"Back Door" Cheating Scandal Rocks Online Poker 427
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.
*mucks his hand* (Score:3, Funny)
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the morality police is what brought us here. If online gaming was regulated to be fair and run by legit casinos who had a legal liability to create a fair and secure playing field this would be unlikely to happen and if it did there would be legal recourse. Since the morality police can't bring themselves to do that people play without the safety of regulation and a legal system and when companies harm their players through negligence our outright fraud the players are just screwed.
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, except those legal casinos with their legal liability are the same ones who will tell you "you are no longer welcome here", if you start winning too much, or card counting, or employing some other system to bend the odds in your favour.
Online casinos can't scrutinize the players in the same way, and can barely tell the difference between a real player and a bot.
I'm not saying what they did was in any way correct, but please don't compare them with the "fair, unbiased people of Las Vegas" - they both want to bleed you dry as quickly as possible.
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:5, Insightful)
That's only true when you're playing games that compete against the house.
"Counting cards" occurs in Blackjack. In Blackjack, if you win, the house loses.
That's not the case in Poker - in Poker the house wins whether you win or lose. They really don't give a darn.
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:4, Funny)
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So, is this a matter of the "poor players" who deserve better, even though they don't really deserve anything better than to lose all their money, which they did?
The players chose to throw their money away, while the business shouldn't exist in the first place.
I think you've confused poker with roulette. Someone who is much better at poker than the people he's playing with will come out ahead in the long term, assuming that nobody's cheating. If everyone at the table is equally good/bad, the house rake will slowly drain their $$, but hopefully they all have a good time and possibly improve their game. Again, assuming that nobody's cheating - In that case their $$ will be quickly drained and the game will probably be frustrating to all involved.
Poker, although
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:4, Informative)
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:4, Insightful)
I might lose 25 dollars a month playing poker for 10 hours of entertainment, because I'm not that good, but still I only play 5 dollar games that aren't winner-takes all. My neighbour rents 5 movies a month for 10 hours of entertainment, spending 25 dollars. He's the good guy and I'm the bad guy why exactly?
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Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever played poker? With the right people, poker is fun. A movie costs 10$ and lasts 1.5 hours, and may or may not be fun. I can play a 5$ poker game with friends that lasts twice that long, is more entertaining than most movies and that allows for actual interaction between people, rather than staring at a screen. I could blow 50$ or more at the bar, or I could play poker all night for 20$ and not wake up smelling of smoke and beer.
Playing poker because you think it will make you rich is probably retarded, playing at a casino is certainly reckless if you aren't an elite player, but playing poker doesn't in and of itself indicate naivety or stupidity. It's just a different form of entertainment and is reasonably priced as long as you're reasonable about it.
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:4, Funny)
You're doing it wrong.
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So why should the poker business not exist?
Online poker for real money shouldn't exist because its virtually impossible to ensure systematic cheating isn't taking place.
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:5, Insightful)
This is false. It can take awhile to catch it (as is seen in the AP/UB story),...
So is it safe to play now? That's the question that needs answering. Or is there another scam going that hasn't been caught yet. You don't know.
but statistical analysis will always show if weird things are happening.
Eventually. But what good is that?
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.
And 4 years later they got caught.
"A few players" should have retired their accounts, and spun up new ones every now and then.
Or after 3 years, should have just plain retired and taken their millions to another country. How sure are you this didn't happen too with other teams? Or isn't happening right now?
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.
So not only does it take YEARS to unmask systematic cheating, but the online houses aren't cooperating to solve the issue faster. That doesn't exactly install confidence...
As I originally said, there is no way to reliably ensure cheating isn't taking place. Sure if it is taking place, one day, we'll know about it, maybe. But the smart criminals will have moved on before then... and meanwhile the new criminals will still be under the statistical radar.
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It was never "safe" to gamble online. That's the whole point.
Gambling online is not unlike shooting heroin with dirty needles. You'll get high, but eventually something bad is going to happen.
EXACTLY! (Score:5, Funny)
I SAID NO CONSEQUENCES!
Re:*mucks his hand* (Score:5, Insightful)
Online poker for real money shouldn't exist because its virtually impossible to ensure systematic cheating isn't taking place.
So what? Then people don't have to play it. Why limit what consenting adults want to do in their free time?
