Royal Poker Blog

If you happen to know Kevin Saul on AIM beware of requests for money.

-----

BeL0WaB0Ve gets hacked part 2....

"So its almost the 2 year anniversary of my old aim "iambel0w" getting hacked, and I have been hit again. My aim b3l0wab0v3 has been taken over by a hacker. It is the same guy who got stinger and samh and the donator. I was really busy rushing threw some record keeping when out of no where samH messaged me on my ALT aim that I was signed on trying to find CJM. it was pretty random, but Sam had my ALT aim from last year when we made a saver in a PCA DSO and I literally never talked to him after that. He starts making small talk, etc etc and I'm not completely paying attention trying to rush threw my record keeping so im just being polite and answering very simple questions. We start talking poker, and im like d00d i never use this aim, hit me up on my alt aim b3l0wab0v3. At this point he knows who i am, and is like...when we gonna go partying, etc etc I'm like when we can celebrate Cubs winning world series. We then go on to BS about cubs, he nonchalantley asks if our cities are as close as he thinks. I'm like an hour or so and he's like gimme your zip ill mapquest and w/o thinking i did and GG me. He obv figured out a near by town where i was born and guessed my security question.

Lucky for me and my poker accounts, I use a completely random pw for aim so nothing was connected, I had a friend change pw to email even tho it was diff but I was worried that I had a key logger on my computer and my email is only thing i dont have auto saved so I wouldnt be able to log in w/o him getting my pw at which point he would be able to email poker sites and possibly hack my poker accounts."

-----

Here's some of the chat from the hacked account. Thorladen has some fun playing with the guy.

ok as much as i love rumors im gonna clear this one up:

I was messing w below scammer cuz i was bored and trying to get info on him(ok drunk too)
heres our chat:

Not much news on the AP front. The Casinomeister thread continues to be somewhat interesting simply due to the CM himself.

"What I am concerned about is the apparent aloofness of the poker room. These are very serious issues and the poker room has not responded satisfactorily:"

Is the iMEGA shit going anywhere? I hope so, but my guess is no.

Absolute Poker continues to deny that any wrong doing took place including chip dumping. What would you do in their shoes? It's becoming more likely this was an inside job and of course they do not want to admit that. On the other hand it's not uncommon for Poker Stars or Full Tilt to catch cheaters (bots / colluding) and return funds to those cheated. In these cases you get a note informing you that the cheaters were caught. It seems that Absolute needs to take this approach and keep the "how they cheated" aspect rather vague. It won't satisfy everyone, but it will allow them to save some face and get most people off their back.

Until Absolute Poker admits something went on and corrects the situation it seems foolish to play on their site. Why take the risk that you might be cheated? A smart cheater with the same tools as GRAYCAT and others had could go on forever. How will you ever know that great call of your bluff is legit or if you've been cheated?

To be perfectly clear -- It is currently not safe to play on Absolute Poker.

----

Latest Links:

• Even the Poker-King thinks Absolute is shit.
• 2+2 has a new Cliff Notes Thread clearing things up.
• Casinomesiter continues to question Absolute.
• Absolute Poker Cheats website getting started.

And finally Dan Druff (online pro and WSOP braclet winner) had these interesting comments on the superuser possibility.

"In reference to the "superuser being absurd" statement by someone in another thread:

It is not at all absurd. Again, I have no proof that a superuser account exists, and there may very well not be one. HOWEVER, given that we have all basically accepted that cheating occurred of some sort, I still maintain that a superuser account is the most likely explanation.

Man-in-the-middle and/or server-side attacks sound more techincally interesting. While they might make a much more intriguing research subject than careless/malicious creation of a superuser account, the actual successful implementation of such attacks would be extremely difficult.

Many of you are incorrectly assuming that a superuser account would have to be funded with real money, or that such an account would have to be tied to the AP graphical user interface. Neither are necessarily true. It is very possible that such a superuser account could be a SEPARATE entity -- NOT a playable account, and not one that you log into via the AP GUI. For example, it could be accessed through a text interface such as telnet. It doesn't need to be pretty. It just has to work.

