosted by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (More info here)

[btmagnetw]

need more popcorn

[ASPoker8]

vw written Josem.

I am eagerly awaiting SOMETHING from AP. I feel like we need to get this out there to the public more, but that is obvious and I am sure people are doing their best.

[phishstiiix]

Do we have any evidence that user #363 is the only superaccount? IMO this number is disturbingly large to apply to an account with this sort of power, any idea as to how many other superaccounts could be in use or could have been used in the past?

[Josem]

[ QUOTE ]
Do we have any evidence that user #363 is the only superaccount?

[/ QUOTE ]
It seems to me that this is self-evidently impossible to prove.

After all, there is always the chance that a particular superaccount has never been used before.

[ QUOTE ]
IMO this number is disturbingly large to apply to an account with this sort of power, any idea as to how many other superaccounts could be in use or could have been used in the past?

[/ QUOTE ]

This would be pure speculation. There's no evidence that other accounts have been used - although, if someone has more of the Absolute HHs from other play by the cheaters, that may change.

[Plikoe]

Its not that large if u keep in mind beta testing a tournament requires a lot of accounts.

[Victor]

link to other thread bc that was some sherlock holmes type [censored].

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...;gonew=1#UNREAD

[whangarei]

[ QUOTE ]
Do we have any evidence that user #363 is the only superaccount? IMO this number is disturbingly large to apply to an account with this sort of power, any idea as to how many other superaccounts could be in use or could have been used in the past?

[/ QUOTE ]

The relatively high user number should not suggest that this is not a superuser. Depending on the robustness of the software development practices many testing accounts with different access privileges could have been created on the fly.

[phishstiiix]

[ QUOTE ]
Its not that large if u keep in mind beta testing a tournament requires a lot of accounts.

[/ QUOTE ]

True, but im guessing the sort of testing this account was designed for would have been done well before the beta stage. Having 362 other accounts created before this presumably very early stage of testing lends credence to the possibility that there could be a number of other accounts, probably inactive, with this type of ability. As Josem says though, it is purely specualtive and basically impossible to prove without another monumental screwup from Absolute Poker.

[w_alloy]

Good concise summary.

A few other points:

-As has been mentioned above, the account with user id #363 was likely created before Absolute went public, further pointing to the fact it was an inside job.

-A good hypothetical timeline for how things played out written by Dan Druff can be found here. There is a decent amount of speculation in this link but it all fits the evidence nicely.

- http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...2&fpart=all is the thread started on 9/21 some days after the story first broke with a good summary of why experienced internet poker players who have examined the evidence (nearly) unanimously agreed this was a case of cheating long before the latest developments.

-More good links and info can be found at http://www.absolutepokercheats.com/statisticalanalysis (site referenced in op, but there is a lot of other good info here).

-AP has blatantly lied throughout, saying they carried out an investigation and that no cheating occurred. While it remains technically possible AP is really this daft, the far more likely explanation is that they are covering this up.

-P5s has severed advertising links with Absolute as explained in this post on P5s. In this post, the P5 admin Adam says that he has been on the phone with Absolute and that they are still professing their innocence, even offering Adam access to their "office and systems". Bonus whores (an influential bonus information site) has blacklisted them (see http://www.bonuswhores.com/blacklisted-sites.php).

Thats all I can think of for now.

Edit: One other important thing from the other thread is that cardplayer has talked to TheWacoKid about doing an interview, and Nat mentioned Bluff will likely write something about this too, which he will get to review.