Hell, let's just ban the internet, since it's "virtually impossible" to keep it from being used to steal music and distribute kiddy porn.
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The RIAA and MPAA agree with you.
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Why limit what consenting adults want to do in their free time?
Really? Did anyone consent to be cheated?
Hell, let's just ban the internet, since it's "virtually impossible" to keep it from being used to steal music and distribute kiddy porn.
False analogy and you know it.
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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.
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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 certa
Let's comp the cheaters some room nights (Score:5, Funny)
Illicit high rollers get free room and board for the next 5-10 years.
This is why (Score:5, Funny)
I don't gamble.
I invest my money in the stock market.
Re:This is why (Score:5, Insightful)
Whee.
Re:This is why (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't buy individual stocks
The economy is not a zero sum game
Yes it is, but as long as in the long term production is higher in the future than it is now, your (sufficiently diversified) investment will grant returns.
Re:This is why (Score:5, Interesting)
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...?
Re:This is why (Score:5, Informative)
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.
This is true. However, the increase in effeciency due to technological advancement *is* the huge driver that makes investment work. That growth is significant over time (measured in inflation-adjuested money, as that's what's interesting). European economies have grown a solid 2% a year post-WWII. The American economy has grown a terriffic 4% a year. And a bit less than that 4% gets paid to bondholders, and a bit more to (common) stockholders, so the stock market is far from a zero-sum game.
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?
Yes, it's the 30-40 year time horizon that matters. Everyone can invest on that scale: just live below your means, not above them. Accumulate wealth, not debt. It's as easy (as hard) as having a little self-discipline. If you need your money back in 5 years, it should really be in (short term, non-corporate) bonds. Shorter than that and you want to stick to FDIC-insured accounts and treasuries.
Investing so that you can retire comfortably at 55 instead of starving on social security at 65 is "just" a matter of saving a significant percentage of your take-home pay every month, to an account that you won't draw from even if your 'fridge breaks and your car's in the shop, and you get laid off. That means you have to save even more to give yourself that padding. All of which is easy (for a salaried professional) if you stop trying to impress your friends and neighbors with your purchases, realize you dont need the latest tech toys, and even (gasp) realize that maybe you should be renting, not buying a house, during the collapse of the biggest housing bubble ever.
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Thinking "I'll put my money in the stock market now then in five years, I'll cash it out" is plain wrong. Gradually you need to move away from stocks into bonds.
I'm not going to get into financial advice; I suspect that we would agree a lot, but this isn't really the forum for that discussion. Regardless, the way the tax system is set up in my country, and the advice that was routinely given by numerous financial advisers until quite recently, both encouraged people to take a stocks-and-shares view even for medium-term investments, and effectively imposed significant penalties on those looking for safer or alternative investment opportunities — or just keepin
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what of it?
Are you predicting the end of economic growth? If so we've got more serious problems to worry about than the Dow.
If if and when we run against a boundary condition it's not going to matter whether you've invested in gold, stocks, or stuffed your mattress with cash.
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> If so we've got more serious problems to worry about than the Dow.
We sure do: peak oil, global warming, asteroids, people who actually like Murder She Wrote. Now that's scary.
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You make the same mistake that many do: the stock market is not about growth. Long-term, the value in the stock market comes from dividends paid, not growth. Else, the stock market would simply be a game of hot potato where the last person holding the stock loses.
Tech stocks often don't give dividends while they're in the growth phase, as the price is expected to increase and the profits that would otherwise be dividends are needed for funding company growth. However, these stocks must eventually produce di
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You may want to learn more about the concept called Secondary Market Offering [wikipedia.org].
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Anything is a gamble.
Putting the money in your mattress guarantees you'll lose value at the rate of inflation. (several percent a year, over 40 years you'd be lucky to have a third of the value kept...
Buying GOLD for the money risks that goldprices fall, or don't keep up with inflation.
Putting them in the BANK risks that the bank goes bankrupt (assuming you've got more cash than the guarantees cover), or that inflation and taxes will eat any gains. Or that the dollar falls so your value is reduced.
So yes. B
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That sounds a lot like the labor theory of value. The labor theory of value as an explanation of capitalism is the foundations of The Communist Manifesto.
Re:This is why (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah, you could do worse, like go vote on an election or something.
Re:This is why (Score:5, Funny)
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I thought I was the only one who remembered anything from Gremlins 2 (yes, there was a sequel).