Note that, to my knowledge, the cheaters never multitabled. This could very much be indicative of a superuser account that can only monitor one table at a time -- perhaps some sort of crude debugging tool.

Take this scenario:

1) Cheater logs onto GRAYCAT account. This account is a regular AP account, just like yours and mine.

2) Cheater opens another window and logs into a telnet session to the AP "superuser" debugger. He sets it to report all cards dealt at the table where GRAYCAT is sitting.

3) Cheater refers to the telnet window before making any and all decisions while playing on GRAYCAT.

It's possible that the cheater even used a separate computer and/or internet provider to connect to the superuser account, thus removing later suspicion toward GRAYCAT.

Other factors pointing to a superuser account being utilized:

1) Cheating appears to have begun after the last major software update. This makes it more likely that the perpetrator is someone who had access to the inner workings of the software around that time.

2) Cheater seemed to have an urgency in winning the money quickly, rather than making it more subtle and far less likely to be caught. Perhaps this can be explained by dumb greed, but also could be due to a fear that the superuser account's usage might be found and the plan would be ruined. Cheater would have to win quickly and cash out in such a case, which appears to be his MO here.

Again, I have NO proof that a superuser account exists. However, it is laughable to state that a superuser account is "absurd" while leaning toward man-in-the-middle attacks (or other highly unlikely scenarios) as a more plausible explanation."

The hits just keep on coming for Absolute Poker. This ordeal cannot end well for them.

• 100 players in the $1,000 event last night. That's on par with the 99 and 98 of the last two weeks. Of course that's 20% down from a month ago. I guess a $100K guarantee is enough to keep people playing a potentially rigged game.
• Absolute Poker responded to Casinomeister. It's basically the same lack-of-information denial as before.
• The New York Times (at least a NYT blog) has now covered the situation. How Not to cheat.
• The current 2+2 thread is trying to work out the probabilities of this "hot streak." The math is not easy.
• Absolute Poker is shit. An example from PokerTips of Absolute's ethics. Can we say Clooney Gowen?

On an equally serious note G-Vegas has been taking some hits lately too. First a robbery and now a bust.

Goodness.

No huge revelations today. Though the evidence just keeps mounting.

Here's the latest summary:

• Absolute poker has locked 5 accounts. STEAMROLLER, DOUBLEDRAG, GRAYCAT, POTRIPPER and PAYUP.

• The play of all 5 accounts is very similar. They are likely the same person(s).

• The PAYUP account was actually locked by Absolute before the masses detected him. This supports the foul play opinion even more.

• The cheating seem to coincide with an Absolute Poker upgrade which occurred ~8/24.

• The only official statement from Absolute claims there was no cheating.

• Several people on 2+2 have talked to Absolute Poker security on the phone. Security did admit the accounts were closed for cheating. Though they insist no hole cards could be viewed.

• There is now a post up on Casinomeister where CM asks Absolute Poker to respond. This is a very good thing. CM has incredible pull in the industry and clearly understands the statistics of gambling.

• The $1,000 Wednesday tournament has been rigged twice in the last two months and has consistently lost players every week since 8/15. Maybe this is the indirect indication of funny business. Let's see how many players we get this week.
  

Hi All,

Thank you for your patience in this urgent issue.

Let me start off by stating in 100% confidence that, fair play and security is of paramount importance to Absolute Poker. We have temporarily frozen accounts that have been brought to our attention while we perform an extensive investigation.

While we are continuing with our investigation, we have yet to find any evidence of wrong doing. Our game client only receives data regarding the individuals hand and no other players hole cards, except in the event of a showdown.

The player’s and their respective actions that are in question, all come from a small sample of Hands. We have researched their play exhaustively and have found no proof that they had any knowledge of other player’s hole cards.

There were hands that were played poorly -- from a poker strategy perspective -- and these players did receive a fortunate result.
So far we have no evidence that substantiates claims that any of the players were involved in chip dumping, or any other improper activity.

Because of the seriousness of these allegations, we have not closed the investigation and are continuing to look very closely into this matter.We will notify you if we obtain any new information regarding these claims.

