For all the "pro-regulation" advocates dancing on Absolute's head ...

[MiltonFriedman]

Your faith in "regulation" is touchingly naive.

Pop History Quiz:

What OTHER online poker site was discovered to have a "back door" which allowed certain players to see their opponents' hole cards ?

What State Gaming Commission approved the suitability of the former manager of that site for a GM position with an unrestricted gaming licensee, with knowledge of his history of involvement with that same poker site ?

Research THAT one before you go shouting for "regulation" of the marketplace as a panacea for this rather simple "dishonest employee case".

Do you also think that if someone working in a B&M casino cheats that the casino's license is pulled ?

Here there is VERY little to actually tie Scott Tom personally to this caper. I would be astonished if he had ANY role in the heist. I tend to think the "disgruntled geek" line may be accurate. I could be wrong, but I doubt it on this one.

Absolute DID screw up clearly. The security and monitoring by Absolute IS a legitimate issue, as any "superuser" account should never leave a testing environment and the player winrate and results should have been flagged internally by Absolute's own monitoring.

However I VASTLY prefer that the online poker market, in the persons of poker players, be allowed to mete out whatever justice is due from Absolute, unless they are stuoid, they will pay out any legitimate "cheated" players.

[adanthar]

[ QUOTE ]
Here there is VERY little to actually tie Scott Tom personally to this caper. I would be astonished if he had ANY role in the heist. I tend to think the "disgruntled geek" line may be accurate. I could be wrong, but I doubt it on this one.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was interested in your post up until this line, which shows that you have no idea what this scandal is about and haven't read most of the information on the subject.

edit: I would have preferred not to post here, but this misconception, if widely held, plays right into AP's hands and does not need to be spread any further right now.

[Skallagrim]

Adanthar is one of the people to be most thanked for his work uncovering this scandal. His conclusions are the next best thing to absolute fact (pun intended).

Milton, Do you really think that the poker community, which uncovered and prosecuted this scandal itself, is "crying out for regulation?" I would guess that maybe, at most, 5% of the online poker community actually wants government regulation. IF, IF, IF we could get the government to just leave us alone, thats what most would want, no question. And the real truth of this incident is that we can take care of ourselves.

But it is clear the government is not going to just leave us alone, It is going to continue escalating its attempts to stop us from playing, or its going to regulate and tax us (to one degree or another). Obviously, the latter is preferable to the former, the lesser of the 2 evils.

In that light, saying this incident shows how "regulation is needed" is an appropriate response to those (FOF and the NFL) who will use this incident to argue that further banning efforts are needed.

Skallagrim

[JPFisher55]

I have read a lot about this scandal. Certainly, existing evidence points to Mr. Tom. The way that Absolute has issued press releases in increasing admissions of problems from none to breach by unknown employee suggests that it may not be telling the truth about Mr. Tom's lack of involvement.
However, I would not yet say that the evidence against Mr. Tom is conclusive. I noticed that the G911 article, a translation of an article from a German publication, accusing Mr. Tom of being the culprit is no longer on G911's site. So, I would be careful before I make any statements that his involvement is fact.
I agree with Skall and I just hope that WTO or court cases save us from government ban or heavy regulation.

[DeadMoneyDad]

[ QUOTE ]
Adanthar is one of the people to be most thanked for his work uncovering this scandal. His conclusions are the next best thing to absolute fact (pun intended).

Milton, Do you really think that the poker community, which uncovered and prosecuted this scandal itself, is "crying out for regulation?" I would guess that maybe, at most, 5% of the online poker community actually wants government regulation. IF, IF, IF we could get the government to just leave us alone, thats what most would want, no question. And the real truth of this incident is that we can take care of ourselves.

But it is clear the government is not going to just leave us alone, It is going to continue escalating its attempts to stop us from playing, or its going to regulate and tax us (to one degree or another). Obviously, the latter is preferable to the former, the lesser of the 2 evils.

In that light, saying this incident shows how "regulation is needed" is an appropriate response to those (FOF and the NFL) who will use this incident to argue that further banning efforts are needed.

Skallagrim

[/ QUOTE ]

The poker community may not be calling for regulation but the actions of some of the sites in relationship to all the work some very dedicated 2+2er's sure is!

If these sites continue to rely on the same external people over and over and show that thier internal security is worthless and can't see the value in rewarding the volunteer "sherifs" in this wild west virtual world, then regulation will certainly follow, just as it eventually came to the US wild west.

Most of us wouldn't have a clue about these scandals if it were not for the 2+2ers who have found almost every major problem to date. Let alone all the fish who are scared off at every scandal let alone the tin foil hat crowd. Almost none of them could find 2+2 with twelve sherpas and a talking GPS system.

Mason et.al. may not want a reward but I think that someone has one comming. Simply redistributing the seized money to those cheated, is not investing in the knid of goodwill and forsight that might, just might, keep some future legislative aide from writing rules that will significantly change on-line poker as we know it today.

Thanks again for this community. I shudder what might be going on if it weren't for some of the people here.



D$D

[JPFisher55]

The truth is that any government regulators would not have discovered this scandal for many more months or even seriously taken the players complaints for some time. The work of Josem, Adanthar and others far exceeds what any regulators, especially US ones, would have accomplished in several months.

