Poker News Daily Update on Pitbull Poker Superuser Online Poker Scam

Pokernewsdaily.com has just released this comprehensive article on the Pitbull Poker superuser scam, a smaller version of the giant UltimateBet scam where crooked insiders manipulated the software to see opponents' hole cards.

Article:

Almost nine months have gone by since the Pitbull Poker scandal was blown wide open and to date, justice has yet to be served. The small poker site, formerly part of the Flash Poker Network, was first put under investigation by members of the TwoPlusTwo community. Many of these members suspected the site had players that had access to see hole cards at a table, also known as superusers. During the scandal, the two owners of the site closed up shop in the middle of the night, sticking players with bankrolls at Pitbull Poker.

Poker News Daily caught up with former room manager Dave Brenes, who stated that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and has not heard from either of the owners. As of now, there have been no updates and no resolutions in the matter, leading many to believe that nothing will ever be resolved in the case.

Representatives for Poker News Daily were able to reach the embattled former poker room manager for Pitbull Poker on Thursday. Brenes told PND that he has moved on from Pitbull Poker and is holding down a temporary job while looking for something long-term. To his knowledge, no employees or customers have recovered any funds since the owners closed the company doors and disappeared. Message boards for casino and poker site affiliates confirm that players owed funds through business dealings with the company have yet to be compensated.

Brenes concluded the conversation by stating that he has not heard anything from either of the owners, Kevin Baronowski and another identified in an earlier article as “Justin.” He claims that he is just as much of a victim as anyone else and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. His tone was much more upbeat and hopeful now that, in his mind, the controversy is behind him.

The controversy first started back in July 2009, when “chesterboy” from the TwoPlusTwo forums posted that he suspected that there were superusers on Pitbull Poker. Most posts like these are ignored for the most part by the community, but this player was actually a prop player and a respected longtime member of the community. Others stepped forward once he broke his silence and the site was suddenly placed under the microscope of intense scrutiny. While representatives for Pitbull Poker said there were no shady dealings at the site and that they were working to produce hand history files to back up their claims, players demanded their funds en masse.

Pitbull Poker closed its doors in the middle of the night without informing the company's employees. On-site staff called police, who did not stop owners from disconnecting and removing computer equipment. The next day, the poker room was down and all players with account balances were suddenly left in the dark. Scores of players called for justice, with some losing hundreds and others losing tens of thousands of dollars.

Players on the site weren’t the only big losers thanks to the shocking actions of the site's owners. Affiliates stepped up to say that they hadn’t been paid either, with one, “JC Hawk," leading the charge, claiming he was owed well over $100,000 from his poker site NLPT.tv on top of cash investments he made into the site directly. Hawk gathered as many individuals as he could to join his cause and worked with the Costa Rican government to help bring the owners of Pitbull Poker to justice.

Some players, including “chesterboy”, decided that they could no longer be part of the world of online poker. In an announcement on the forums, he stated that he would be leaving poker for good and joining the United States Army. In December, JC Hawk continued to state that he was pursuing legal matters against Baronowski. It was Hawk’s guess that Baronowski had fled Costa Rica and was in hiding in his native homeland of Canada.

Since the turn of the new year, there have been few new developments in the case and at this point, the prospects of affiliates and players recouping any owed funds seems to be low. Many in the industry have claimed that this story is a perfect example of why regulation and legalization of online poker is vital to protect consumers from this type of apparent fraud.

Singapore Resorts World Casino Cheating Becoming More Brash!

One form of casino cheating probably thought of by every single person who has ever entered a casino, both legit gamblers and cheats alike, is simply grabbing up a handful of big denomination casino chips right off a blackjack or craps table and stuffing them in your pocket, and then bolting for the door if someone happens to see you in the act!

Well, Singapore's new Resorts World Sentosa Casino has gotten its first taste of this. Not nearly as professional as my Harley-Davidson grab-the-chips-and-run exploits of 1980s, this 56-year-old fledgling casino cheat in Singapore, Ooi Boon Huat, allegedly pocketed ten $500 chips from a mini-baccarat table belonging to another player.

