The largest online gambling scam in the history of online poker has finally really reached mainstream media. 60 minutes and the Washington Post have both been looking into, and shedding light on what’s known commonly among poker players as the Absolute Poker Scandal.
The cheating scandal actually included Absolute Poker and sister site Ultimate Bet poker. There’s been no accusations of cheating on other sites such as ClubWPT that use the same software as Ultimate Bet.
Steve Kroft explains how online poker players who suspected cheating were forced to successfully ferret out the cheaters themselves. Further explained in the video is the lack of accountability here.
The United States has refused to step up to the plate and regulate online gambling. The servers the games are played on are located in a ‘nondescript’ building on soverign Indian ground within the Kahnawake Reservation.
The Kahnawake Reservation says that they will back up anyone who wants to nail these cheaters, but.. they’re the ones with the jurisdiction.
Millions of dollars stolen, and noone even seems to be investigtating. It’s the perfect scam.
Those cheaters were never revealed by authorities at the Kahnawake gaming commission, or by the companies they cheated.
The Washington post also recently ran a story on the cheating scandal, which followed earlier stories that hit the New York Times blog and The Register, in addition to several more amatuer stories on poker related news blogs, magazines and websites such as this one.
The Internet Poker world is begging the United States to step in and take their cut of the rake, and offer some accountability, some regulation, some rules. Members of the poker community would ultimately just be relieved that their freedom to gamble away all their damn money in their own living room as they choose with whatever of their own credit cards they like is returned. Until then however, until we can go on singing the Land of the Free, perhaps PokerStars, a publically traded, and trusted company is the better choice for online poker players, them, or sites like ClubWPT, tell ’em LadyHoldem sent ya, so don’t rip ya off. 😉
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My opinion after months of playing on Club WPT is that they are certainly cheating I’ve seen thousands of pieces of evidence as blatant as giving the pot to the wrong player to getting called all in 100 times in a row and caller never losing — this I’ve seen hundreds of times over and over. WARNING!!!
I’ve seen the pot go to the wrong person – a pair of kings erroneously beat a pair of aces.
Also, it seems the worst hand always wins on the river.
Recently, a guy with a pair of tens calls an all-in, along with another guy with a pair of jacks. The first all-in caller had a pair of pocket aces. Of course the aces, which became a set on the flop and the jacks, which also became a set on the flop, both lost to the person with tens as he hit a four card flush on the river.
Figures.