Re:This is why (Score:4, Insightful)
You kid, but the stock market is actually worse than gambling. At least when you gamble you know what your odds are.
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Unless people are cheating. Then you think you know the odds, but the reality is something else entirely.
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But your odds on average are still better with the stock market. Yea you get down periods. But in the long term you see a general upward direction. For real gambling you will find a general downward direction. The stock market people usually want you to make money. Gambling wants to take your money. You are gambling if you are going for short term trading. But for long term your odds are quite good especially if you diversify across different areas. So any one area could die and you are still going strong
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Re:This is why (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:This is why (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Did your wife mind the "expensive entertainment" you bought?
It is (legal after all in) Vegas/Nevada!
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Prostitution is not legal in Vegas, though it is in the rest of the state. Our expensive entertainment consisted of rides, Cirque de Soleil, Madam Tussaud, video games, and more rides (none of which involved any other women, sadly)
Re:This is why (Score:5, Funny)
But then you find out that all the toilets have locks on them charging $10, or even worse, they are slot machines too. "Come on cherries! I need to pee!"
Re:This is why (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty rude. Not to the casinos (I could care less about them), but to the poor, hardworking "cocktail girls". I do more-or-less the same thing when I'm in Vegas, but I make a point to tip the waitrons well. This means: they'll happily keep bringing the drinks; they'll carefully not notice how few nickels you're putting in the slots (as long as you keep up a minimal pretense); and you're still getting drinks at bargain-basement prices.
"Do what you wanna--do what you will;
Just don't mess up your neighbor's thrill--
and when you pay the bill, kindly leave a little tip
to help the next poor sucker on his one-way trip."
-- Frank Zappa, "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing"
Re:This is why (Score:5, Funny)
After a quick visit to the dictionary, I have to admit I am rather disappointed that waitron is not a robotic cocktail waitress that I was previously unaware of.
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But for long term your odds are quite good especially if you diversify across different areas. So any one area could die and you are still going strong.
So if you have lots of money (to diversify) and won't need it at a particular time long term investments work. If you have a small pot and may need the money at a particular time (eg when you retire) then you're screwed and you may as well enjoy some poker, smoke big cigars and hope to die young.
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Amen! That's why I spend all my money on hookers and booze!
Why do people place such a sucker bet anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
I still don't understand why people do this. Are they really THAT desperate to place a bet, any bet? Might as well become a day-trader and play the stock market for your fix. It would be a lot more regulated than most online poker.
Re:Why do people place such a sucker bet anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
People do it for two reasons.
1) It's fun. When you plunk down $20 for you and your significant other to see a movie in a theater, you have no chance of ever getting that money back. But it's worth it to you for the entertainment. Same goes with gambling. You lose money but a lot of people enjoy it. I don't, personally, but many people do.
2) It's profitable. When playing poker, you don't have to beat the house, you just have to beat the other players. The house takes a portion of the winnings but if you can consistently beat the rest of the table then you come out ahead. It's not like other casino games in this respect. You're not playing against the house, you're just paying the house for the privilege of playing against other people. You can, and many people do, make a living playing poker.
Well, there are actually three types:
3) Idiots think they will win big.
But the point being, with reasons 1 and 2 it's possible to gamble without being irrational or stupid.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How can they enjoy it, when they know the trend must result in loss?
Oh, and: how dare they enjoy it?! I don't enjoy it, so they shouldn't either.
BTW, they're having sex the wrong way too. And they listen to crappy music. The "beer" they drink sucks. They run the wrong OS on their personal computer, and the wrong text editor too.
Something has to be done about these people.
Re:Why do people place such a sucker bet anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand. You answer your own question. The people who make money at it do guarantee that they play against people who are worse than them (on average), by virtue of becoming and staying good at the game.
Of course an average player can't make money at it. (Unless they have a skill for finding tables filled with really crappy players, anyway.) That's why it's not the average players who do it for a living.
Obviously the people who fall into categories 1 and 3 must put in more money than the people who fall into category 2 take out, but that no more disproves the existence of category 2 than the fact that customers put more money into a store than the workers take out disproves the existence of the workers.
Re:Why do people place such a sucker bet anyway? (Score:4, Funny)
They're called addicts. I stand by my previous statement.
