Slashdot Mirror
Tracking Online Cheaters in Poker
prostoalex writes "MSNBC has a special report on discovering online cheats at AbsolutePoker.com. A Costa Rican company belonging to a Canadian tribe at first denied all the accusations of any cheating going on, but after Serge Ravitch made a scrupulous analysis of the games' events, the reputation of AbsolutePoker.com was at stake. A detailed log file provided investigators with necessary details: an employee and partial owner of the site was one of the players involved, and having direct access to other players' cards allowed him to improve his game substantially."
wow beaten by the copy and paste troll
how's that feel?
Cards are out. Sports are in. Bet on horse racing, football, and dogfighting - the holy trinity.
"This is literally a geek trying to prove to senior management that they were wrong and he took it too far," he said.
So you know there is a problem and management refuses to believe it. What's the best course of action? Ignore it (and potentially looking like an idiot and getting fired when it's discovered)? Show that it's a problem (and potentially be fired)?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
and having direct access to other players' cards allowed him to improve his game substantially.
</Understatement>
Is anyone surprised? Off-shore gambling sites have no real oversight whatsoever as far as I know (unless Vegas, et.al.). Of COURSE people are going to get ripped off. As much as gambling on the cards, people are gambling on the site itself - and in this case - the guilty parties were gambling that no one would notice. Gambling all the way around. This is just one of many reasons why the U.S. is just out and out foolish to continue banning on-line gaming, when instead, it could bring it to shore, charge gazillions for licenses, tax the proceeds (for both the house and the gamers), and as an added bonus, enact various certification and oversight requirements that would provide some measure of protection while allowing government to do what it does best - grow even larger.
This particular story has to do with a security hole in the computer software, but in general, my understanding of the logic of the game is that online poker is potentially the only way to get a guaranteed honest game with strangers. In a meatspace game with strangers, the problem that basically can't be solved is collusion. Player A and player B both walk into the casino, and pretend they don't know each other. In reality, they've arranged certain secret signals in advance, to be used in hands where the pot gets big. One signal might mean "I'm bluffing," and another might mean "I'm not bluffing." Over time, this gives them a huge systematic advantage. An online poker system, on the other hand, can at least potentially be set up so that A and B can't get themselves into the same game together -- you just have to have a large enough pool of users, and assign them randomly to games. The other reason I'd never play in a casino game is that the house's take is big enough that you're practically guaranteed to lose money in the long run, unless you somehow manage to get into games where your skills are extremely high in comparison to your competitors'.
Find free books.
The stakes of online gambling is simply too high, and it's far easy to cheat. If I simply call a friend who lives in another location and exchange information, how will you catch that? Many of the high stakes table only has 1 table so it's not hard to get on the same table. If you assume the cheaters are actually good players then it is also not necessary that you always play on the same table. Poker is a game of information, and knowing even 2 more cards compared to others give you a huge advantage.
"...and having direct access to other players' cards allowed him to improve his game substantially."
Yeah, I find knowing the other players cards helps my game as well. Go figure...
They could have made tons and tons more money if they were just patient. The way the hands played out, there were only two possibilities: 1. They're cheating, or 2. They're luckiest SOBs ever.
Here are some of the damning hand histories: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=beats&Number=12493401&page=0&fpart=1
...this is what happens when you make your data members public.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
Jails are full of stupid people who thought they were actually smarter than everyone else.
You say that like you can't do that online, too? Maybe it COULD be done better online, but you still have to trust the casino.
And unless this is a completely different story than the one I saw, the problem here was that the house was crooked--they had a superuser type account that could see everyone's hole cards. Someone then gave this information to an outside party, who used it to rake in the cash.
Clearly, if the house is unscrupulous, having it electronic only makes it more difficult for you to know if they're cheating. You might see someone looking over your shoulder and at your hole cards, but you won't see it if the internet gambling site is feeding it to someone over the internet. As for collusion, you might not know the other players, but that doesn't mean the poker site doesn't. They could, if they wanted to, arrange things so that it was even easier to collude online than offline.
In other words, when it comes to playing for money, you really can't trust anyone.
Looking at the link... what is it with assholes who need 800kb avatars? They post three or four times and the poor schmuck with dial up spends sixty seconds downloading text.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
This is only the tip of the iceberg.
from the article, it mentions that the cheater was so blatant at cheating because they had a personal vendetta to prove to the company about it's flawed security. Basically the cheater told the company that it's systems were vulnerable and they wouldn't listen, so he set out to prove a point to them. Only after basically being so blatant at cheating that people thought he was god, and complained umpteen times to Absolute Poker did they do anything about it.
