The latest 48 hour recap of the AP dramabomb:

-Once upon a time, before the scandal ever broke, CrazyMarco (second to Potripper in the cheater's 1K win) asked for a hand history of the tournament to be sent to him. It was, and, on Saturday, he finally got around to checking the massive Excel file, only to find...the master hand history of over 2.5 hours of the tournament containing everyone's hole cards on every table. Oddly enough, this appears to not be the first time AP's done that by accident (kinda puts a damper on their claim that nobody can see those cards, eh?), but, regardless, this makes it really, really easy to spot the cheating. Talk about a smoking gun?

-But wait, it gets better. The master hand history *also* contains the emails and IP addresses of every observer that opened up a table. (Gee, thanks for randomly emailing that out. Anybody want CrazyMarco's email, which is half of his login ID, and his IP address? Anybody? For sale to highest bidder!) Now, Absolute uses a 'player ID' system with sequentially generated numbers - if you open an account right now, you'll be user # several million or so. Does it surprise anyone reading this to know that, starting 2 minutes into the tournament, Potripper's table was being observed for over 2.5 hours by an account with the user ID #363 (meaning this was created during beta testing)? Does it surprise anyone to know that the IP address of the user of that account resolved to AP's own servers?

-As of this writing, AP has not commented on these exciting implications. We don't care, because it's already been enough to get AP delisted from Bonuswhores (that's about a few mil a year right there), rogued by Casinomeister and, shortly, blacklisted by every major affiliate. When they do comment, my guess is that they'll deny the whole thing again, but it's a little too late for that to work now, what with, you know, US HAVING THE FREAKING HOLE CARDS FOR EVERYONE IN THE TOURNAMENT.

BTW, that 'this will blow over before it hits the major media outlets' defeatist attitude I had about the whole thing? Yeah, that's gone. Expect major developments along that front (and, tbh, it's probably better off now than whenever Congress decides it's not worth losing 100 billion dollars and passes IGRA, UIGEA's smarter, better looking cousin.)

In the meantime, BBV's your exclusive place to go for 'Superuser #363' T-shirts.

edit: To see for yourself, sign up for pokerxfactor (you can use a fake email) and watch the hole card cam at work.

...I've played about an hour of poker, a 15/30 razz session that ended with me up $2. Jet lag can be brutal, and it seems like west -> east is a lot worse than the other way around. I've been home 3 days and still haven't been asleep past 8 AM, which is about 3 hours earlier than usual. In other words, I've got nothing to write about :)

Since that's the case, and I've been slacking on this blog, it's time for a filler hand. This is a Bakes PCA sat hand posted in HSMTT:

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No reads as I just got moved here.


Poker Stars, $615 + $35 NL Hold'em Tournament, 100/200 Blinds, 8 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter

MP2: 3,352
CO: 7,652
BTN: 6,301
Hero (SB): 14,800
BB: 12,556
UTG: 9,135
UTG+1: 19,275
MP1: 4,990

Pre-Flop: (300) Q Q dealt to Hero (SB)
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to 600, 4 folds, Hero calls 500, BB folds

Flop: (1,400) T K 3 (2 Players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets 1,000, Hero calls 1,000

Turn: (3,400) K (2 Players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets 1,400, Hero calls 1,400

River: (6,200) 9 (2 Players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets 2,000, Hero calls 2,000

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I think this'll be a long thread that'll probably end up with people reaching the wrong answer. In a satellite, with these stack sizes, it's not nearly as well played as it would normally be. Here's why:

-PF is sketchy. Nobody likes reraising PF normally; we're too deep and OOP vs. an EP raiser that can play optimally, etc. However, this is a satellite, meaning that having our hand face up isn't really that bad - taking down a 900 chip pot is fine when we've got a stack this big this early - and, if we get any more action, we can just fold or c/f because nobody plays back in these things. Just calling is OK, but since the point of this exercise is to get to the bubble with a medium stack and not to get the most chips, deciding to keep the pot small means you should eventually wind up folding the best hand fairly often (that is to say, err on the side of caution.)

-So, Bakes calls and sees a KT3, 2 flush flop, which his opponent makes a clear cbet/value bet on. Does Bakes have the best hand? There's a good chance. Is his equity vs. villain's range still the 7x%ish it was PF? Very unlikely; this flop hit a whole lot of his raising range. In addition, the specific bet size is a tell, not necessarily that we're beat, but that our opponent has a clue. While we still can't really say anything about him, him having a clue is going to make it pretty hard to extract any value on the river if he checks behind with a worse hand on the turn; it also means we'll have to fold to a turn barrel. I am generally fairly indifferent between check/calling and check/folding this street here since c/f'ing feels so weak/tight, but in a sat, especially one where a lot of people play very tight/predictable, I think that folding might be correct.