Kindest Regards,
Danielle

-----

What Absolute fails to realize, or acknowledge, is that this isn't a couple of guys who deposited $100 and are now claiming online poker is rigged. Some of the most respected online pros completely believe there was foul play. These guys know what a heater looks like, have had luck boxes take their money and didn't cry wolf. Of course Absolute wants to resolve this in the dark. The problem is without acknowledging a problem existed (which they ideally fixed) they are going to be crucified in the court of public appeal.

Lets see what the pros are saying:

-Action Jeff-

"for the uninformed:

A player using multiple screennames are believed to be the same person.Every one of those accounts is up an enormous amount of money in ashort period of time. Until the recent 2p2 thread, from the most recentAbsolute poker update every one of these accounts has never booked alosing session. They play the highest stakes in any hold'em gameagainst anyone, play over 90% of hands preflop no matter what theaction is, and win every single session/tournament. These accounts have a river aggresion factor of close to infinity. This is consistent with the notion that they can see hole cards, because a player who could see your cards on the river would always raise or fold, because they know if they have the best hand.

There is much more evidence available with screenshots of the players' results, and hand histories from people in tournaments or cash tables where its clear that the player is playing as though he could see the hero's hole cards. When people say "impossible", what they mean is, the odds of a player playing 90% of hands in full ring cash games for weeks and weeks and making literally perfect decisions postflop while consistently winning at a rate of hundreds of big blinds an hour per table are less than that of the earth imploding before I finish this post. It just isn't possible.

Imagine how difficult this could be if the player doing this was smart and covered their tracks more effectively? The evidence is so incredibly obvious here that its actually a blessing because there is no way that this guy can't see hole cards, just no way. His play is exactly consistent with the play of how a donk who could see hole cards would play. No amount of luck or variance can explain this. Who knows if there are other accounts like this that fell into the wrong hands of a more clever person? I think its important to note that we don't even know what the "superuser" account is, because whoever is using it could possibly just keep it logged in on another computer with the tables he is playing open and act accordingly on whatever acccount he is actually playing."

-Cmoney3-

"ive read the entire 2p2 thread AJ is right

AP is fucked, 94% VPIP and infinite river agression, im sold"

-mr. menlo-

"After only reading half the 2p2 thread and not even looking at PT databases just HH's it is STILL the most blatantly obvious cheating that I have ever seen and anyone who knows poker at all can not dispute that there is foul play. And as to AP's response that there is no "concrete evidence" what the hell do they need, do they need to go to this guy's house and see his screen and see that he can see everyone's cards. If the hand histories that I have seen and the PT databases that I have heard about are not enough to be "concrete" then I don't know what will be."

-brsavage-

"LOLOL at some of the posts in this thread. You can't possibly have looked over the entire 2+2 thread. Seriously, if you look at the poker tracker stats, the river aggression is impossible to fathom. Combine the river aggression with the hand histories and there is no doubt in my mind that this person is playing as if the cards are face up.

FYI, the reason the sample history is not humongous is simple. The thief simply messed with the wrong marines who caught it fairly early on... otherwise there would in fact be a greater sample.

Greed always gets these people who find loopholes and chinks in the armor of the system. If you remember the national pick 6 scandal from the breeders cup horse race was similar. A few tech savvy insiders figured out how to place a bet on exptic wagers after the first legs of the wager was already completed. For example, after race 5 of the pick 6 races in a row wager, all they had to do was go into the system and select the first 5 winners, and then pick all in the last leg to lock up the winning ticket. In a pool as huge as the national pick 6 for the breeders cup, this meant millions of dollars. These nimrods, as smart as they were, were astronomically stupid. All they had to do was pick a ticket that looked innocent, such as one that had several selections including the winning longshot of one of the races. Instead, they made a ticket that singled the winning longshots, and then made the 2$ pick 6 wager for $10, effectively hitting the bet 5 times. This is like someone making a single powerball wager, and then hitting the repeat button over and over. Had they not been greedy, they would never have been caught.

