TIMELINE
OF THE ABSOLUTE AND ULTIMATE BET
CHEATING SCANDAL
September
2007
-Player
Potripper wins first place in
a $1,000 buy-in tournament.
The final hand involves
the winner making a ridiculous
call heads up with 10 high to
another players post-flop all-in
push with 9 high. Skeptical
of the call, 2nd place finisher
CrazyMarco requests hand histories
from the tournament from AP
support.
-Absolute
Poker accidentally sends CrazyMarco
a raw data file from the tournament,
containing all card
and account information (email,
i.p. addresses) of players participating
in, and watching the tournament.
Marco
sits on the file, not yet knowing
the value of what is contained
inside the file he has just
received. In retrospect, questions
have arisen whether this person
was a whistle blower, or if
they simply accidentally sent
the file.
-Around
this time, people on on poker message
boards (TwoPlusTwo) began to talk
about the strange play and
impossible statistical win rates
exhibited by certain players in
the highest limit games on Absolute
Poker. Potripper is just
one of many possible cheating accounts.
-Work
on a database containing all hands
histories against the suspected
cheaters is put together by various
members of the Two Plus Two Poker
community. Various players show
ridiculous rates of aggression on
the river, either raising or folded
on the river, never calling,
a true sign they could see the cards.
-A
skeptical online poker community
previously unwilling to accept the
possibility of cheating, begins
to open it's eyes to reality.
-Instances
of chip dumping
(where the suspected cheater purposely
lost money to other accounts, presumably
to cash out and blur the money trail)
occur as word spread about the cheating.
The cheaters know their run is coming
to an end.
Early
October, 2007
-In
response to a number of posts on
various poker message boards, Absolute
issues a number of responses confirming
they have skill found "no
evidence of cheating."
-The
tournament file is fully dissected,
and it becomes the “smoking
gun” evidence.
Starting
a few hands into the tournament,
an account with an ip addresses
linked to AP headquarters in Costa
Rica watches every table where Potripper
plays.
Through
background efforts by members of
TwoPlusTwo, the email of the cheating
account and ip address is linked
to Scott Tom, one of various
ownership entities within the company.
Allan
Grimard aka AJ Green, a man hired
to handle security for the site,
is suspected of controlling
the other account.
(THIS
VIDEO IS NOT IN REAL TIME, IT HAS
BEEN RECREATED)
Late
October, 2007
-AP
issues statements admitting that
cheating has occurred. Instead of
exposing who the cheaters, AP passes
it off as “geek consultant”
trying to prove that the system
can be cheated.
-Some
players receive refunds, but no
information regarding actual hand
histories against the cheaters is
provided. It is still unclear how
long the cheating has been taking
place, and how much money has been
stolen from the high stakes poker
community.
January,
2008
-Account
NioNio, this time at UltimateBet
(a sister site of Absolute Poker)
is proved to have ridiculously high
statistical win-rates.
According
to Cornell Fiji:
“MyPokerIntel.com
provides a summary of anyone’s
last 14 sessions. In those 14 sessions,
NioNio had 13 winning sessions and
was up approximately 135k.
His one losing session consisted
of a mere 2k loss. The stats on
MyPokerIntel.com also showed that
NioNio had beaten the games at a
rate of 114 big blinds per
100 hands over the 8,000
hands that he had played. As a base
of comparison, the absolute best
players in the world strive to win
15 bb/100."
Strangely,
this account stopped playing around
the time when the Potripper scandal
was being exposed.
May,
2008
-As
players began to reveal numerous
accounts they have found to be cheaters,
word begins to spread that Ultimate
Bet will release a statement. This
statement never comes.
-Cornell
Fiji beats them to the
punch and issues this hard
hitting report that
summarizes the cheating and cover
up by Ultimate Bet.
As
stated in his report:
"I
would also like to express my sincere
gratitude to every one who investigated
this scandal and who have worked
tirelessly to uncover the truth
and demand restitution for the affected
parties. I did not participate in
any part of the investigation myself,
all I did was summarize the hard
work of posters such as 'trambopoline,'
'dlpnyc21,' Nat Arem, and 'Josem.'
Special thanks also to poker columnist
Gary Wise who assisted in the editing
this post."
-Finally,
Ultimate Bet finally comes clean
and admits NioNio and a host of
other accounts are have proven to
have “somehow” cheated.
Through an official press release,
UB confirms that accounts “NioNio,
Sleepless, NoPaddles, nvtease, flatbroke33,
ilike2win, UtakeIt2, FlipFlop2,
erick456, WhackMe44, RockStarLA,
stoned2nite, monizzle, FireNTexas,
HeadKase01, LetsPatttty, NYMobser,
and WhoWhereWhen” have all
been linked to the cheating.
-Despite
this bomb-shell, much skepticism
remains in the Poker community as
all counts revealed as cheaters
were first mentioned as cheaters
beforehand on poker message boards.
The bottom line, the sites
answer to know one, and the organizations
designed to regulate them are owned
by similar ownership entities. Work
begins in dissecting the past of
software and security companies
linked to Ultimate Bet.
Considering
the statistical evidence, it is
impossible to believe that these
accounts could achieve impossible
win-rates and not trip off certain
security alarms within the game
play and financial security systems
of the site.
June
2008
-An
internal screen shot of a management
system is leaked by a whistle blower
with information for NioNio and
various other cheating and (likely)
non-cheating accounts (specifically
pros Freddy Deeb and Lyle Berman),
and an internal management cashier
account.
The
screen shots show account
cashier and name
change history of certain
accounts, and cheaters are
proven to have received seed money
from a management account!
Not
only did management know who the
cheaters are, it has now became
clear that they were either directly
or indirectly involved with the
cheating.
At
this time, members of Two Plus Two
Poker Forum began a massive investigation
of their own with the information
from the screen shots. Through an
elaborate web of financial transactions,
name changing, and more, a possible
owner of the company named Russ
Hamilton is believed to be at the
center of the cheating. The
final nail in the coffin was a property
transaction between Hamilton and
the owners of the main cash out
account.
October
2008
-After
months of silence, UB confirms that
Russ Hamilton is indeed the mastermind
of the cheating scandal. Still,
nobody knows the actual amount that
was stolen, and the time frame where
the cheating occurred. It is assumed
that the cheaters were able to steal
between $10,000,000 and $60,000,000.
-The
poker community continues to wait
for a supposed "60 Minutes"
story regarding the cheating scandal
at Absolute and Ultimate Bet. Who
knows if it will ever come out?
