You guys are both missing the point. Collusion between players is the end user's version of cheating. It is easy to do, and can actually be profitable, just by moving the risk ever so slightly.

That is the small end of the stick.

the RNG has little or nothing to do with it. Let's say you are a poker site. You spike every big game with a half a dozen players for "the house". They might even be automated for all that matters. You feed those players all of the information about what is going on at the table, and because the deck is in theory pre-shuffled, you can even reveal all the cards that will come out. Those players can then choose to play winning hands when they will win, and be able to call out bluffers without an issue. They can also even lose hands when there isn't many chips in the pot, just to look good.

At the end of the day, you end up from, say 200 players in a $100 per seat tourney with 10 players at a final table and say 6 of them are house players. They all then lose out over the next little while, taking 10th, 9th, 7th, 5th, 4th, and 2nd. All that money goes directly to the company instead of back to players.

Instead of the $5 fee to enter the game ($1000 for the house) they also took in about 30-40% of the total prize pool, or $6,000 - $8,000. Suddenly, running a poker room is very profitable indeed. Do that 10 times per day, and there is an extra 30 millions dollars in it for you.

Doubly more important if the money isn't going to the company but the the main partner's personal off shore accounts.

you have to think big :)

There is no conclusive proof Absolute is cheating..there is evidence that maybe an employee, someone associated with the site was involved in cheating.

Big difference...but Absolute I don't really care about..in the grand scheme of things they are small potatoes.

one thing you're missing is that people who play online, are aware of others who play online. If all of a sudden even just 1 player wins multiple times, and the top MTTers online don't know who he/she/it is, they are going to start asking questions.

You're trying to think big, but I think you're missing some key numbers here.

Let me give you a quick example. A $200 buy-in tournament with $15 juice to the house on Pokerstars had 1,639 players involved.

Pokerstars made $24,585 off of that one tournament alone.
Tournaments are all top heavy when it comes to pay structures.
1st was $72K, 2nd was $42K, 3rd was $27K.

They make $24K without the same overhead as a live tournament has. They of course have servers / bw, but there are no dealers, or floor that a % of that goes to.

So, why try to make an additional $27K by putting a bot into 3rd place, when all they have to do is run another tournament..which if you log onto any poker site they have them running all day long. This does not take into account the rake from cash games...how about the ungodly juice on a low limit SnG, which if you open up pokerstars you will see up to 100's of just $5.50's running per hour...that doesn't include the $10's, $20's etc.

Once again, there is no reason to blow $24K a day to make an additional $27K a day...and I'm telling you...if the sites tried, they would not get away with it for long.

There are far too many people who do this for a living, who follow the stats of other players...sites that track this shit too like SharkScope. Hendonmob, and many others...when 1 player wins one of these big events and no one knows who he is...the forums light up asking..."who the fuck is this?"

Another thing...polle has tried to point out. There are people out there with millions of hands in their poker tracker database and not one has come forward so far to say..."hey..the numbers are just not adding up."

What that means is they can look at their stats and see if they're getting Aces the right amount of times...and if those Aces are holding up the right amount of times...this is how potripper was found out...people looking at their poker tracker stats saw things and said...wtf this can't be right.

Eros, you are correct. But you miss it again: 24k to the company to run the show, and by placing a single player in 3rd place, they would take another 27k - worth a ton more if it isn't going to the company but rather to an employee's personal account, example. There is a limit to how many big money games will play in a day - so taking a major ass second skim is the most profitable way to do thing. Heck, add more big money tournaments, and just skim those too... who cares? Do it over every multi-table game running every day, and tell me how much money that would be going into someone's offshore account.

In a scheme like this, they would NEVER win. Winning is bad. Taking some of the money off the final table is good. 3rd place, 5th place, 6tth place. You have a player who finishes routinely in the top 20 but never really wins, and he would blend into the stats like a ton of other player would. Use hundreds of user names, build them up over time, let them all make money, and smile.

The best part? The game could be audited down to the last card and nobody would be the wiser. No playing with the shuffle, no playing with the dealing, no nothing. Just knowing what cards will be in play and calculating the which hand wins is enough. Debug info, basically.

the bottom line is that a live real life card game, blackjack or poker or whatever, is the way to go.... it is much preferable to be able to see and feel real cards that are shuffled right in front of your eyes

you know absolute was cheating, and it's proven as much as it can be without someone admitting to it. I don't have the time or inclination to go and read up about it again, but the cheating account was traced back directly to the Pres of the company.

yep the IP feeding the cheating account (potripper) was traced back to the residence of the President of AP.

Don't these same guys own ultimatebet?

still sticking by the 'only losers think online poker is rigged' storyline?

Which the article claims was someone making it appear to be a former official with the company doing the damage. The MSNBC article points the finger at an employee.

There is no evidence that the company directly played a role in this other than being the employeer. Could they have ordered this to happen, sure. Just gotta prove that part.

How do you know so much about online poker? Are you involved in the biz?

Yes...because loser's apply it across the board when even if it is proven that a company owner had something to do with it, it's still an isolated event.

I'm honestly getting tired of having to educate you...LOL.

The rake these sites make just like in live games comes from the huge amount of low limit games going on out there, not the big games, so it doesn't matter how many big games they have going on as long as the low limit players keep feeding the rake machine.

Example:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1571041
A $96,000 pot an the rake was $1.00

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1614099
$2/$4 NL game $200 pot, $3 rake.