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This is exactly how poker differs from other casino games. Since players play against each other, the game is not biased against anyone. The house takes a cut of each pot (the rake), but skill determines who wins in the long run. For example, here in California poker is legal while other gambling games are not since it is considered
as i've said before (Score:2)
You have to be crazy to trust the house in online poker. In physical poker, it's a lot easier to see when the house is cheating.
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Really? [wikipedia.org]
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Because they are always cheating? :)
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The problem is that you can't tell what the other players are doing. Are they sitting in the same room, using a chat program, talking on the phone? I know the companies have been going after programs where random strangers see each other's cards and it computes odds based on that, but unless table spots are random you can't control what people do.
Use the Front Door! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Use the Front Door! (Score:5, Informative)
All that said, I have no idea whether or not the online casinos are really successful at preventing outside collusion.
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Those methods you mentioned don't seem like they'd be all that fool proof. A team can easily communicate via skype, IRC, IM or even old fashioned telephone (so you don't need to use screen scrapers). There's easy ways to get around always having the same IP (Internet cafe, Wifi, dial-up, proxies etc.) As for the same accounts playing at the same table all the time it seems like it's a matter of having a large enough team, decent record keeping to keep track of who won what and many accounts. If organized te
Re:Use the Front Door! (Score:5, Insightful)
If organized teams have ripped off Casinos in Vegas (the MIT blackjack team comes to mind) then surely online casinos get hit all the time and don't know.
You are missing the point. In poker games where players are not competing directly against the house but against other players and the house just charges a small percentage of the overall pot as a fee to play their game, they aren't actually stealing money from the house but the other players seated at the table. So, while the sites want to assure you that there are not any "back doors" they actually don't lose money directly from them, only indirectly if they end up losing aggregate business as a result of people not gambling due to mistrust.
Re:Use the Front Door! (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you do that often enough, the software running the site should pick up the collusion and kick you out. Quoth wikipedia on poker cheating [wikipedia.org]: "online poker cardrooms keep records of every hand played, and collusion can often be detected by finding any of several detectable patterns (such as folding good hands to a small bet, as it is known that another player has a better hand)". I expect any poker site I play at is using software to check for basic cheating like that, but of course the same sort of incom
No James deGriz (Score:4, Insightful)
They played under the same accounts over and over for four years??
It's like they were begging to be caught.
In the words of the Stainless Steel Rat, "Learn to graft and walk away and live to graft another day."
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Some of them were identified by anomalous statistics, but some were caught by following the money transfers among accounts. At some point a "good samaritan" from inside the company posted some transfer histories to the forum where this was being investigated, which allowed some of the dots to be connected.
'insider knowledge' (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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This is why I don't play poker online.
Doing exactly this is so easy that you have to assume at least half the table is doing it.
At least at a casino you have a chance of noticing a cheater.
Re:'insider knowledge' (Score:4, Insightful)
That's so obvious, I'm stunned that anyone would play if this were possible. They don't have a way to prevent collusion, such as randomly assigning tables?
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The same reason wallhacking [wikipedia.org] worked in FPSs: Game logic offloads opaque-object obscuration to graphics drivers and hardware.
That said, was there a 3-d online poker game which would be susceptible to wallhacking? Sounds pretty hypothetical to me.
Re:'insider knowledge' (Score:5, Insightful)
If you played at any of the levels where the pros inhabited you'd have been identified and banned quickly.
Most of the online pro's are using tracking software and doing analysis which would have picked up on you three. Though I hardly doubt they'd have needed it, the math involved in poker is only part of being a winning player.
2+2, where most of the collaboration is done, is the /. of the poker world. A lot of Statistical anomalies are discussed and investigated there.
Show of hands if anyone knows about the DERB thread?
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Am I to understand that you just admitted to engaging in Federal wire fraud in a public forum? That's quite a gamble, sir!
-Peter
This just in... (Score:2)
Maybe I'm being archaic here, but plain 'ol gambling seems sketchy enough as it is. When you take that online and you aren't even rolling real dice or shuffling real cards, can you really expect to have fair and truly random experiences?
Now I think the people who perpetrated this scam are scum, but it really seems to me that the players who got ripped off shouldn't have been gambling online in the first p
your signature Re:This just in... (Score:2)
Play WAR? [warct.com]
Was a little ambiguous when talking about card games. Though I'm not sure that playing war (the card game) would really be worthwhile online from a gambler's perspective...
