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"Back Door" Cheating Scandal Rocks Online Poker
AcidAUS sends us the story of an online poker cheating ring that netted an estimated $10M for its perpetrators over almost 4 years. The article spotlights the role of an Australian player who first performed the statistical analyses that demonstrated that cheating had to be going on. "In two separate cases, Michael Josem, from Chatswood, analyzed detailed hand history data from Absolute Poker and UltimateBet and uncovered that certain player accounts won money at a rate too fast to be legitimate. His findings led to an internal investigation by the parent company that owns both sites. It found rogue employees had defrauded players over three years via a security hole that allowed the cheats to see other player's secret (or hole) cards." The (Mohawk) Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which licenses the two poker companies, has released its preliminary report. MSNBC reporting from a couple of weeks back gives deep background on the scandal.
Backdoor? That's nothing. What if I log into a table (which seats 10 people) with 1 friend... or worse, 8 friends -- and then work as a team.
This cheat required somebody on the 'inside' to perpetrate. As with most casino table games, if you have somebody on the inside, cheating is easy.
This is how I cheated at various online poker sites. Me and two buddies would join a table, and have a VNC connection setup to view each others hands. two of us would play dummy hands based on whom had the best hand of the bunch. We cleaned out every table we played at.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
For those who don't know, Kahnawake is Mohawk territory claimed by the aboriginals (aka Indians) in Canada.
The Mohawks claim to sovereignty over the land, and do not allow the provincial & national police to enter.
To avoid stirring up trouble, the Canadian government usually doesn't send police to Kahnawake, even though the Canadian government doesn't recognize the Mohawk claim to exclusive sovereignty.
Without any real police force, crime flourishes in Kahnawake. Drug smuggling, gun smuggling, people smuggling, cigarette smuggling, you name it.
Don't trust any business in Kahnawake, let alone a business attractive to crime, like gambling.
Not long ago, there was a Mohawk criminal driving at high speed (off-reserve) trying to get to the Mohawk territory before getting caught by the police chasing him. He made it on to the Mohawk territory, and the police abandoned their pursuit. Sadly, the Mohawk driver ran a stop sign and killed a Mohawk teenager.
For the people of Kahnawake, it seems that it is more important to be the victims of aboriginal criminals than to cooperate with non-aboriginal law enforcement. Sad.
Yea, Yea the found a hack and they exploited it... Big Whoop, that not news. The real news is that Online Gambling Industry is starting to use Decision Support Systems and other Business Intelligence methods for finding the cheaters...
Most companies are pathetic with incorporating Business Intelligence into their infrastructure. They collect the data and do nothing with it. Most IT people don't care about doing anything with it. It is quite sad.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Isn't this a fairly standard design practice? How did this happen?
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The background story to all this is highly fascinating - there are a series of companies of everchanging names involved, that first wrote the software, then sold it to a gambling company, that then got taken over, and somehow always the same names show up. This backdoor was probably planted long ago for just the purpose it ended up being used.
As for "oversight", the gambling commission oversees one major operation - the online poker sites. Which also pays their bills.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
There is only one way to make money gambling: Make sure you are "the house". In the long run, only the house wins.
Actually, I cleaned up last time I was in Vegas. My buddies did too - We developed a 'system'.
1) Fill your pocket with nickels.
2) Find a nickel-slot, sit down, and drop a nickel in.
3) Wait for the cocktail-girl to walk by and spin the slot.
4) Tell the girl, "Why yes, I would enjoy a Heineken on the house."
5) Accept your beer and walk off to find another nickel-slot. (Alternatively sit at the same one, but that will require tipping if you want regular service.)
Maybe you get your nickel back and maybe you don't. Who cares? It's a full night of nickel-Heineken. A buck goes a LONG way.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Assuming, of course, that the companies you've invested in don't fold with a negative value. From that, there's no recovery.
Also, keep in mind that the stock market depends on an influx of fresh money from the bottom. It's a legalized pyramid scheme, where those who buy new stock infuse the market with the money that established investors can cash out. Once the supply of fresh money stops, the stock value can only rise artificially. So sooner or later a stock market has to crash. It may be in ten years, or in two hundred, but any system that's based on continued growth will collapse.
In short (no pun intended), your 10-40 year investment is still a gamble. You're just trading a large risk of losing some money for a smaller risk of losing a lot of money.
