Cheating

I remember over five years ago having the "online cheating" argument with my poker buddies. They would argue that the online sites would not cheat for "a couple of extra bucks" when they were already making millions on the rake. I would argue that money is money and since cheating was so easy from inside the server firewall that it just had to be happening. We had this same argument every time we got together on one of our poker road trip. Guess what! They don't argue with me any more. Not after both Ultimate Bet and Absolute were caught cheating.

Now to be fair, some of the details of both of these scandals are still unclear but the bottom line is not. Cut away all the accusations and finger pointing and you have the unrefuted fact that insiders with "super user" accounts were able to see the hole cards of other players and they cheated them out of millions of dollars. No one, any longer, denies this happened.

Did either site try to cover up the facts? Was it the 'previous owners' committing these crimes? Is there any jurisdictional basis for anyone to go to jail? Was any of the cheating erased from the databases? Who ultimately is responsible?

If you would like to know just how convoluted this mess really is... I want to point you to the MSNBC article from last week: Poker site cheating plot a high-stakes whodunit. For the first time in the "non-poker media" there is an honest treatment of just what may have happened in this case. The article ought to convince you not only of what did happen but of how legally difficult it might be to hold anyone accountable for the fraud and theft.

Time to sort through all of those non-WSOP notes and see what has been happening outside of Las Vegas for the past two months.

The most recent Ultimate Bet cheating scandal is still apparently not fully investigated and the results are

"expected to take an additional two to three months."

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You can read a semi-complete account of the current state of the affair based on a conversation between Barry Greenstein and Russ Hamilton, former principle in UB.

There is a documentary based on the final table of the 2005 WSOP about to be released. It's called "Pass the Sugar", yes 2005 when Joe Hachem won the Main Event. Not surprisingly this is an Australian production and Tony Hachem, Joe's brother is a co-producer.

The fact that the press noise around this release says that "Pass the Sugar also will feature interviews with Jennifer Tilly, Jose Canseco and other celeb cardplayers", makes me want to repeat that Jose Canseco is not a celebrity but a old baseball player who thinks it's appropriate to play in Ladies Only events and impose his own warped view of the world on others because he once took steroids and could hit a baseball.

Sticking with show business, the Venetian is going to open a show next month based on poker. The Real Deal will apparently be audience interactive and will include in its cast on a rotating basis, many name poker professionals including: Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Jr., Antonio Esfandiari, Gavin Smith, Eli Elezra, Jennifer Harman, Phil Laak, Scotty Nguyen, and Todd Brunson. The pros will participate in shows each month, taking on the Las Vegas audience members in interactive games. More on The Real Deal can be found here.

The Game Show Network, after deciding not to renew the World Poker Tour and subsequently seeing the WPT move to Fox Sport Network, well GSN decided not to remove poker completely from its lineup and has renewed Poker After Dark for another year.

It is way past time that someone had a few sane words to combat all of those "high moral" opinions being yelped about all over the web. Our topic today: cheating at poker on the internet. By the way I respect your right to find my words insane or at least devoid of morals or standards. I will exercise those same rights when your four letter responses arrive duct taped to the back of turtles. These are opinions, you have the right to hold different ones, which does not make mine any less valid or logical. So here goes:

There is very little real cheating in online poker.

What we have are a bunch of very stupid rules that do not take into consideration either the reality of the internet or the basics of human nature. Time and time again, it has been proven that making rules which have no possibility of being enforced is a fool's errand. We don't need to have this legal and social debate again in the tiny world of online poker. Governments have gone through this redundant exercise for centuries to the same conclusion: If you can't enforce it, don't legislate it. So here are the rules.

If you can see the other players cards; you are a cheat, a crook and a thief.

Because I am in the middle of a rant, I will refrain from any absolute comments on this topic, other than to say that this is the ultimate example of cheating and must be prevented and when it does happen there actually ought to be real punishment.

One player to a hand is a incredibly stupid and unenforceable rule.

