Absolute Poker Cheating Scandal
FuckOnlinePoker details the scandal that sent shockwaves through the Internet poker world.
Players at Absolute Poker became suspicious of a player account known as POTRIPPER. The account was suspect because this player seemed to win every single time he played. When his stats were looked up, it revealed an impossible streak of winning coupled with the stats that showed he played nearly every hand, always made the correct fold, and had infinite river aggression. River aggression factor is a measure of how a player plays-raise, call, bet, fold-on the last betting round. An infinite river aggression factor is consistent with being able to see your opponents hole cards on the river. If a player new his opponents hole cards, he would always bet, raise or fold, and never call. When these stats were looked up by players, the POTRIPPER account (and a few more) always knew when his hand was better then his opponent, so he either bet or raised, and always folded when his hand was losing.
Alarm bells went off after POTRIPPER made an improbably call when he was heads up to win the Absolute Poker’s $1000 bounty event on September 12, 2007. He won the hand and the tournament after calling a massive bet with the Tc 9c on a board showing 4h Kd Kh 7s. The better was semi-bluffing with the 9h 2h. The improbable call with 10 high in his hand won him the tournament, a call that could only be made if he knew exactly what his opponents cards were. Below is the final hand of the tournament:
Stage #896976330 Tourney ID 1883389 Holdem Multi Normal Tournament No Limit $4500 - 2007-09-13 01:43:49 (ET) Table: 14 (Real Money)
Seat #3 is the dealer
Seat 3 -
POTRIPPER ($765740 in chips)
Seat 8 - CRAZYMARCO ($214260 in chips)
POTRIPPER - Ante $450
CRAZYMARCO - Ante $450
POTRIPPER - Posts small blind $2250
CRAZYMARCO - Posts big blind $4500
*** POCKET CARDS ***
POTRIPPER - Calls $2250
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
*** FLOP *** [4h Kd Kh]
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
POTRIPPER - Bets $9000
CRAZYMARCO - Calls $9000
*** TURN *** [4h Kd Kh] [7s]
CRAZYMARCO - Checks
POTRIPPER - Bets $13500
CRAZYMARCO - All-In(Raise) $200310 to $200310
POTRIPPER - Calls $186810
*** RIVER *** [4h Kd Kh 7s] [5s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
POTRIPPER - Shows [10c 9c] (One pair, kings)
CRAZYMARCO - Shows [9h 2h] (One pair, kings)
POTRIPPER Collects $428520 from main pot
*** SUMMARY *** Total Pot($428520)
Board [4h Kd Kh 7s 5s]
Seat 3: POTRIPPER (dealer) (small blind) won Total ($428520)
HI:($428520) with One pair, kings(ten kicker) [10c 9c - B:Kh,B:Kd,P:10c,P:9c,B:7s]
Seat 8: CRAZYMARCO (big blind) HI:lost with One pair, kings [9h 2h - B:Kh,B:Kd,P:9h,B:7s,B:5s]
After this was posted, more hand histories were posted in forums that showed his hand selection pre-flop was very bad, especially when he played 9 handed, that he should of been losing a lot of money against the top tier players who play the high limit games. On the other hand, he had been winning in nearly every session of online poker he played. Also, he would very rarely fold if his opponent missed the flop, and always folded when his opponent held a huge hand. These hand histories posted in the forums can be found here.
When CRAZYMARCO learned of this, he emailed Absolute for a hand history of the tournament. Out of sheer luck, an inexperienced customer service person accidentally (many originally thought he was a whistle blower as an insider who knew about the cheating) sent him a hand history that showed the hole cards of everyone in every hand played in the entire tournament, whether they folded or not. Also, IP addresses of players and observers and email addresses of all the players were included too. When the IP addresses were investigated it was apparent that Costa Rico, home of Absolute Poker, was where the POTRIPPER account was from as was the observer account which later was determined to be the super user account. More investigating and pressure from the online community forced Absolute to comment, and by comment I mean totally deny any wrongdoing or the possibility of cheating. Here is an excerpt from Mark Seif’s Blog in Absolute Poker’s official response to these claims:
“A ‘super-user’ account does not exist in our software. Absolute Poker was created by poker players who value security and fair play. The back-end of the Absolute Poker software prevents the possibility of any such feature. Our game client only receives data regarding individual’s hand and no other player hole cards are ever visible – by anyone – except in the event of a showdown. Having said that, we will continue this investigation as well as look into any other allegations of wrong-doing. If appropriate, we will freeze funds and reimburse effected players.”
This was an obvious lie by Mark Seif, as the hand history showed hole cards of even those players who had folded from every hand played in the entire tournament. A well respected player said this after looking at the hand history. "Well it only takes a few hands to realize potripper could see the cards, but not what is coming on the flop/turn/riv… I was already 99% sure from seeing Marco’s hands and some HH’s other ppl had posted, but this is just unreal how he plays each hand… there is no way someone could bluff like he does and value bet like he does without being able to know what their opponents hold, it really is undeniable…”
Yet denying is what Absolute continued to do, as an admission of guilt would be bad publicity for the online poker room. Online poker legend and WSOP bracelet winner, gank on his poker blog, "Most players understand why Absolute has responded the way they did, it would be virtually company suicide to tell the public that either someone on the inside has compromised the site, or that someone on the outside has hacked the site and compromised it. Either way it would spark a huge pull-out of players funds as players would refuse to play there."
More pressure from the online community and other poker media outlets got the Kahnawake Gambling Commission involved and eventually Absolute came out with an admission. Absolute tried to pin the culprit on some programming 'geek' inside the company, which most people did not believe.
More pressure for the truth and an investigation into the hand history by the founder of ThePokerDB Nat, uncovered a IP address connection between an observer watching every table that POTRIPPER was playing at because if POTRIPPER was moved to another table during the tournament the observer would move too. Todd ‘Dandruff’ Whittles of NeverWinPoker analyzed Nat's findings and pieced together what probably happened revealing to the online poker world for the first time how the entire cheating process took place. His findings can be read here.
With pressure from many angles plus the effort from a lot of individuals, Absolute eventually admitted the truth, that a consultant and former CEO Scott Tom and another high ranking management guy named AJ Green were named as the cheaters. The elaborate cheating scheme began when Scott Tom had found a super user account from the early beta testing days of the Absolute Poker software. This account could not actually play, but could only be used as an observer. This observer could see hole cards of everyone at the table, originally intended to test the software to make sure the pot was always awarded to the best hand at a showdown. With access to this account, he used four other real player accounts that were abandoned by their owners after going bust and were essentially inactive for some time. He changed the password to those accounts from the inside of the company. He then proceeded to get AJ Green to use those accounts to play high stakes online poker games while Scott Tom observed with the super user account. Scott Tom would tell AJ Green what the opponents cards were and they began cheating for several months, amassing over $700,000 in profit. The accounts they used would take their winnings and chip dump in heads up matches to accounts of friends and families of Scott Tom and AJ Green in order to be cashed out, since the cheating accounts were still registered to real people.
All the details may never fully come to light as Absolute has tried to hide the truth and may have been able to hide important information, but with an ongoing investigation by the well respected gaming commission the entire truth may eventually come out. Scott Tom and AJ Green have not been arrested and are probably in hiding, as many players, company investors, and others hold serious grudges against what they did.