Basically what this proves is that, there is no way a real cheater will be caught. A real cheater is not going to do things to draw attention to themselves, if they can gain a 100% edge by cheating, they won't press it to it's maximum, they'll only press it slightly so that they only have a 55% edge, time and compounding will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams, and NO ONE will be the wiser.
Was the employee a shill who was playing for the house?
...here is a snippet one of the really damning hand histories (the cheat is POTRIPPER):
...
POKERME420 - Posts small blind $150
JINXY_MONKEY - Posts big blind $300
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to AUTOSMOKE [7c 4h]
Dealt to OBV_DONK [Js 5h]
Dealt to POTR0AST [6h 4c]
Dealt to POTRIPPER [Ks Qd]
Dealt to POKERME420 [10d Qs]
Dealt to JINXY_MONKEY [Ah As]
Dealt to CLOVER777 [Kh Jd]
Dealt to SCARFACE_79 [7s 3h]
SCARFACE_79 - Folds
CLOVER777 - Calls $300
OBV_DONK - Folds
AUTOSMOKE - Folds
POTR0AST - Folds
POTRIPPER - Folds
POKERME420 - Raises $450 to $600
JINXY_MONKEY - Raises $1500 to $1800
CLOVER777 - Folds
POKERME420 - Calls $1200
*** FLOP *** [10h 10c 9s]
POKERME420 - Checks
JINXY_MONKEY - Bets $1800
POKERME420 - Calls $1800
*** TURN *** [10h 10c 9s] [5c]
He folds KQo unraised preflop ahead of AA when there was a grand total of ONE HAND in the whole collection he folded preflop where an opponent didn't have JJ or better. A few hands prior he raised 62o under the gun.
I guess if you are going to cheat, you are going to need to not be so obvious as to never fold _except_ when your opponents have something.
http://casinosmack.com/blog/the-absolute-poker-scandal/
The Absolute Poker Scandal
October 16th, 2007 5 Comments
Is AbsolutePoker.com rigged?
Either way, the company is in big trouble. What follows in this post is huge news in the world of online poker and online casinos.
Our story begins in 2003. Absolute Poker's software is in development and many test accounts are created to make sure the program is working correctly. One of these test accounts, known as account #363, can see the hole cards at any table. This test account can not be used to play in real money games, it is only used for development purposes to see that pots are distributed correctly. The id number of this account being #363 is important because this tells us that this was one of the first accounts ever opened in AbsolutePoker, making it very likely the person in control of this account is someone with intimate ties with the company (owner, founder, employee, programmer, shareholder, etc.)
Follow with me to the opening of Absolute Poker (AP). Four people in different parts of the United States open up accounts at Absolute Poker. These four individuals do not know each other. The names in question are Graycat, Steamroller, DoubleDrag, and Potripper. They play in Absolute Poker for a bit, but they don't do well and their accounts are not logged into for many months. These are actual and real players, they are not fake players, they do not know each other, and they are not cheaters.
Key moment in the development of Absolute Poker: a major software upgrade is in process in 2007. The company hires programmers from many areas, including Costa Rica. Our villain in this scandal comes across the test account #363 with hole card access. Visions of big money flash in front of his eyes as he envisions hacking his way to big casino cash. He hatches a plan.
He finds inactive accounts at Absolute Poker and changes the password to these accounts at the server level. He opens test account 363 at a separate computer which allows him to see all the hole cards at the table. He then gets family and friends to cash out his winnings to. The way he does this is after he gets a big amount of cash at the poker tables, he plays against his relatives and buddies and loses all his cash to them. DoubleDrag loses to Reymnaldo, Graycat loses to SupercardM55, and Steamroller and Potripper lose to other various friend and family controlled accounts.
September comes, and as the money piles up, so does the ego and greed. Other poker players make comments in chat that they suspect there is cheating and collusion involved. He logs in as DoubleDrag and then loses every hand intentionally in No-Limit in an attempt to cover up his scam as he senses other players may be on to him.