My wife doubted we would get comped at the nickel slots. Not only do you get comped, the drinks are stronger than the ones you pay for at the bar! Add to this the cheap rooms and cheap food, and you've saved enough to pay for some expensive entertainment while still vacationing on a budget.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This is false. It can take awhile to catch it (as is seen in the AP/UB story), but statistical analysis will always show if weird things are happening. People who play seriously online use tools like Poker Tracker, Hold'em Manager, Poker Office, etc to keep track of their own play, wins/losses and whatnot.
Someone noticed something odd about the win rate of a few players. They mentioned it to someone else; who looked and found the same thing. It kept going until the evidence was so great that it couldn't be a statistical anomaly.
The real difficulty is in getting sites to admit when something shady has been going on. AP and UB denied that anything had happened for ages. Until the bad press started showing up and it became too much for them to ignore.
The economy is not a zero sum game
Perhaps not, but it's a lot closer than the markets sometimes seem to think. There are all kinds of clever economic theories, but ultimately, there are only so many goods produced and useful services provided in the world, no matter how much money gets printed to pay for them, and the efficiency of production and service provision only increases so fast over time. As we've all been finding out rather painfully in recent weeks, economies that ignore this reality, based on funny money that is not backed by anything of any real value, are liable to collapse when someone knocks the bottom card out of the house.
For the first time ever, my investment portfolio has actually tipped over into an overall negative return recently. Several years of gains from investing in decent companies trading in useful markets with sound fundamentals, carefully avoiding madness like the dot-com bubble and the financial services industry that caused the current mess, have been wiped out in a matter of weeks. Sure, the market will recover in time, and if you're lucky enough to have a substantial sum of spare cash lying around to put in now then there are probably long-term bargains to be had. And sure, I know that objectively, given the various tax implications in my country, I am still better to be in my current position that I would have been if I had put the money in a bank and then bought in for the prices available now.
Even so, this makes it all too clear that stock market investing really is a long-term prospect: even something like a five-year plan, which is what a lot of the pros used to quote as a sensible minimum investment period, has brought little safety at all in the past 10–15 years. And how many people really have enough money that they can invest for 10+ years without wanting to spend any of it, yet still have little enough money that the return on investment matters? Maybe once you own the house and your kids are grown up, if you want to save for your retirement...?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Professional online players play orders of magnitude more hands than their bricks and mortar counterparts - thats why they do it. If you are better than those you play against in a casino game you get to play roughly 30 hands / hour against your opponents. If you multi-table online some players play in excess of 10 tables simultaneously at 60 hands / hour / table. Thats over 600 hands / hour online v 30 hands / hour in live play. Add in the lower rake online, no tipping etc and you can see how a good player can make far more online than in live play.
In online poker:
* the house doesn't need to cheat. The amount they make verses their costs means they don't need to
* players try and cheat via collusion, but their edge is so small it's not worth worrying about
* if you are playing cash games you will probably be fleeced by bot networks. I know people that run them, they live in tax havens and siphone off fortunes via a network of Net-teller accounts etc. Most of the bots run via valid accounts and credit cards, with the recipients that run the software 24/7 on their machines via DSL rake in 10%. The bots don't run on tournaments so that's where I play.
In real life:
* the house doesn't need to cheat. It's still a profitable business
* in a poker club or a casino the other players rarely cheat. It's such security that justifies the house rake
* in private games you have to watch for cheating. Eg thumbnail imprints on the back of cards, bent corners, etc.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Hey guys poker is not gambling, in the long term!
Just visit sharkscope.com and check the name livb112 at FullTilt!
Username Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit
livb112 23,560 $43 $840 5% $1,020,747
Did anyone consent to be cheated?
They consented to play on using a format that cannot be secured. So the answer is "yes".
False analogy and you know it.
I don't know it, but thanks for setting me straight. Your incisive lack of explanation has shown me the light.
They consented to play on using a format that cannot be secured. So the answer is "yes".
You seem to be using 'consented' in a rather absurd manner.
By that logic, if I get mugged on the way home today its because I consented to walk home along routes that I cannot ensure are secured.
Of course, I could elect not to walk, but then I apparently consent to get carjacked because I consent to drive along routes I cannot ensure are secured...
I'm sure they accept -some- risk that cheating is possible, but they certainly don't consent to be cheated, and I would further argue that most of them have absolutely no concept of the level of risk they are taking on, and that most of them would make different choices if they actually understood the risk.
Seriously, if you think playing online amounts to consent to be cheated, then its no wonder you you thought your analogy wasn't false. Hell, by that twisted logic I perhaps it wasn't.