Back to the poker at Absolute. As AJ pointed out, the fact is that the community was extremely lucky that the thief was not bright enough to disguise his cheating ability, and further, he attacked the games that he could siphon off the most money quickly, which is of course filled with players that recognize abnormal activities and have the intelligence to compile empirical data that supports their claims that something was amiss.

River infinity aggression x posted hand histories = plenty enough evidence.

Chris."

-sheets-

"cliffsnotes...ini and i flushed out an alleged cheater weeks ago and finally put 2 and 2 together"

-yellowsub-

"whats scary is that

1 there is cheating going on in our online poker world (albeit on a fringe site)
2 said site refuses to admit to it"

-YourTimeIsUp (Stealthmunk)-

"Its not a question if whether or not the guy could see your hole cards. That has already been established.

It is a question of what action is next? Anyone that understands poker, (cmon guys, even brsavage realizes this guy is cheating) knows there is a virtual 0% chance that this guy is legitimate. I'm sure some of the smart people at 2p2 can do an advanced statistical analysis that could eventually "prove" that this guy is cheating."

-----

Thread #3 on 2+2. A 5th cheater was found to have won the 1K in August (PAYUPS)

Apparently ABS has locked 5 accounts so far. Security is providing mixed information. They are adamant about not seeing hole cards, but do mention cheating.

Congratulations to Annette_15 for winning the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event! Enjoy the 1 million pounds.



-----

Update on the Absolute Poker cheaters:

New 2+2 Thread

High Stakes Limit Thread from Schneids

Mark Seif is going to have the matter looked into. See the comments on his 9/12/07 post.

One of the cheaters "DOUBLEDRAG" dumped about $20K last night in an obvious attempt to show how bad of a player he is. I'm sorry sir, calling with 4 high on the river only reinforces the previous notions.

Absolute has yet to respond.

It now appears that the tinfoil hat crowd was at least partially correct. There is a hack / crack / trojan / bug / inside job / etc. on Absolute Poker that allows some accounts to see the other players hole cards.

I'd recommend not playing on Absolute Poker until this is resolved.

Please see the ever growing thread at 2+2 for all the details.

Here's the basic summary:

• Players "POTRIPPER", "GRAYCAT" and "DOUBLEDRAG" appear to have the ability to see other player's hole cards. These accounts are very likely the same person(s).

• POTRIPPER won the $1K last week out of the blue. According to those who sat at his table for multiple hours he played like a maniac and never showed down a loser on the river. He won the tournament be correctly calling a huge turn bluff with 10 high.

• GRAYCAT and DOUBLEDRAG have been playing the highest games on ABS with unbelievable success.

• Some of the hand histories and crazy, but we've all seen horrible players go on heaters. The damning evidence is the River Aggression Factor reported in PokerTracker. A river AF of infinity means they never called on the river. It was always a raise or a fold. Sure sounds like someone who already knows the outcome of the hand.

• Absolute Poker's RNG is not being completely questioned at the moment.

• There have been rumors of a "Superuser" account on ABS that allowed the programmers to troubleshoot. There is some speculation this is an inside job and someone is using that account or it's access level.

• Theses accusations are not being leveled by your typical newbies. DanDruff and adanthar are two very respected high stakes players.

• In February of 2006 someone accused Mark Seif of cheating on ABS. Is this related? Has there really been a security hole for 18 months?

Tomorrow online superstar Annette (Annette_15) Obrestad plays in the final table of the WSOPE Main Event. First place is a cool 1 million pounds. That's pounds baby, pounds!

Annette is considered one of the best online players. She also is considered by many to be the best NLHE female player in the world. Of course she's not yet 21 and a virtual unknown to the live poker world. Perhaps tomorrow will be her coming out party?

The World Championship of Online Poker started yesterday with a bang. Too bad we have yet to see the conclusion of the first event.

4610 runners started Event #1 ($215 NLHE 6-max) yesterday at 3:00 EST. As of 7:42 EST today they are finally down to heads-up. We're approaching 17 hours on this one folks!

Oh yeah, that $400K guarantee is no problem. The total prize pool ended up at $922K!