September 12th. A well-known online poker tournament player named Marco Johnson, who plays under the screen name CrazyMarco plays in a $1000 buy-in tournament at AbsolutePoker.com. Cheat account Potripper is also playing in this tournament. CrazyMarco loses a head-to-head battle with Potripper when Potripper and asks for the hand history of the final table.
September 17th. The four Absolute Poker accounts (Graycat, Steamroller, DoubleDrag, and Potripper) are suspended and frozen.
September 21st. AbsolutePoker sends CrazyMarco a huge Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file (10MB and a full 65,536 rows, which is limit in Excel for most current versions). The spreadsheet is too complicated and scrambled to look into, so he saves it and decides to analyze it later.
October 12th. An AbsolutePoker.com official statement is released with their official comments on the cheating rumors, gossip, controversy, and overall poker community outrage. The company has been made aware of the poker blogs, chatrooms, and online casino discussion forums that are talking about this situation and they state that they take these allegations "extremely seriously". They have "determined with reas
It seems like every time online poker is mentioned on Slashdot, there's a chorus of "What kind of fool would play poker online?! Cheaters, bots, hackers, oh my!"
Granted, this particular incident does give a black eye to the industry, but I can't help thinking back to the mid-nineties. Every once in a while there'd be a news story about some online store or other leaking credit card information, or closing up shop and keeping customer money without delivering the goods, or some other scandal. And every time there'd be a chorus of "What kind of fool would give away their credit card number online?" "Well, what do you expect when you send money off to some website, who knows where they even are or if they'll ship what you bought?"
I think online poker is about where e-commerce was ten years ago. And if those arguments against e-commerce sound silly to you, well, that's what your blanket statements about online poker sound like to those of us who play online on a weekly or daily basis, and rarely if ever encounter any problems.
(The biggest problem I've ever had is the US Attorney's Office deciding that money on deposit to NETeller by US customers was "evidence", and holding on to my $9000 for six months while conducting their grandstanding crusade against the company. As for online cheating, while I'm sure it's happened to me occasionally, I'm not arrogant enough to think I could win the amount I have over the last few years against consistently crooked opposition. No one is that good, certainly not me.)
I write webapps for a living. I know how easy it would be to sneak in a back door, and so do many of you. I cannot believe that anyone with enough internet savvy to play online poker wouldn't be aware of this possibility.
Just.
Plain.
Stupid.
I guess that stupid people get what they deserve.
der durrr durrr der der der criminals.
No.
omg.... im a troll for pointing out that its not smart to trust technology made by humans, for humans, to do stupid human things... dood...
Now, maybe there's some sort of authentication system to make sure that none of the other players are shills or robots, in which case you seem to be claiming that there's no reason to cheat on dealing. I still don't think that's true. Now, you know a lot more about online poker rooms than I do, so maybe there are safeguards against this that you haven't mentioned, but, since you didn't mention them... You said that the room takes a percentage of the pot in each hand, so the obvious ways for them to make more money from the same game are to manipulate events to increase the number of hands played, and to increase the size of every pot. It's been mentioned again and again that the online poker sites have complete hand histories as if this is protection to the player against a crooked site. It seems to me that if you want to socially engineer someone to keep gambling past the point where they would normally stop, etc. having that kind of information to know how to manipulate them would be very useful. Armed with that kind of information, there should be ways to alter peoples hands to, for example, make them more likely to raise the stakes, increasing the size of the pot and therefore the size the "rake". The other thing that could be done by a crooked site is to cycle the winner on each hand, making sure that no-one ever ends up down by too much, that way people are likely to play more hands hoping to win back their money/win more money/do better than break even, whatever. Something like that is a win for the poker site since everyone more or less breaks even, but pays to the site for every hand and when they finally leave, they end up feeling like they were so very close to winnning big.
Frankly, now that I write this down, it doesn't seem that different than what casinos do legally. They're allowed to rig the games as long as the odds end up matching some particular agreed upon number. And, naturally, they skew things to keep people thinking like they're going to win big. The anecdotal person who wins big isn't really someone who "beat the odds" they're part of the casinos advertising. Frankly, the gambling industry in general makes me kind of sick.
Anyway, what I've speculated above is based on fairly poor knowledge of how online poker rooms work. If I'm wrong about how they could cheat the players, please tell me in what way I'm wrong and then I'll have learned something new.
That source stuff is copyrighted.