Now to get back to your top 20 finisher theory, once again, tournament pay out schedules are top heavy, favoring the top 3 finishers. Why would they try to skim $5K here or there, when they're making $20K off of a tournament, when all they have to do is start up another without any risk.

I am not saying there has never ever been a "rogue" employee, which may be the case at Absolute. But there is no reason for PokerStars, or PartyPoker to risk an easy money making machine just to increase their profits by 1-5% a year.

well then by all means go ahead and invest. As for me, this is more evidence than I need.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...fpart=1& vc=1

and there is no evidence other than the IP being traced back to the owner's house is what you meant to say.

Eros,

Let's apply the no reason to shave then. Sponsors make tons yet still shave, they risk millions a year also.

Also, why wouldn't the site itself just show the guy playing all the cards and all 4 of the cards to come out? So he knows ahead of time if he wins or not. He could then lose some, win some etc. Like if someone is dealt A A and he has J J but a Jack will flop, he could get the A A to allin maybe and it wouldnt look so bad.

I think there is alot more cheating going on then you can imagine. It's way to easy to rig shit for them to pull millions out without anyone knowing.

Spot on once again.

It is completely nonsense to risk a perfectly healthy business. And I really don't believe that it was the whole Absolute Team who is behind this. It is more than likely a hack made by a former programmer/employee who is taking advantage of this now.

This was inevitable at some point, but there's absolutely no reason to think it's the company as such who are behind and I am 100% sure that no big company like Stars, Full Tilt or Party or Absolute for that matter would never do anything that could jeopardize their more than healthy business.

RawAlex if your theory were to be correct. They have some sort of Bot network which have a slightly edge, it would fuck up your poker tracker stats in the long haul. There's no way shit like that will go unnoticed. Just as the Absolute incident didn't. PokerTracker shows you EVERYTHING, I love this tool :)

A good example is that PotRipper had an Infinite River Aggression :)

Yep...there are people with millions of hands in their stats who would see something strange if strange is what was going on.

i thought frank rosenthal said "it's ALL about the skim."

The skim was what they were taking off of the casinos...they did not have to cheat the patrons.

To further my point Sltr...let me give you an example of how poker used to be ran in this town.

The house did not take a rake, they had what they called "snatch games."

Right in front of the dealer's tray, there was a hole, the dealers would just take as much as they could out of the pot and hope the player's didn't pay attention.

A good friend of mine started dealing here about 30 years ago, but she came to Vegas to play poker professionally.

Anyway, her first day here she won the biggest pot of her life, but lost money due to the snatch.

That was when she realized she needed to be on the other side of the table to make any real money.

They used to run other rigged games here too, but have realized that there's not reason to they have an edge, and the suckers that play slots and table games regardless of this knowledge will continue to play.

Here's an article written about a snatch game

http://www.vegascommunityonline.com/...tMarinoCol.htm

This is exactly why I don't play online poker. Unless I can watch the shuffle and the deal, I just don't trust it.

Check this out - they recreated the cheating - I didn't see the links posted here yet.


Absolute Poker "POTRIPPER" Cheating Part 1
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FczbS7FiWSM

Absolute Poker "POTRIPPER" Cheating Part 2
https://youtube.com/watch?v=PbQyKgELDEA

Absolute Poker "POTRIPPER" Cheating Part 3
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xqmp-a7SzFs

Absolute Poker "POTRIPPER" Cheating Part 4
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FCMiK9pJ7Kw

you can knock off saying they wouldn't cheat because there's no reason to cheat. They cheated. There's no reason to say it was a rogue employee. It's already been proven it wasn't.

Are you deef son?

Where has it been proven that the site had anything to do with it? In the court of 2+2 the poker version of GFY? :1orglaugh

I am not defending Absolute...I think they did a poor job of handling this.

But once again...the loser's mantra is "online poker is rigged."

Winning players with 100's of thousands of hands...millions of hands...can prove that the games that they are playing in are fine. They were able to figure this out in a relatively short amount of time...you don't think they won't figure it out elsewhere?

Sorry if you can't beat the game online man, the simple fact is that the games are much tougher online.

Your typical winning $2/$4 limit player online can beat a $10/$20 - $20/$40 game live.

Now NL, the games are drying up. The $25/$50 players are having to drop down to $10/$20, and $5/$10, those guys are dropping down to $2/$4, and $3/$6. When these guys play live they are playing anywhere from $5/$10 on up to $100/$200.

There is cheating online, but not tot the extent that sites are rigging games that you would like to believe.

Just study harder, and some day you'll get there.

i know it makes you feel really special calling people losers when they're only stating the obvious, but it's been proven as much as anything can be proven without Scott and co. walking up to your front door and saying 'I cheated'. I mean, really. What's it going to take for you? Any moron who reads that thread on 2+2 knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that AP cheats. If AP cheats, any of them can cheat. The CHEAT.

Online poker is rigged. Let me say again for emphasis: RIGGED. RIGGED. RIGGED.

And it's proven. Now tell us all again how only losers say it's rigged, so I can point to the thread again. I like all the publicity this issue is getting, the lower limit players still need to get the word and some of them are on GFY.

What happened to her? I mean to end up being your roommate and all that...

:error

I shouldn't have read this thread.

Can anyone transfer $100 into my PokerStars account? I will pay via PayPal first.

Hey Ill be at the Venetian on Nov 2.. In the Poker room..

Eros, if you are in seat four lets be sure to say hello!

Chiting i'ts on of the way off gaming...and i fink no bad.