Cheating Uncovered At Absolute Poker Site

steve_in_hb just told me about this. One guy in a tournament (who, it would later be learned, had won hundreds of thousands of dollars off other players) seemed to have a psychic read on every other player's cards at the table -- doing odd things like folding pocket aces when someone else at the table had lucked into flopping a straight.

It turns out the guy -- or an accomplice -- had a "Super-User" account, one of the first created by Absolute Poker (and one that appears to belong to partner Scott Tom), which allowed him to see every single hole card at the table.

The guy turns out to have been a bad cheater, because by making so many absurdly prescient moves people came to the conclusion they were facing a cheater before internet detective work proved this to be the case.

He won too often and too obviously, never allowing himself to lose to classic trap hands like trips, always walking away when he was beaten. Rather than just on occasion -- just to maintain the illusion -- making the expected, normal, losing play. He raised whenever no one had anything, and always called when people were bluffing.

It's not necessarily Scott Tom behind this, but obviously someone at Absolute Poker gave out a very useful login to someone, or used it themselves. Absolute Poker is now claiming it was all the work of a "disgruntled employee," but people are wondering.

Here's video of the cheating. "Potsripper" is the cheat.

The rest of the videos (four in all) are here.

A bit more about this at the 2 + 2 poker forum.

Oh... He also pays to see just about every single damn flop (why shouldn't he? He always knows what his opponent has and can usually bluff him out) except for those where an opponent has some big pocket pair. Then, suddenly, he folds.

Man, that's the way to play poker. Wish I had a Super-User account.

posted by Ace at 06:31 PM

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