Ooi told the judge that he wasn't guilty because the player would have lost the chips to the casino anyway! Well, I imagine the judge cracked up upon hearing that, and unless the judge really hates casinos, I don't think he's gonna buy Ooi's excuse. He did tell the casino chip thief, "I know you like to go to the casino but please keep away." That was worth a laugh from me!

In addition to that advice, Ooi faces up to three years in prison.

Any Truth to News of First RFID-Aided Casino Cheat Bust?

Supposedly, and I mean supposedly, a professional roulette pastposting team suffered a cheating bust at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas when a $1,000 chip tagged with an inner RFID chip alerted the dealer to their pastpost move. The way it was to have gone down was that one member of the team, after number 32 came out, slipped the $1,000 chip underneath a $100 on the 3rd-Dozen bet at the bottom of the layout that pays 2 to 1. The cheat team was looking to get paid $2,200 instead of the $200 the original legitimate $100 bet was owed. The dealer was instantly notified of the pastpost when his screen beeped at the sudden late presence of the $1,000 chip, and the roulette team ignorant of RFID technology was caught and its claimer (the person who claims the pastposted bet) arrested.

This was reported to me by three different e-mails from people who are not my sources. The fact that there has been no official documentation or news articles about this "major" incident makes me think it is untrue. I mean, after all, had there been a professional casino cheat team busted because of RFID technologoy, you would think the casino related newswires on the Internet would be buzzing with this, pushed heavily by those in the business of marketing RFID technology to casinos.

In fact, I have not even heard of a roulette team or any of its members being busted at the Wynn in recent times. So, again, I don't believe it happened.

My advice to all you casino cheats out there concerning RFID chips is still the same: Don't worry about them. RFID remains a non-entity as far as casino cheating goes.

Which Online Casino and Poker Portals Can You Trust?

More and more online poker and casino information sites are popping up every day. Among the promises they all make are their effectiveness in steering online poker and casino players to safe online gambling sites where they won't get cheated and where their account information and credit cards and personal information are protected. Of course you expect them all to make these guarantees. But which ones can you trust? How do you pick an online gaming informational portal to give you sound advice as far as poker cheating and casino cheating go, as well as the protection of your personal and credit histories?

Not an easy question to answer. First of all, we don't know the motives of the people operating these portal sites nor do we always know a 100% of their affiliations. If they are affiliated with certain sites, quite naturally they are going to promote those sites as the best online and the safest against cheating and information stealing. I guess the only way to minimize the possibility of taking advice from dishonest poker and casino portals is to stick with the ones that have been online the longest. So before you decide to click onto an online poker room or casino from the pages of informational portals, do a checkup on the portal itself. You can do this simply by searching these sites on any of the "Whois" web pages. You will get all the domain information, physical location, etc. Also check and read through the poker forums on this subject. Then, of course, there are the poker and casino anti-cheat safety ratings on this website.

Does this mean the biggest and oldest the better? Yes, it does, but it does not mean that you are 100% safe taking their advice. It only means that you are most probably receiving the best advice out there as far as honesty is concerned.

Beware of Facebook Poker Cheat Scam!

Source: sportsmedianetwork.com

It seems one of the apparent latest scams going on is for people to open a Facebook account, or an account on a similar social Networking site, and in the guise of being a very well known poker pro. Then the scam begin and when these poker pro players start asking for money transfers between poker sites, or even a small loan, or for you to receive a piece of their winning action. First of all we are under the impression that no legitimate poker pro would ask for money from other online poker players as these matters are held in private and are usually held within a very small group of trusted associates. No matter how legitimate the person appears to be, or how enticing offer they might make to you, make sure you always protect yourself and your precious money. No way should you give anyone person or player instant poker credibility simply because of a name or a picture appears on a social networking site.