-Instead, he calls and sees a king, which is theoretically a great card for him (reducing the chance he's beat and eliminating Tx's, etc. 2 pair outs.) He checks and villain...underbets. We'd know we've almost certainly got the best hand if he checked, and could have snap folded to a real bet, but an underbet is a problem because we've got no idea if it's air, a king trying to eke value out of a worse hand, or JJ/Tx mistakenly value betting. What do we do?

In a real tournament, the line Bakes took is fine by default because QQ still winds up good more than enough to make it work, even when we know we'll probably also have to call a river bet. In a sat, though, with a really big stack, we should already be thinking 'preservation' above all else. I think this is a spot where you will frequently be folding the virtual nuts, but should probably do it anyway, moreso than on the flop.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Bakes won the hand, BTW. I just don't think it's a good idea to take this road in a sat. As an alternative, if we had wanted this pot a little more, I'd suggest betting the turn (easy fold to a raise/shutdown to a call, worse hands like JJ/draws do sometimes call - this is one of the few times an information bet is OK, because it's very hard for anyone to bluff raise). As it stands, though, I think this is ultimately a +cEV, but -$EV line.

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Tomorrow marks the first time I play a full tournament schedule in 3 weeks. For some weird reason, I'm really looking forward to it :)

After about 18 hours of travel time, I'm writing this from my hotel room in Seoul, where I'll be playing the APPT event in a couple of days. Initial impressions - this city's awesome, and I'm jetlagged as hell. I'll probably post more about it tomorrow or the day after, and, of course, once I busto/robusto the actual tournament.

Final Absolute update: still rigged, regulars apparently back in action. Okay, you guys won, good luck with all that.

In what seems to be the final word - because they're definitely not doing anything else so far, and it's been over a week - Absolute is on the record as saying there's been no wrongdoing and they've unlocked the accounts involved. Understand this: unless they are mouth-breathingly retarded or completely insane, they didn't actually do that. Instead, they've decided to sweep this under the rug and quietly sit on the accounts while publicly denying the entire story ever happened. In the meantime, the story's been picked up all over the poker world and even on the Freakonomics blog (who knew that Steven Levitt worked for a poker site? Certainly not me...but one hopes Absolute is quietly emailing him for his number.)

In the meantime, credit goes to Adam Junglen and myself for coming up with a solution to the whodunit:

[23:09] Adam Junglen: man
[23:09] Adam Junglen: imagine multi-accounting super users
[23:09] Adam Junglen: that'd be fun
[23:09] Adam Junglen: lol
[23:09] Adanthar: the software is clearly 1 table max
[23:09] Adam Junglen: Come on
[23:09] Adanthar: and actually come to think about it
[23:09] Adam Junglen: a little humor in there
[23:09] Adanthar: it cant be software
[23:09] Adanthar: it has to be some kind of program with a login
[23:10] Adanthar: otherwise they'd just run 2 copies and multiaccount
[23:10] Adanthar: nah you seriously gave me the idea just now heh
[23:10] Adanthar: dude
[23:10] Adanthar: you just showed conclusively its an inside job
[23:10] Adanthar: omfg
[23:11] Adam Junglen: As long as you give me the credit and make it sound as t hough it was a coherent thought
[23:11] Adam Junglen: I sure did
[23:11] Adanthar: yeah I'm gonna post it right now
[23:11] Adam Junglen: make sure to point out that I'm so brilliant I did it without realizing

If you read the BBV thread (and seen the hand history of Potripper's FT I went over), it's pretty obvious that the superuser is using some kind of aid that has to be pointed at a specific table, because the only hand where Potripper clearly doesn't cheat is exactly the first hand when he gets moved to the FT. In addition, none of the superaccounts ever played > 1 table at a time. But wait - why wouldn't they just make a second copy of the software, if it was a standalone program, and monitor multiple tables? Because they couldn't - they only had the one login/password combination and doubtless didn't want to, or couldn't, log in from multiple PC's at a time.

Game, set, match. The reason AP is trying to bury this is because a superuser program with an outside login - something that should never exist and should certainly not be publicly revealed if it does - somehow got out into the wild, or, more likely, a disgruntled security guy pulled off the steal of the decade. Of course, they now have no choice but to try to bury it; otherwise, their entire site has a high chance of going under (screw the people who lost half a million dollars; they aren't important.) This will even probably work, since none of us have a high desire to let Focus on the Family run any more misinformed 'online poker really is rigged' hit pieces and will probably let them get away with it.

