AB rigged?

[jrhelms]

Anyone hear about Absolute poker being rigged and players being able to see other players cards. Also that Mark Seif was cheating as well. It is all over 2+2 and pocketfives.com

[Mika Ollila]

The casino watchdog and player advocate site Casinomeister has a writeup of it at the following page. Including a statement from Absolute.
WHAT'S UP AT ABSOLUTE POKER?

Its seems to be about allegations that three accounts graycat, steamroller, and doubledrag could somehow had access to view other player's hole cards.

[jrhelms]

They need to come out and show innocence because it is hard for me to want to deposit on there if this stuff is happening

[Mika Ollila]

They need to come out and show innocence because it is hard for me to want to deposit on there if this stuff is happening

Absolute Poker management now made a post to 2+2 sating that they subject themselves to an independent third party auditor, Gaming Associates, to conduct an audit of Absolute Poker’s security systems.

Absolute Poker Management wishes to inform the poker community of the following information in response to the most recent claims posted over the past 48 hours on the 2+2 and Pocket Fives forums wherein again it is alleged that some person or persons breached Absolute Poker’s redundant and varying levels of game client security. As was stated in Absolute Poker’s Official Response released on Friday October 12, 2007, Absolute Poker conducted an extensive investigation in response to the claims it was made aware of and received. The results of that investigation indicated that to the best of Absolute Poker’s knowledge, information and belief there was no security breach. Specifically, Absolute Poker’s internal investigation determined that it is impossible for any person, device, program, script or other means to see hole cards.

Based on the most recent claims that Absolute Poker has been made aware of and at the request of some of our players and business partners, Absolute Poker has agreed to retain a widely acclaimed independent third party auditor, Gaming Associates, to conduct an independent audit of Absolute Poker’s security systems. Specifically, Absolute Poker has requested that Gaming Associates conduct a thorough and extensive review of Absolute Poker’s practices and security systems to determine whether it is possible for any person, device, program, script or other means to see hole cards thereby gaining an unfair advantage. (Welcome to Gaming Associates)

Absolute Poker has agreed to fully cooperate with Gaming Associates and its investigative team and to provide the above with unfettered access to all systems, protocols and databases at Absolute Poker worldwide. Absolute Poker has also agreed to allow Gaming Associate’s final report to be made available to Pocket Fives and Bluff Media for their review.

With respect to the claims that Scott Tom, a former Member of Team Absolute Poker, is in anyway involved in wrong-doing, Absolute Poker has requested a formal investigation into that matter as well. Mr. Tom has not been involved with Absolute Poker for over a year and to the best of our knowledge, information and belief has not had access to any of Absolute Poker’s systems, databases or information.

Absolute Poker reserves the right to pursue any and all remedies whether in law or equitable which may procure to it as a result of any unlawful and injurious actions taken by any individuals who may have falsified any information, documents, files, or have by other means attempted to disparage and/or harm Absolute Poker, its Players, its current or former management, employees, business partners or affiliates.

Absolute Poker shall bear all expenses related to such investigation and is eager to learn about Gaming Associate’s findings. Absolute Poker highly values and intends to protect its players, shareholders, business partners, and affiliates.

Absolute Poker Management

[Mika Ollila]

Here is also an interesting recent post made by 2+2 member Dan Druff, who is one of the affected high volume players at Absolute. He got a phone call from them.

"Here's what a lot of you have been waiting for... I got that phone call from AP.

But before I go into that, I need to post an important retraction to something I said earlier. I mentioned at one point that 1994 WSOP Champion Russ Hamilton owns Absolute Poker, and was responsible for the AP/UB purchase last year. THIS IS FALSE. I was unfortunatley given bad information about Russ by a source that is usually reliable. I apologize to Mr. Hamilton and to anyone who was misled by that statement. In fact, I would appreciate if the mods could remove that short post of mine (in the previous AP cheating thread), as I now believe it to be untrue.

Now, onto the AP phone call....

Yesterday, I spoke to AP and told them I wasn't going to be playing there until this matter was resolved to my satisfaction. Given that I have been one of their most active players over the past 2 years, they became concerned about my departure, and promised me a phone call from one of their managers.

Indeed, I received a phone call from Roger, who I have spoken to before concerning other matters in the past. At first, he attempted to deny that a superuser exists. I stopped him and told him everything I knew -- basically a rehash of all that has been posted here over the past month. He acknowledged hearing this information before, and said he has been following all of the 2+2 threads about the situation. I then went on to tell him the following...

There is too much evidence out there at this point for AP to be able to deny that this occurred. AP's continuing to make statments like the two we've seen serve only to make people angry and frustrated. Nobody here is interested in reading carefully-prepared corporate statements about how nothing nefarious occurred. There are a lot of really smart people on 2+2, and none of us will buy it in the face of everything else we know. What we have all been looking for are truthful and plausible answers to all of our questions.

I asked Roger to answer the following questions for me:

1) How do they explain the "perfect" play of POTRIPPER and the other accused cheaters, if there is no superuser involved?

