Poker News

Jennifer Newell

Beginning in mid-September of 2007, rumors of cheating on the Absolute Poker online poker website began to surface. Within a matter of weeks, those rumors turned into allegations of cheating involving someone seeing whole cards, tapping into old unused accounts, and dumping chips. It soon evolved into a full-fledged scandal that implicated Absolute Poker executives, questioned the position of AP-sponsored pro player Mark Seif, and demanded a third-party investigation by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

The most eye-opening part of the saga thus far was the people who exposed the cheating affair?the players. Nat Arem, an online poker player who started the online statistics site PokerDB.com, and Todd Witteles, online poker pro and partial owner of NeverWinPoker.com, were two of the players who immediately began examining the facts, analyzing hand histories, and putting together the pieces of the puzzle. It was through their keen detective work, along with pressure from the masses of online poker players and fans, that Absolute Poker was virtually forced into taking the allegations seriously. And when AP officials denied that they could confirm any wrongdoing, again it was the outrage and pressure from the poker community that pushed AP into agreeing to an outside investigation.

To fully understand the scope of the scandal, it is only appropriate to give an overview of the events that led to cheating suspicions in the first place.

On September 12, a $1,000 buy-in tournament took place on Absolute Poker that was won a player named POTRIPPER. At one point at the final table, this player called with ten-high against the nine-high flush of a well-known player by the name of CrazyMarco. That caused CrazyMarco and several observers to question whether or not POTRIPPER could possibly have seen the hole cards.

Marco contacted AP support and requested a hand history to review the play at the final table, and on September 21 he received a rather large and jumbled Excel file. Several weeks later, Marco and his roommate, Jared ?TheWacoKidd? Hamby, tackled the file and found that the document actually contained all of the hole cards for the first few hours of the tournament. In addition, players? IP addresses, user ids, e-mail addresses, and other personal information were included in the file.

After some analysis, Marco and Jared invited several others, including Nat Arem, to view the Excel file. All came to the unmitigated conclusion that POTRIPPER had cheated by viewing the hole cards of his opponents.

Upon further consideration, they noticed an observer at the tables where POTRIPPER played. The user number, something given to each of the millions of players who register at the site, was 363. They deduced that it had to have been one of the first players ever have an account with AP and could possibly have been someone associated with the company during its start-up period. They also noticed that 363 had a Costa Rican IP address, and the e-mail address associated with the account belonged to someone atAbsolute Entertainment.

Eventually, a moderator on the 2+2 online forums connected the IP address with Scott Tom, who was an executive at one time with Absolute Poker. And a source posted on the PocketFives forum that the POTRIPPER account belongs to A.J. Green, a supposed close friend of Tom. And the pieces of the puzzle began to connect.

In Part 2, Absolute Poker responds, Mark Seif speaks, poker players raise objections and more questions, and a third party is brought in to join the investigation, though that auditor just happens to hold one hundred percent ownership over AP. The saga continues?

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