Online poker may never be the same because of the scandal that was caused by Absolute Poker. People may no longer trust playing poker online all because some people wanted to make a little more money the easy way.
The story starts way back in 2003 when Absolute Poker was in its developmental stage. They created accounts to test their program and one such account, #363, was created for just that purpose. This account could see everyone’s hole cards at any table to make sure that pots were distributed correctly. This account could be used to play for real money and it was tied to someone in the company.
Now in 2007, Absolute Poker was going to upgrade their software, so they were dealing with programmers. One of those programmers ran across the #363 account and decided it would be a good idea to use this account to their advantage but in a subtle way. Some way that wouldn’t be noticed that much.
Around this time there were four accounts that were opened by real players to play for real money. Those accounts were Steamroller, DoubleDrag, GrayCat, and Potripper. These players played at Absolute Poker for a little while. They weren’t the best players and eventually it seemed that they had all abandoned Absolute Poker to try their luck somewhere else. These accounts weren’t used for months.
Right before the new upgrade was released, these four accounts started to play at Absolute Poker again. At first these four accounts played pretty conservatively and they would win a little and then leave the game quick, talking about how dinner was ready. After awhile though it seemed the players started to get greedier and they wanted more money. So, their play started to get looser and they were winning more and more money. The weird thing though was that they seemed to never cash out. The four accounts never cashed out any of their winnings. It seemed that they would play certain other players and lose a lot of money to those people. Then those people would cash out their accounts a couple days later. Other players started to get suspicious of the four accounts, so they started questioning Absolute Poker. Then Potripper played a tournament that was a $1,000 buy-in, on September 12 against Marco Johnson. Johnson lost that tournament to Potripper and thought some of his moves were a little suspicious. So, Johnson asked Absolute Poker to send him a report on his hand history. For an outline of when things happened go to http://www.neverwinpoker.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44393. On September 17 the accounts of Steamroller, DoubleDrag, GrayCat, and Potripper were suspended and frozen so that their could be an investigation into their activity.
On September 21 Johnson received the report from Absolute Poker on his hand history in the tournament that he played against Potripper. He didn’t read the report right away because it was so big and it was pretty complex. Then on October 12 it came out that Johnson not only received the report on his hand history but he got the whole report on everyone’s hand history that was in the tournament and he was able to see everyone’s hole cards. By seeing this you could tell that Potripper was able to see everyone’s hole cards and that is how he won the tournament. It was apparent that he had cheat.
The next thing that had to be done was figure out who was behind these accounts. It was discovered on October 16 that Potripper’s email address was scott@rivieratld.com. This email belonged to Scott Tom who was the co-owner and president of Absolute Poker. They also figured out that Potripper was also using the account #363, so that they could see everyone’s hole cards at the table. People think that Potripper is really AJ Green who was the former Director of Operations at Absolute Poker. He is now the Director of Operations for nine.com. What everyone figured out was this scandal was done by people who were within the company. They stole thousands and maybe millions of dollars from people who were there just to make some money have a little fun.
This could be really bad for online poker. People may never trust online poker sites again with their money. The investigation is still going because they aren’t exactly sure if those two guys are the only ones involved but if they are they just ruined a whole business just because they wanted to get money quick and easy. This story has generated a lot of talk between people. Some people are really upset and hope that something is done to these men. Time will only tell.
Absolute Poker hasn’t made much of a statement. They have been pretty quiet about this story. Hopefully they will soon explain what happened and why. Hopefully those two men are punished for what they did. It has been said that the money will be returned to those players who played against these accounts but that is a pretty hard thing to do.
Stay tuned for more updates as they come out. This story is far from over.
October 20th, 2007 at 11:05 am
this will probobly be used as an “example” in a lot of court cases..
November 16th, 2007 at 12:58 am
I suspect that this has been going on for quite some time at A.P. The general rotten fish stench of the site is obvious if you play here for any considerable amount of time. Opponants always seemed to make unbelievable calls, in situations where any reasonable player would have folded. My friends and I called these “Absoulute Poker Moments”. Getting in on a freroll, I never invested a dime in this site and ended up cashing over two grand before they finally banned me for transfering chips to a friend in a HEADS UP 15-30 game. They still owe me $500 that they froze in my account.
January 6th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Potripper scandal represents only the tip of the iceberg, I’ve played there for a few years and I suspect all the games are rigged and AP is collecting all important prizes from all tourneys with significant buy-ins using the Potripper method. So Potripper is the rule not the exception that proves the rule, they were stealing players money for years as they probably still doing it right now …