AP infinity plus one - New AP Statement

[RunDownHouse]

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I can't defend all of AP's actions throughout this situation for a lot of reasons. I am not telling anyone to give them another chance.

However, I do think there is a significant possibility that one day they will run a completely secure site (from all angles) that will offer a 100% fair gaming experience. There is ALSO a significant possibility that they will never truly clean house and no one can really deny that as a possibility. That's all yet-to-be-determined and obviously lots of people here will never play there again no matter what and it's their right to do that.

In my mind, the jury is still out on the AP that we will see going forward.

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OK, I can see all that. But why do you care? It sounds like you're putting yourself out a bit by going down there to check them out. You don't need the money they're offering, you'll lose a bit by being away from other business, there's whatever small risk of actual danger, etc. Why bother?

If there was little or no chance of AP being hurt as a result of this whole scandal, then I can see some value in verifying they've cleaned up, seeing exactly what went wrong, etc. But if instead AP can be shoved to the bottom of the pile or put out of business, why wouldn't you spend your efforts to that end?

If I wasn't invested at all in seeing AP succeed as an online poker room, and I had a choice between exerting X effort to fly down to CR, "audit" them, etc, and spending X effort simply releasing all the info I have, talking to authorities, getting the principles prosecuted, etc... well, it's a pretty clear choice in my mind. Given a reasonable chance of completely sinking AP, I think the poker community would be better off over all without them than with a "clean" them.

If you think there's no reasonable chance of this scandal hurting them significantly, or if you're personally invested in seeing them succeed, then it changes the variables, obviously.

[N 82 50 24]

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Is anyone else amused by the overabundance of references to how much of a [censored] Jenny Woo is in articles by her own employer?

I think its also hilarious how obviously hot she thinks she is. She's a really bad boob job past being just an average asian chick. Get over yourself Jenny.

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You also have to factor in who gambling911's audience is and how girls are regarded in the poker world. Many people surmise that girls who know anything about poker get an additional 2 points on the hotness scale.

I don't really agree with that idea, but it seems to be a relatively common idea and g911 might have considered that factor.

[Josem]

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Both sites and Joe Norton state that he owns 100% of the firms

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This is your error. As far as I've read, neither site nor Joe Norton claim that he owns 100% of the operations.

They claim that "Absolute Poker" is owned by Joe Norton.

Since I have now posted this three times, let me be very clear here -- <u>The legal entity "Absolute Poker" is just one part of the total gaming operation.</u>

There are other companies involved in this process. Some of the posts mention "Absolute Entertainment," some mention "24h," and some mention other organisations.

The correct point that you do make is that the ownership structure is very opaque.

[ibluffoldladies]

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Are you really amazed that I don't have to tell you about my business, or that you have no way of knowing if I have given someone a right to buy me out?

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and this kind of secrecy is what online poker has to change. There needs to be more transparency, and as Josem suggested(I think it's brilliant), an independent audit agency which can verify HH's and actually have a voice in the investigation of fraud.

[N 82 50 24]

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[ QUOTE ]
I can't defend all of AP's actions throughout this situation for a lot of reasons. I am not telling anyone to give them another chance.

However, I do think there is a significant possibility that one day they will run a completely secure site (from all angles) that will offer a 100% fair gaming experience. There is ALSO a significant possibility that they will never truly clean house and no one can really deny that as a possibility. That's all yet-to-be-determined and obviously lots of people here will never play there again no matter what and it's their right to do that.

In my mind, the jury is still out on the AP that we will see going forward.

[/ QUOTE ]
OK, I can see all that. But why do you care? It sounds like you're putting yourself out a bit by going down there to check them out. You don't need the money they're offering, you'll lose a bit by being away from other business, there's whatever small risk of actual danger, etc. Why bother?

If there was little or no chance of AP being hurt as a result of this whole scandal, then I can see some value in verifying they've cleaned up, seeing exactly what went wrong, etc. But if instead AP can be shoved to the bottom of the pile or put out of business, why wouldn't you spend your efforts to that end?

If I wasn't invested at all in seeing AP succeed as an online poker room, and I had a choice between exerting X effort to fly down to CR, "audit" them, etc, and spending X effort simply releasing all the info I have, talking to authorities, getting the principles prosecuted, etc... well, it's a pretty clear choice in my mind. Given a reasonable chance of completely sinking AP, I think the poker community would be better off over all without them than with a "clean" them.

If you think there's no reasonable chance of this scandal hurting them significantly, or if you're personally invested in seeing them succeed, then it changes the variables, obviously.

[/ QUOTE ]
You make a number of good points.

First, I am no longer going down there on the original mission as described in the other thread. I have posted a number of times in that thread about why.

Second, I do not believe there is anything that can be done to put AP out of business in the immediate. They still have plenty of traffic and they will make enough money regardless of what I do from here on out.

