Saturday, October 30, 2010

Straight Collusion Play Continues to Dominate Cheating in Brick and Mortar Poker World

I recently released the latest statistics for how online poker cheating breaks down in percentages, in which poker-bot cheat-play is gaining ground on plain old collusion-play at the online tables.

In the brick and mortar poker cheat world, however, simple collusion play continues to dominate poker cheating and will probably keep dominating it for years, if not decades, to come. Poker cheating via card-marking is gaining steadily as new laser techniques for marking the cards are being introduced and constantly improved. The simple reason for collusion-cheating poker-play dominance in the poker cheat world is that the protaganists involved can never be prosecuted because it is impossible to prove, and even if it were possible to prove, it really doesn't constitute a crime anyway.

Here are the numbers of the poker cheat percentage pie.

Collusion cheating 72%
Card marking 15%
Card mucking and switching 8%
Pot cheating and stealing chips 5%

I was surprised that pot cheating and stealing, which comprises poker cheats trying to short poker pots or steal chips from other players' stacks, only accounts for five percent of the brick and mortar poker-cheat pie. But these are the figures I am getting.

To review my latest online poker cheating figures, click here.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Full Tilt Poker Taking Over Front Line in War Against Online Bot Cheats!

Full Tilt Poker, the second biggest online poker site, is really laying out its artillery against the online poker bot cheats. They have begun confiscating funds from suspected poker cheat accounts and then closing these accounts down. I have been blogging about the advances made by poker bot programmers and how bots are getting a bigger piece of the overall online poker cheat pie. These bot programmers are making rapid and constant improvements to the bots' artificial intelligence, and the overall poker bot population cheating online poker is on the steady rise. Ever since the Chinese poker bot cheating ring was exposed on PokerStars a few months back, the entire online poker industry has been trying to stepup its defense against bot-player online poker cheats.

Security personnel at Full Tilt Poker has identified a company that is purportedly selling quality bots online. It is called Shanky Technologies, and it does sound kind of "shanky" to me...if not shady. In any case, several online poker room security departments are investigating this company to see just how far it is involved in the online poker cheating market.

Full Tilt issued this statement to the world media: "For a number of reasons, we are unable to provide additional information regarding this case, including the players involved and the game type where it occurred."

Although that statement seems to say nothing, I believe that Full Tilt is no longer turning its head to the bot cheats. I think they really want to fight them man-to...bot...and win this war.

Can they?

No. but they can win a few battles and slow them down from time to time.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Blanca Games Responds to New Online Poker Cheating Scandal


"In September, a letter from XMT Liquidations to the shareholders of what was formerly known as Excapsa Software identified a new cheating incident on the former Ultimate Bet site. Recently, Blanca Games, the current owners of UB.com and Absolute Poker, addressed the findings and the dispute between Tokwiro Enterprises and Excapsa.

The letter, dated September 10th, references an “an unfair and unlawful advantage in online poker games in 2004 and 2005.” However, the incident was not outlined. Blanca Games shed some light on the issue last week, explaining, “The Liquidator has recently advised Blanca’s employees that the security breach at issue was closed by Excapsa in early 2005. Blanca has no knowledge of whether or not this incident is, in fact, ‘newly discovered.’ It does, however, understand that two player accounts were involved in this 2004 incident, and that the damages sustained by players were less than $100,000.” The incident was then reported to the “appropriate regulatory authorities.”

Blanca Games clarified, however, that the liquidators in question were not acting on Absolute Poker or UB.com, which together make up the USA-friendly CEREUS Network. Additionally, the press release from Blanca asserted, “The operations of the AbsolutePoker.com and UB.com sites, now under the management of Blanca, are entirely unaffected by the events referred to by the Liquidator… In short, the 2004 incident has no impact whatsoever on current players and customers of AbsolutePoker.com or UB.com. Blanca will continue to do everything in its power to protect its players and customers by providing the highest levels of security on its sites.”

The cheating scandals on Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker were profiled in a “60 Minutes” piece in November 2008. Two months ago, Blanca Games acquired the CEREUS Network from Tokwiro Enterprises. Blanca Games is based in Antigua and has headquarters in Costa Rica, where UB.com and Absolute Poker are both located. Stuart Gordon serves as the company’s CEO.

Blast Off was comprised of the assets of Ultimate Bet before it was sold to Tokwiro Enterprises and the liquidation at hand saw one of its major creditors elect “to exercise its rights in respect of the collateral it held as security for Blast Off’s debt.” This “major creditor” may refer to the former owners of the Absolute Poker domain, although the event was not addressed in Blanca Games’ letter.

The liquidation letter added, “Blast Off intended to [end] any and all operations related to assets over which Excapsa has been granted a security interest.” This could potentially refer to UltimateBet.com, which was not included in the transfer to Blanca Games. Instead, only UB.com and AbsolutePoker.com became part of the new company. Now, UltimateBet.com forwards to an online poker affiliate site and is not associated with UB.com.

Blanca noted that the company has “no interest in that dispute” between XMT Liquidations and Tokwiro Enterprises.

In response to the press release from Blanca Games, one poster on TwoPlusTwo noted, “Further evidence as to why this industry needs to be regulated and have oversight.” The Kahnawake Gaming Commission cited Russ Hamilton as the main person responsible for the cheating scandal that erupted on Ultimate Bet. The former World Series of Poker Main Event champion is still roaming free in Las Vegas much to the dismay of many and over $20 million was stolen from players.

In a blog posted from August, UB.com pro Joe Sebok lamented the lack of persecution in the cheating scandal: “I wish we were a police force, but we are not. I wish we could really round up all of these people and interrogate them, but we can’t… I also wish we were a court and we could try them all and jail the convicted, but again, we cannot do this. The poker community would be a better place if we could, but as of right now this just isn’t possible.”

In February 2009, Raw Vegas caught up with Hamilton in the parking lot of a Las Vegas golf course. Poker pro Layne Flack and two other unidentified people were with Hamilton at the time. Hamilton refused comment and drove away."

Sunday, October 24, 2010

No, Virginia, Online Roulette is Not Rigged to Cheat You

Funny thing. I got three emails this week asking me if online roulette is rigged to cheat because all three people lost money playing online roulette. And one of the askers was named, of all names, Virginia. My response to Virginia was:

No, Virginia, online roulette is not rigged...that means in general. Like in all walks and runs in life, online casino sites have their bad apples. Some online casinos, a very small percentage of them, do cheat the players. But this cheating is not usually carried out by software that rigs the percentages against players. The online casinos that cheat generally do so at their cages. This is when you try and cash out and there's no cash waiting for you. In other words, you are the victim of fly-by-night casino, and that means that the entire casino was a scam and was set-up strictly to fleece all the player accounts opened up with it.

My advice to anyone worried about the integrity of online casinos is simply to play with established ones. You can keep current on the safest and most honest online casinos by following my SAFEST ONLINE CASINO CHEAT RANKINGS. The casinos listed here will not give you any such problems.