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Message: [QUOTE="Marton Magyar, post: 6376317, member: 490703"] And here's Chapter 32, Luvepoker's pick: CHAPTER 32 The Potripper Cheating Scandal on Absolute Poker At the very dawn of poker’s history, card cheats defrauding players in the games was almost the norm. If you sat down to play some poker on a boat on the Mississippi, you could expect to get a stacked deck from time to time. (See Chapter 3.) However, as decades passed, more and more people came to realize that poker is a game of skill where you can win honorably. You didn’t need to be good at cheating; you “simply” had to be really good at the game. Thus, the poker world went for over a century without a major cheating scandal. That’s why when a player with the screen name “Potripper” appeared on the scene at the former online site Absolute Poker, it shook the online poker community to its core. Players on the site noticed that this unknown Potripper was winning at rates that the mathematics of poker shouldn’t allow. In cash games, he was scooping nearly 500 BBs per 100 hands, while playing virtually any two cards dealt to him. He first drew significant attention to himself in a $4,500 tournament, played on Absolute Poker on September 15, 2007. He made a call on the river with 10 high, catching a bluff his opponent made with a busted 9-high flush draw. Stu Ungar had been applauded for his understanding of the game in a 10-high call a decade earlier. Potripper, however, got a very different reaction for his unusual river decision. Maddened, thousands of online poker players from all around the world cried foul. They congregated on the famous Two Plus Two online poker forum on the internet, working tirelessly to gather evidence against this suspected cheater. The online poker community was convinced that Potripper was a so-called “superuser” who was able to see all of his opponents’ hole cards. He made plays and was winning at rates that could be explained only that way. This uproar eventually involved the people at Absolute Poker as well. At first, they denied any possibility that cheating was occurring on their servers. Evidently, this didn’t calm the players. After more digging, they identified a number of other accounts with possible access to the other players’ hole cards. These screen names were Steamroller, Graycat, and Doubledrag. They weren’t as brazen as their “partner in crime” Potripper, but the Two Plus Two users found suspicious plays from them as well. The scandal was getting out of hand. The Kahnawáke Gaming Commission, the regulatory body based in Canada that issued Absolute Poker its gaming license, stepped in and started an independent investigation in October 2007, about a month after the cheating allegations erupted. On October 19, at long last, Absolute Poker admitted to a security breach in an email to its users. What every poker player on the internet knew already had been officially confirmed: Potripper, along with some other accounts, were cheating by gaining access to their opponents’ cards. This poker story blew up and even made its way into mainstream media. The primetime news magazine “60 Minutes,” airing on CBS since 1968, did a well-produced segment about the Potripper cheating scandal. Other major national news channels covered it as well. Articles appeared about the issue in The New York Times. Absolute Poker refunded the affected players with interest. However, that hardly brought any closure to this infuriating story, which turned out to be an inside job carried out by a rogue employee. However, the names of the perpetrators are still unknown, at least to the public. It’s also unclear whether or not they faced any real punishment, other than having their accounts banned. The “spirit” of Potripper will forever be a major stain on the integrity of online poker. However, it also showed the power of a dedicated and righteous online-poker community [/QUOTE]

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