Firstly, 'omg' isn't a word. Secondly, you end sentences with a single period. Thirdly, you capitalize 'I' as it is a proper noun, and insert an apostrophe as I'm is a contraction of I am. Lastly, dude is not a palindrome. Don't get me started on your initial post. Regards, your local grammar nazi.
correction ... very strict gambling laws which these sites must not get caught violating before they've extracted large amounts of cash.
Get thee back to Myspace.
wouldn't being on myspace be trusting technology to do stupid human things like be social, you sir are a genius to have found out my secret hypocrisy on a lighter note, i don't have a myspace account... and i bet you love programming lousy web apps in dot net.... psycho
Yes, there are people cheating. There are people cheating over the phone, there are Winholdem bots sitting at the same table sharing cards, there are no-limit hold'em $1/$2 profitable bots (altough pathetically bad: but they make money out of players worse than themselves), there is a good poker bot for heads-up play that is basically 50/50 versus world top pro in *heads-up* match, etc.
Yup, no-limit hold'em has been fully solved when your stack is only 10BB (10 times the big blind: i.e. you're sitting at a $1/$2 table and you have only $20).
However : full stack no-limit hold'em will *never* be solved (unless a major mathematical/computer science breakthrough that would have much more crucial implications than online poker being hypothetically raped by bots).
How comes there are people like, say, Elky and TillerMaN (I choosed two ex- StarCraft and Warcraft pro-gamers here), that make consistently, since years, more than 30K per month (yup, more than $30 000 per month on average, you read correctly) ?
Yup, when you play online it's very clear that some people are colluding and that some are bots? Does it prevent people good at the game to win? Not at all.
Yup, in some case some sites have been caught using rigged random number generators. People have hand histories... There are companies that exists solely for the purpose of analyzing hand histories and making sure that there aren't nasty things going on.
The fact is very simple: either someone is cheating in a way that allows him to stay under the radar and hence its impact on the game as a whole is insignificant... Or he's cheating in a way that significantly impacts the game and then he'll get caught.
There are many pro Poker (and even semi-pro) players making an insanely good living playing honestly and no amount of bots, students colluding over the phone, rigged random number generators, etc. is going to change that.
Regarding the bots problem, in the long term only monitored bots will be viable (bots supervised all the time by someone): sites are now sending captcha, amongst other, to detect bots. You don't answer with a close to 100% rate to the captcha? Say goodbye to your account and go whining in the Winholdem (bot program) forums...
There's isn't a week that passes by without having bots getting busted and destroyed. Some sites are even tracking this.
And it hardly makes a dent to the revenues of the good players: the level of play starts to get really high when you play $5/$10 (some would say $3/$6) and there are no no-limit hold'em bots there that can understand the "x level poker thinking" needed to be a winning player there. If you have that, you've got a real A.I. and, once more, this would have more implications than online poker being hypothetically pwned by bots.
I started playing online a few months ago for I wanted to see where were all these bots, all these coluders, all the rigged sites, etc. and see if I could "beat the game". And sure enough I do. I'm building my bankroll and already switched up several levels (so, yes, I'm starting to win some money online). And, yup I see bots and colluders and, yup, I exploit them.
It took around 200 hands for those involved to smell something fishy.
"if they can gain a 100% edge by cheating, they won't press it to it's maximum, they'll only press it slightly so that they only have a 55% edge, time and compounding will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams, and NO ONE will be the wiser."
And this is the ignorance talking. The detail in records that are available would allow even this level of cheating to be detected, it would just increase the necessary sample size.
You could probably make some money (as some have) but rich beyond your wildest dreams is just wrong.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
"I know how easy it would be to sneak in a back door, and so do many of you."
Well, let's hear it. I have no doubt if your method is viable, there are enough technical experts to say so.
Of course, they will be able to tell if you're full of shit too, which leads me to believe you'll never be heard from again.
So enlighten us AC. Let's hear about how "easy" it would be to sneak a "back door" in. I'm nervous with anticipation.
Of course, after they sneak their "back door" in, they'll have to actually play which means that their decisions will be recorded and any statistical variance noted, like it was in this case.
Please go back to writing "web apps".
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
why did OP link from the retards at MSNBC?? the original story was broken by the people at
2+2 and by Steven Levitt at NYTimes Freakonomics blog. OP should have linked to them instead.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12097244&an=0&page=0#Post12097244
This has been known about for a month for many people.
Poker site owners claim the market will police integrity. If customers find own a site is crooked, they'll all depart another of many competing sites.