That's what you get in Kahnawake... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Well, now they've gone and done it (Score:2)
Now that these online gambling sites have been proven as havens for cheaters, our innocence has been broken and our trust that anonymous strangers on the internet would play games of chance for money in a purely ethical and fair manner has been shattered.
For shame!
Strict client/server separation was missing (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I gather from the articles, they didn't actually write any code that tapped into the server... it was just getting information from the client app that was residing in memory but was not displayed to the screen.
This is just an enormous case study suggesting why strict client/server separation is essential, and that clients only get the information on a "need to know" basis.
Isn't this a fairly standard design practice? How did this happen?
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
Re:Strict client/server separation was missing (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't this a fairly standard design practice? How did this happen?
--
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.
simple rule: (Score:2)
there is no technological security fix made by a man that cannot also be broken by a man
all you need is enough incentive
given that realization, and the boundless financial incentive implicit in onliner poker played for real money, it should rapidly dawn on you that there is no such thing as an online poker game played for money that cannot be fixed, and probably is fixed, if you are pumping real money into it
playing online poker is really foolish. its an arms race between exploitation and security, and the
A fool and his money... (Score:2)
This illustrates why online gambling is so @#$%ing stupid. How can you possibly be sure the game is honest?
The real news is finding the hacker not the hack. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
superuser (Score:5, Informative)
o my....story time...
The phrase of the day is "superuser"
This data was given to many professional online poker players who analyzed the data in late 2007 (see 1 year ago, 10/16/07 to be exact) when they requested the data from the online site "Absolute Poker".
Instead of the site giving them the usual data which hid the opponents cards unless they had shown them during the hand, they sent all the raw data which included the opponents hole cards, and specifically every player and spectators player number. One of the spectators was player number "363" I believe which was incredibly low (one of the first ever to register on the site).
When designing the software they must have used several "superuser" accounts to make sure that it was working correctly, so they let it see all the cards on the table. Someone inside Absolute Bet discovered(or knew they entire time) that the loophole was still open and used multiple accounts to siphon hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars off of their high stakes users. This was used also over other websites running the same backend software.
What made this so obvious, simply put, to the high stakes players was that these players were playing perfectly over thousands of hands which isn't possible unless you know all the cards on the table.
For more reading see:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/the-absolute-poker-cheating-scandal-blown-wide-open/ [nytimes.com]
or for more poker talk:
http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12523924&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1 [twoplustwo.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
another link, better link for more 2+2 information:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/ub-scandal-sticky-251207/ [twoplustwo.com]
(found through the msnbc page)
Surprised? (Score:4, Funny)
I am shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that there is cheating occurring in online poker!
Round up the usual suspects . . .
There are good cryptographic solutions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There are good cryptographic solutions (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed there are. I wrote a book on this:
Policing Online Games
It's far from the last word.
For more information:
http://www.wayner.org/books/pog/ [wayner.org]
To look up on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967584426/myhomepage0bc [amazon.com]
Half of these posts (Score:5, Insightful)
seem to be from people that know absolutely nothing about poker and ultimately nothing about how the sites make their money, so let's clear up a few things.
1. It would never be in the best interests of the company to try to allow this to happen to anyone, as the cost would be too high. If players had a hint that they were being cheated they would never play there. That $10MM figure is nothing compared to what the sites generate from rake alone. The only people who could benefit would be hired contractors who wrote the code and got paid some small amount of money to do so. To them, it would be worth the risk to try to cheat somehow, and they obviously did.
2. To the few people who seem to think that they were getting information that was already on their systems from memory that was encrypted or something, well, that's false. The "special" accounts were sent information that other players do not get sent. You only get your hole cards, and it's not until a showdown where anyone but you and a random server out there know what anyone has.
I guess that's it, aside from the extreme unlikelihood that anyone would try to cheat in this manner at a small (say 30-60 or less) game. The risk/benefit doesn't add up at those stakes.
A few random points: high stakes poker can be shady at times, and collusion in the smaller games can be defended against to some extent (by either not playing, or using the style of collusion against the colluders. At times games can appear to be collusive due to excessive raising, but the majority of the time that's just strategy.
Cheating (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Back door (Score:5, Funny)
Liquor in the front,
Poker in the rear.