17 October 2007

Poker Cheats caught redhanded

Cheaters never prosper. Well, they do. They make a shitload of money. But eventually the truth will out. Not usually. But sometimes. When it's not a sitting government but rather an off-shore online poker site, the truth will out. Looks like some (extra, "accidental") data was crunched and cheaters were found on AbsolutePoker.

So the poker detectives turned their attention to this observer. They traced the observer’s IP address and account name to the same set of servers that host Absolute Poker, and also, apparently, to a particular individual named Scott Tom, who seems to be a part-owner of Absolute Poker! If all of this is correct, it shows exactly how the cheating would have transpired: an insider at the Web site had real-time access to all of the hole cards (it is not hard to believe that this capability would exist) and was relaying this information to an outside accomplice.
This is why online poker needs to be legalized and regulated in the US.

4 comments:

Beckylooo said...

And why I play cards at Commerce.

R.A. Porter said...

I do miss Cali cardrooms. Here in the desert, the best we've got is poker at the Indian casinos and I just don't trust them that much (about the same as PokerStars.) Plus...the ever-present cloud of smoke.

sme said...

There was some guy at my table (Pokerstars) the other day who kept ranting and raving in the chat room about cheating. He told everyone that we were all cheaters and that he was going to timeout every hand to get back at us. It was really strange and annoying. The funniest thing about it was that it was a very low buy-in play money table. Why would you cheat for play money? Why? What a freak.

R.A. Porter said...

Cheating for play money? Really? That guy needs to take off his tinfoil hat.

Frankly, I've only seen a couple instances of collusion on the table (there might be more cheats involving knowing what cards are coming, but if so they're playing out more subtly than the Absolute Poker guys.) When I see it, I just fold anytime the colluders are in a hand together.

Then again, I finally got tired of the string of insanely bad beats I was having online and just transfered all my cash to The Wife. Now online card profit is her responsibility.