And thus, another ridiculous chapter in the history of e-commerce/online poker/people who shouldn't be trusted to run an ice cream store comes to a close...except for one thing. Some people, even a few high stakes players, still apparently want to play at AP since it's such a soft game now that the better informed regulars have all left (lol). To them, I offer this 2+2 post of mine:

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On one level, it may make sense for Absolute to do this, but on that same level, it makes zero sense for HS players to ever deposit a dollar there again.

You may think that since the games are going to be softer in the near future, you'd want to go back and give them a shot. Well, there's two problems with this:

1)You're relying on Absolute to be stonewalling while fixing their mistakes internally. What happens if they're simply dumb and the hacker is still out there, or if it's an inside job [editor's note - oops!] and he's just taking some poker lessons before trying again?

2)It's hard to play perfect poker at the best of times. Now you're gonna have to wonder whether an unknown can see your cards whenever he raises you off your missed overcards twice in a row. You think you're gonna be playing optimally vs. him for the next hour? How about in the big MTT's, where timex already panicked enough to make a thread about it once? Hell, that guy could've really been cheating and decided to tank the tournament to deflect suspicion. You'll never know. Have fun working out your new, updated EV, cause I'm not gonna be the one sticking up for you and compiling a body of evidence after Absolute quite clearly admitted they're not going to act publicly.

My prediction is that no high stakes player that is aware of this scandal is ever going to play optimally at Absolute for a very long time, and it's going to send your EV straight through the floor even without the benefit of any hacking. GP and a few others might prove me wrong over the long run, or they might not. Remember that in the long run, it only takes one giant hole card cammed pot to wipe out a couple of weeks' worth of rungood.

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Let's hope that every other site is very quietly taking notes. It's too late for Absolute to do anything to retain a good chunk of its high stakes playerbase, but if you're somebody else with hole card cams...for the love of God, delete the functionality and never access it again. Better yet, hire me as your crisis PR guy; I promise you I'd do a better job than anybody at AP.

The Absolute tally thus far: three days, five clearly cheating accounts, upwards of half a million dollars, zero acknowledgment from senior Absolute management in any way. Well, okay, it's the biggest scandal in online poker history since Planet's RNG back in 1999 or whenever the Internet was still a series of tubes; perhaps they're trying to keep it in-house and contact everyone involved behind the scenes or something...wait, no they aren't, because I haven't heard shit.

Since 99% of the high stakes poker world *is* hooked up to that series of tubes now, though, there is an awful lot of damage being done, and AP should really have a public relations team on the case. Fortunately for them, the 1% is still stubbornly defending them in this Casinomeister thread with a disjointed post that starts thusly:

The whole issue is just amusing...

Do people really buy that crap? come on..

It goes on from there. Unfortunately, one post later, this guy gets outed as - no kidding - a repeated Absolute spammer who has the same IP address as the President of Absolute Entertainment. He, of course, never posts again.

Wow. Just wow. *This* is the best you can do? Get with the damn times; you're giving this entire business a black eye on a daily basis. In the meantime, every day you don't do anything about this (and I'm including a BIG PR push - not counting spamming shills) is a day I probably personally cost you another five digits in lost business just from compiling freaking hand histories. How do you people run an eight (if not nine!) digit a year enterprise and spend two days with the only response to the nuclear bomb of online poker coming from a random affiliate manager who doesn't know what she's talking about?

How do you manage to print that much money and suck this bad?

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In other sort of poker related news, the Fed cut rates half a point today, stunning pretty much everybody. This sent Wall Street up and the dollar down, a scenario which is going to repeat for the next few months until, most likely, the Dow finally goes down with the ship. The reason I say this is that looking at the combination of a spike in oil price + a weak dollar (driving up oil obv) + subprime today gives me the unpleasant impression that this bounce looks a whole lot like those two minutes on the Titanic where the aforementioned ship stood on end before taking a final giant, glorious swan dive. The rats (that is, those of us who, thanks to earning 100% of our income in dollars while traveling all over the planet, have to hit the water first) are gonna be scurrying around looking for buckets, but unfortunately, BBV4Life tells me the bucket seal is dead. Where am I going with this tortured metaphor? Uhh...pull as much of your bankroll out as possible and stick it into an account denominated in something whose color isn't green, because even one or two more interest rate cuts from now on means that the Canadians are gonna start making jokes about our worthless toilet paper money. If even my lazy ass is going to do it, you ought to get in line before the last life raft sails.