Base on the nature of the internet, no rules should be written that cannot be enforced. I had my nephew play my hand for nearly an hour this past Sunday, while I finished cooking dinner. He would call out the cards and I would tell him what to do and in the process he learned a bit about early MTT strategy. Some will say: "Well the intent here was not to cheat." But others claim: "Rules are rules." I agree with the rules are rules people, but they have to be rules for everyone and since certain rules cannot be enforced, they are not rules but suggestions for high moral behavior, which belong in the pulpit and not at the poker table.

Multi-Accounting cannot be prevented with today's technology.

Go to any wired college dorm in the world and you have the ability for multiple player accounts with different ISP tags. Or stay at a certain Las Vegas casino hotel and discover you cannot play on one of the bigger poker websites because several months ago two players in different rooms tried to play the same tournament and now the hotel's ISP is blocked. Same logic as above, if it cannot be monitored and prevented then it should not be a rule. Sorry folks, I know the purists want everyone to play fair but they don't. The only way to catch people and punish them is if they are: a) stupid and allow simply software detection; or b) they talk about it in public. I am OK with punishing the stupid but making honesty a crime seems counter-productive.

Self incrimination is simply speaking the truth.

This brings me to my one solid suggestion: Players shall not be punished based on their own words. You know that thorny issue of self incrimination. Some players admit they have taken over accounts of other players. So they should be punished for telling the truth about what happens in every major tournament every weekend on the net. Why? The truth is that since account sharing cannot be prevented, it should not be illegal.

Yes, I know there are legal arguments against each of my positions. But reason and logic should prevail here not morals or wishin' and hopin'. I would like internet poker to be as fair and level a playing field as live games but that is not possible at this time. Internet gaming creates a different kind of poker with different rules and only rules that recognize the reality of the uniqueness of the internet should even attempt to be enforced.

Show one, show all. Catch one, catch all or leave everyone alone. Why is learning to use poker spy software any less of a skill than learning how to slowplay or bluff? Why..... ah enough, end of rant. I gotta get back to my game, I am leading a tournament and I am in ninth place too.

Regular readers of PokerBlog know that if you are looking for the smart, intelligent analysis then you should be reading what the Poker Shrink writes here. On the other hand, if you want to read some real over-the-top ranting about anything and everything poker, well then you should be waiting for the Cranky Olde Coot to post. Details and facts are the highlights of most posts by Lindy and that leaves me with the half-naked ladies of poker and assorted crazy stuff. So you can imagine how happy I was to run across this great picture the other day.

If you want the details of the Absolute Poker Scandal, click on this link or this link, you understand there has been some big time coverage of the entire story. If you want to know about the results of the investigation go here. If you actually would like to read the official report here it is. Wanna talk with other poker players about all of it, here is the place. Want the whole blow-by-blow-by-blow in intricate detail, be my guest. As for me, well I just wanted to post that great picture. Oh and I did close my Absolute Poker account and my Ultimate Bet too, but that is another story and another picture.

There is another online poker cheating story looming on the web and it makes me wonder about gullibility and stupidity. You see people cheat, I hope that doesn't shock you.

Now the Absolute Poker cheating scandal from a few weeks ago was a prime example of dumb cheating. How the hell did those dumbasses think they were going to get away with such obvious cheating at a final table watched by hundreds? Yes, I know some have said that it was a slipped email that gave the game away but really have you seen those hands from the final table; did anyone need more information? Dumb Cheaters.

But it gets worse. Apparently over at Full Tilt a big tournament was won ($197,000 prize) when one player let another play his account. To be accurate they both played the account, it was a tag-team victory. So how did they get caught? Well there are two options:

First, we could believe that the site actually checked the IP log-ins on the account and found that the winner was playing first from Brussels and then from Chicago. If that was the case then Dumb Cheaters! At least be in the same location and use the same computer if you are going to share.

Second possibility; they told others they had cheated. What you say Dumb Cheaters? Yes, and in fact, several poker forums are abuzz with exactly this scenario. One player took over the account of another player during the tournament and after they won the event---they emailed other poker buddies to brag about the win. Damn Dumb Cheaters!!!

Wanna talk about this? Pop over to our new forum, here is the link to the appropriate thread.