Third, I believe that if AP is going to be a part of the online poker landscape, everyone is best off if they are an open and honest site. I do not side with the "burn them no matter what crowd" and nor do I side with the "I'll play there now because there's value in their games crowd". I side with the people who say "I'm not going to play there for now, but I might down the line if they can convince me they're running a fair game and being open and honest with the poker community". They have a lot to prove to everyone. There are a lot of people in the middle category right now and my trip, if it had happened as described, might have been the first step in opening a communication line with AP. It would have also, in theory, told people a fair amount about whether AP is actually serious about running a poker site the "right" way (that is, how I would perceive the right way, who knows what others think) going forward.

For all those who think I'm on AP's side because I'm willing to hear them out and give them a chance to prove themselves trustworthy, I don't care. You don't have to play on AP ever again and I will never criticize anyone for making that decision.

[h11]

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I wonder why it took players of a poker FORUM, as oopsed to the "regulators" of the industy/site to pick up on the fact that there was blatent and extreamly obvious cheating going on?

Isn't the kawannee gaming commission supposed to be monitering this kind of thing?

This is a really big hit for the industry in my opinoin. If the people who are supposed to be monitering the industry (poker site/gaming commission) and preventing cheating are not doing their job, whos to say this is not going on elsewhere? And by people who are not as blatent and dumb as to be caught in the mannor that these people were?

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In Nevada casinos pay huge sums to the state in the form of taxes, so the state can afford to have a lot of investigators. The KGC gets only $10,000 per year from each gambling opearator, so they can't really monitor at each poker site thousands of players, day in and day out, for possible signs of cheating. As a practical matter, they must rely on reports of cheating, and they have a form for that mentioned on their website. They would have to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for each gambling outfit to be able to conduct the kind of investigations you want them to conduct. And then they would have zero permittees, since none would pay that much for the right to run their servers out of that indian reservation.

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I'm sorry but I've been wondering this for awhile and I just had to ask. Do you live in Kahnawake?

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No. I live in the USA a very long way from this reservation. I have a major client who in a small way is like Mr Norton, a former ironworker who became a businessman, so I guess I can easily picture Norton as a good guy, so when he or his tribesmen are attacked for no good reason I guess I want to present the other side.

[Synergistic Explosions]

Sounds like there really is nobody in control at AP. If there is and they are so frightened they want to lurk and control from the shadows that's fine I suppose. However, I wouldn't want to trust a lurker with any of my money.

Call me old school, but when I plop down my cash, I at least like to know who I plopped it to. Which one of the four facades they have set up does my cash go to? Joe the Mohawk former Chief who claims in press releases he's the owner? Or one of the other AP facades that won't allow a human name to sign any paper or document that has ever come out of their many but seperate offices? WTF? Who's in control over there? Someone somewhere must know. Or is it still the same people who lied and cheated their player base? How can we ever really know? It's all so multi layered at AP, even the one person who declares themselves the owner only owns the brand name and not the business. Quit proclaiming ownership Joe if that's the case, quit releasing press statements saying you'll clean things up if you can't.

Who's to trust at Absoulute Poker, whatever that even is anymore.

[dave88]

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lurk and control from the shadows

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Scott Tom?

[Josem]

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Sounds like there really is nobody in control at AP.

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No, no, no, no. If I've given that impression, I apologise. That is definitely not the case. It's not some sort of Tattersalls-estate sort of arrangement (that'll only have meaning to people from my state of Australia, but you can google it if you care).


Joe Norton owns the entity "Absolute Poker"

Someone else owns the other entities involved here. We do not know who those "someone elses" are.

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If there is and they are so frightened they want to lurk and control from the shadows that's fine I suppose. However, I wouldn't want to trust a lurker with any of my money.

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Similar ownership structures own many different organisations through the community.

To make a comparison, Rupert Murdoch's name does not appear on the share listing of News Corp. Companies owning other companies are very, very, common. This is a usual way of running businesses right across the world.

[h11]

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Are you really amazed that I don't have to tell you about my business, or that you have no way of knowing if I have given someone a right to buy me out?

[/ QUOTE ]

and this kind of secrecy is what online poker has to change. There needs to be more transparency, and as Josem suggested(I think it's brilliant), an independent audit agency which can verify HH's and actually have a voice in the investigation of fraud.

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Well, there is an outfit sort of like that called the Gambling Commission in the United Kingdom. Here is their url.
http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/Client/index.asp

If online poker were legal in the major market for it, in the USA, then we probably could have a similar organization monitoring online poker sites. Otherwise let's face it - it's a pipe dream. With prohibition the legal drinking age was the age at which you could get your money up to the table. We're in that kind of world right now. Maybe if a Democrat is elected President of the US, then Barney Frank's proposals to legalize online gambling will get signed into law. Otherwise, it just ain't gonna happen.