2) What is the story with account 363?

3) What were the IP addresses of GRAYCAT, STEAMROLLER, DOUBLEDRAG, and POTRIPPER? Did they match their listed geographic locations? Were any in Costa Rica?

4) Where were SUPERCARDM55 and REYMNALDO (chip dump recipients) located? Did they cash out? Are they from Costa Rica?

5) What is the relationship between the 4 suspected cheaters and those accounts they dumped to?

6) Have you spoken on the phone to GRAYCAT, STEAMROLLER, POTRIPPER, and DOUBLEDRAG? What did they say? How did they explain the chip dumping? Did they admit to playing on those accounts?

Roger took notes on all of my questions. He promised to get answers for me later today.

Then he asked one question that sounded promising -- the first thing I've heard from an AP employee that gives me hope. He asked me if the players would be satisfied if we were to simply be returned the money that we lost to GRAYCAT, STEAMROLLER, POTRIPPER, and DOUBLEDRAG. Keeping in mind that I was probably speaking for a lot of the people involved, I answered the following:

Our biggest problem is the fact that we were cheated out of a lot of money -- about $700,000 in preliminary estimates. Our other big problem is the fact that we are being stonewalled about the situation and are not being dealt with honestly. It's frustrating to know that the high-limit AP community was cheated out of nearly a million dollars. It's arugably more frustrating for Absolute to deny that it happened, especially given all that has come out. If everyone affected could be compensated, it would be a HUGE step in the right direction, as it would make it clear to everyone that AP is interested in making the situation right.

I told Roger that I understood AP's situation. I said that I realized that they're "damned if they do, damned if they don't", regarding owning up to the superuser situation. If they admit their games were compromised by an insider with access to hole cards, it will be a huge story and nobody will trust their games again. If they stick to their bogus claim that no cheating occurred, everyone will be angry and feel cheated, as the existing mountain of evidence clearly says otherwise.

Roger was quick to agree with me, and in fact acted as if I hit upon something that he has been dealing with for a long time.

"Exactly. We can't win either way," he said.

I told him that I knew of a way that everyone could come out relatively happy.

There's no doubt that chip-dumping occurred on a massive scale. Chip-dumping is very much against AP rules, and obviously anyone engaging in it in such huge amounts is up to something no-good. It's not like it was a case of me dumping to another known player as a means to trade chips between sites. These were completely unknown accounts dumping to one another, and never being seen again. Surely AP could not be blamed for confiscating the money belonging to these chip-dumpers. Therefore, if the money from these accounts could be returned to those they won it from, on the basis that the accounts were closed for chip dumping, this would be a way that AP could legitimately return the money to the victims without admitting that a superuser account exists. Basically, they'd just be confiscating money from shady accounts (based upon the chip-dumping) and returning it to where it originally came from (instead of just keeping it on AP). Nobody has to admit to a superuser. Nobody has to admit that cheating went down. The affected parties will have their money back. There's no ideal solution to this mess, but I feel that this is probably the closest we can get to it.

Roger told me that my suggestion sounded reasonable, and that he would discuss it with other managers and the site owners. He promised to get back to me about everything by 3:00pm PDT.

Before I ended the phone call, I reminded Roger that we're all sick of rhetoric and carefully-worded corporate statements. Nobody is going to be satisfied until this is actually taken care of, and flat denials that anything unjust occurred does not equate to taking care of it. I told him again that a return of the stolen money would be generally seen as a VERY positive step on AP's part."

[Fictive]

This whole thing is getting absolutely insane... Now there's talk that so-called superuser is a an employee of Absolute, or an owner or a shareholder.

Absolute automatically loses all credibility because they say that there was no evidence of a "superuser" account in the hand histories. Oh really?

The best part of this story is just being fleshed out right now though. Who was involved in this operation?

Absolute Poker not only made a huge blunder in sending out the hand history with all of the hole cards displayed, but they also included the email addresses / account id's / IP Addresses of everyone who opened up a table as an observer during this tournament.

Apparently an Absolute Poker account with an ID of 363 opened up Potripper's table two hands into the tournament and railed him the entire way. The ID number is significant because this would indicate that this account was one of the first accounts EVER at Absolute Poker, making it likely that this is a person with extremely close ties to the company (employee, owner, shareholder, etc.)

Potripper folds the first two hands of the tournament, then ID 363 opens up Potripper's table to observe, and suddenly Potripper starts going wild, winning practically every hand.

The prevailing theory in the poker community? Potripper was a dummy account, and ID 363 had access to hole cards, and was relaying them to "Potripper."

Apparently the IP address of User ID 363 resolves to Costa Rica as well, which is home to Absolute Poker.

Whole story is at Absolute Poker: Going, Going..

[Fictive]

The plot thickens... It would seem that the account "363" is tied to former CEO of Absolute Poker, Scott Tom.

Absolute Poker to Submit to Third Party Audit; Former CEO to Be Investigated