Here is the entire event list courtesy of the PokerStars Blog.

-----

Here's the schedule with the guarantees in bold type:

Sep.14 (15:00) NL Hold'em [6-max] $215 $400,000
Sep.14 (16:30) PL 5-Card Draw $215 $100,000
Sep.15 (15:00) PL Omaha [6-max] $215 $200,000
Sep.15 (16:30) 2-7 Triple Draw $215 $100,000
Sep.16 (16:30) NL Hold'em $530 $2,000,000
Sep.17 (15:00) PL Omaha w/Rebuys $320 $400,000
Sep.18 (15:00) Limit Hold'em $215 $100,000
Sep.19 (15:00) Limit Omaha H/L $530 $300,000
Sep.20 (15:00) NL Hold'em w/Rebuys $215 $1,000,000
Sep.21 (15:00) NL Hold'em Match Play $320 $500,000
Sep.21 (16:30) Razz $215 $100,000
Sep.22 (15:00) HORSE $215 $200,000
Sep.22 (16:30) PL Hold'em $530 $400,000
Sep.23 (16:30) NL Hold'em $1,050 $2,000,000
Sep.24 (15:00) 7 Card Stud $320 $100,000
Sep.25 (15:00) PL Omaha H/L $320 $200,000
Sep.26 (15:00) NL Hold'em [6-max] $320 $400,000
Sep.27 (15:00) 7 Card Stud H/L $530 $200,000
Sep.28 (15:00) PL Omaha $530 $300,000
Sep.28 (16:30) NL Hold'em Triple Shootout $530 $200,000
Sep.29 (15:00) HORSE $5,200 $500,000
Sep.29 (16:30) Limit Hold'em $1,050 $200,000
Sep.30 (16:30) NL Hold'em Main Event $2,600 $5,000,000

Be sure to follow Dr. Pauly's live coverage of WSOPE over at Pokernews. For the most part those guys do a top notch job of tournament coverage. My only question is WTF is up with snoopy1239's posts? I guess he / she is trying to be funny? The commentary on the Beth Shak / Annette_15 hand was ridiculous, though it appears to have been updated slightly.

If someone has to have an exclusive on tournament coverage I'd rather it be Pokernews than anyone else. Keep up the good work gang!

It's not my intention to turn this blog into a gossip column, but thanks to Peter (number1pen) Neff there is just too much good conflict to pass up.

You might remember Peter from his infamous PocketFives post containing a huge IM log with Chad "lilholdem954" Batista. While humorous and eye opening to the rest of us on the interweb it sure didn't seem like a smart thing to post about someone you consider a friend. It was a stupid immature thing to do and obviously Peter would learn from that mistake, right? That's a big negative.

Now Peter Neff brings us this gem:

ONLINE PROS, CAN WE STOP MAKING POKER VIDEOS???

Ignore the fact that this discussion was held and resolved 30 years ago when Super System came out and dig into Peter Neff's brilliant replies in this thread. There are tons of gems in here, but the meat of it is this:

• Peter Neff is a cock. That might be too kind.
• Peter Neff is good at poker. Tough to argue with his results.
• Peter Neff can play perfect poker every time if he focuses. He has not improved for 2 years and can not get any better. Yeah, he's really matured after his last debacle of a post. Yeah, you always play perfect poker and can never improve. Maybe lilholdem wasn't the dumbest one in that IM log?
  

Goodness...

2 + 2 Thread

High stakes HU player Grimstarr has been banned for a week on Full Tilt for "blind stealing."

The trick works like this:

1) sit down in button
2) raise (any 2)
3) steal blinds, collect money rake free
4) leave with profit

While not technically illegal it's certainly a dick move to repeatedly pull. Apparently enough complaints from other players caused the temporary ban. Forced off the cash games Grim has moved on the SnGs.

Best thread reply:

"Grimstarr is going to try to do this in SnG's, stealing the first blind and then sitting out. Not realizing that the game must go on, he gets blinded out and continually loses SnG after SnG."

PocketFives Post

Funny...1 day ago Ghettofabulous says he will back me.....