[Doom_Switch]

AP cheating, UB cashout delays, Neteller seizing funds, FT freezing account for no legitimate reason, constant RNG accustations. Please regulate so we can get rid of the status quo which is absolutely ridiculous. A government run site similar to Sweden Spel would be ideal. Regulation with open competition would be next. Regulation with few major players would be further down. Status quo is way way way down the list. Get Tuff_Fish or some normal poker players involved in the conversation. This site has too many shill with ulterior motives when it comes to regulating. Last thing major sites want is regulation.

[adanthar]

This probably belongs in politics, and I will probably repost it there eventually. That said:
---


Having just gotten off the phone with a relatively important person at AP, which should just about end this chapter of the story (tomorrow morning, anyway), let me now say a couple of things about this thread:

First off, *every single piece of research* Nat and I had pointed to Scott Tom and AJ Green. These may or may not be the people that wind up implicated, because either one of them may 'merely' be guilty of gross negligence. I won't comment on that yet and it doesn't really matter, because the more important thing is this:

After over a month of completely unpaid, volunteer research, comprising more time and energy than I care to admit, one thing that is extremely clear is that the free market does not even remotely work. The reason is twofold and self evident:

1)AP got 81(!!!) people in their 100 person guaranteed 1K event on Wednesday, when they were still in the middle of the coverup,when every single one of those people knew exactly what was going on, and when AP could, looking at the fact that even their biggest tournament only dropped 20%, have decided to stonewall us into oblivion;

2)One of the major free market supporters immediately took off and ran with the free market angle without doing the least bit of fact checking, something that would have taken him exactly two minutes to do.

In other words, this scandal is the best poker example ever that, when faced with a decision that maximizes the short term utility to themselves at the cost of the long term utility to the entire industry they base their livelihood on, the vast majority of humans involved will take the immediate profit, and damn the consequences. In the meantime,

1)Many of the masses predictably reacted to this discovery with the standard "online is rigged" outcry - even when *they are 2+2'ers that know something about poker* and the person that co-uncovered the entire freaking thing was/is telling them the opposite;

2)Just as many others didn't bother to do any research and came up with their own theories of how the whole thing evolved without even reading the original post in BBV, much less any of the other stuff.

You know what the best thing to come out of this is? The KGC, a licensing agency which has heretofore done *absolutely nothing* to police their licensees, woke up and will now act as a proper authority, *after* multiple senior executives at one of their holdings embezzled a million dollars, *after* the embezzlers (that is the proper crime here!) proved to be the worst criminals ever, and *after* they happened across two of the literal handful of people in a position of authority in this field that could actually drive public opinion to do something about it. Despite that, without the Excel file, which might well have been incompetence rather than whistleblowing, they had a good chance of getting away with it anyway.

Oh yeah, and nobody's going to jail, anyhow. Lack of regulation sure is awesome.

[MiltonFriedman]

1. Your work and Nat's work in this matter has been beyond awesome. It clearly proves that an unregulated market CAN detect something amiss through private action. A market ONLY operates efficiently if there are sources of information available to market participants. Please give it time to work, rather than rush to impose restrictive, anti-competitive regulation.

2. I have read the posts here and in BBV. I know about the email address, the IP, et cetera.

3. Where we differ is that I would rely on poker players to decide what "should" be done. The market DOES discipline miscreants, to the extent that poker players would care or decide how extensive the problem is. If you assume a 20% drop in business is the short term reaction,then this scandal would already cost AP about $100,000 per day going forward.

Your "self-evident' conclusion that this thread "proves" that the free market cannot work is wrong.

First, my original post is not evidence of anything, except my dismay at a lynching of an industry on scanty evidence, beyond someone having cheated at one site. A rush to regulation will not necessarily get anything like justice or prevent future "cheating" scandals. The rush will more likely result in a BAN, than regulation.

Second, you are outraged that the market may ignore this scandal. I really do not think that will happen. (A 20% drop likely would cost Absolute about $100,000 per day) However, even if the market does treat this like a passing blip, maybe that is all it should be seen as ? Are you saying that poker players cannot be trusted to judge this properly, after all your work laying out facts for review ?

FINALLY, do not assume that no one would be going to jail. There ARE laws on the books which could apply here easily. You might want to wait on that conclusion. Mark my words on this point.... (and I am not talking about the KGC.)

ALL I am saying is that regulation is the camel's nose under the tent flap. There is NO way that "regulation" would be a net benefit to US players.

Dracula reputedly could only enter a house if he were invited in.

[girlsCanPlay2]

adanthar may be right; the US market doesn't look like it will punish Absolute currently. I think the problem right now is that for us casual Americans (1hr/day) who like alot of traffic there are only 3 options:
1) Stars - horrible bonus and VIP program; no rakeback (once again for casual players - 1hr/day)
2) FT - horrible bonus and decent rakeback
3) Absolute - best bonus in town (so sad miss the old days) and decent rakeback

So giving these choices, most are going to choose Absolute. Over the last week, Absolute player chat has made refernce to the scandal over and over and no one seems to care. I have monitored the traffic as well and it hasn't dropped drastically.

Granted it is early and only time will tell, but initial observation points to Absolute getting away with this horrible breach as long as our wonederful government keeps its wonderful policy.

That being said I have moved my bankroll to FT for now; but I feel like I am voting Green. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]