How serious has this scam gotten. Well one player reports that he has been friends with no less than twelve (12) Daniel Negreanu’s and another company has reported where the offender posed as the highly respected poker Pro Willie Tann, and other messages from “Mike matusow” in the past about buying a piece of his action in the Sunday Poker Tournaments. All need to keep in mind; it only takes a few minutes and a quick stop at Wikipedia for a person to create a bogus Facebook account. Don’t let yourself be fooled by these scammers. If you want to take a look at a poker site on Facebook look for Poker Host and they are very legit and will answer any and all of your question as they really understand online poker players and the poker community on the Internet.

Iowa Casino Bet-Capping Poker Cheat Banned For Life!

I guess if you're a casino cheat and you have to get banned from an entire state's casinos, it could be worse than getting banned from Iowa's!

Dustin O. Kendrick, 30, was sentenced to two years' supervised probation in Clinton County District Court for the felony charge of prohibited acts at a gambling game. Kendrick got busted for cheating in February 2009 on an Ultimate Texas Hold'em table at the Wild Rose Casino and Resort in Clinton. Apparently, he had palmed two $25 chips and then laid them atop of his original $50 bet after winning the hand, trying to bilk the Iowa casino for fifty bucks. The worst part about this for Kendrick is that the conviction is a felony, a big price to pay for a mere pittance of a crime.

In addition to the lifetime ban from Iowa casinos, he was fined $750, but the judge had the good heart to suspend that. However, Kendrick must seek treatment for his supposed gambling and alcohol addictions.

My take: Well, it's a tough break getting the felony conviction on that. I think Mr. Kendrick oughta keep out of casinos in EVERY state! But for life?
Nah!...Just until he gives up the thoughts of cheating.

Good Casino Cheats Usually Go For the Toughest Moves

People ask me whether casino cheats select the easiest moves or the more difficult ones, thinking the obvious that the easier moves can be performed without much difficulty but might encounter problems getting paid because casino personnel already know about them. The truth of the matter is that the easy moves are usually done by amateur teams while the toughies are the work of experienced professional cheat teams. This is especially true of roulette, the casino table game where the most cheating goes on. If you look at a roulette layout, you probably understand without much cheating knowledge that the easier moves are done at the bottom of the table, the point farthest from the dealer. This is completely true, and 75 to 85% of roulette moves happen there. The most common are pastposts and pinches, the latter being when losing bets are "pinched" off the layout before the dealer can sweep them off.

Good and professional roulette cheat teams, like mine of course, often worked the top of the roulette layout, sometimes directly under the dealers' noses. When a successful pastpost or other cheat move is performed high on the layout like that, the dealer and the supervisor find it difficult to believe that the cheat move was indeed a cheat move. On several occasions I heard dealers and pitbosses say things like "That couldn't have been a move, it was right under our noses!" LOL and I LOL´d when that happened! And to make these top-wheel moves even better, no obvious distractions were used to turn the dealer's head. These type of distractions take the beauty out of the move and sometimes alert the pit that it was indeed a move. We always went up top naked, and the results were devastating to the casinos.

However, I must mention that the best roulette move of all time, the Savannah move, was done at the bottom of the wheel. This was an exception to the rule of the higher the better.

Cheats Continue to Run Amok in Singapore's Resorts World Sentosa Casino!

As I had predicted, casino cheats are having a field day over in Singapore. We've been hearing about people getting caught, but they are the rank amateurs, the latest being forty-six year-old Alice Lau Qian Xiu, who recently got busted for claiming $630 from a cashout ticket that belonged to another gambler. Before her it was a taxi driver who tried a lame $200 pastposting move on the baccarat table. All of this coincides with the dozens of casino infractions being committed to gain entry to the casino and avoid paying the entry tax (only Singapore citizens have to pay it).

But what you're not hearing about, simply because the Singaporean casino authorities have little or no idea it's happening, are the crack professional cheat teams who are wearing out Resorts World Sentosa's tables with cheat moves at a pace that rivals what happened in the rookie days of Atlantic City and Foxwoods in Connecticut. Not surprisingly, my classic ten-oh-five blackjack move is being done on Sentosa's baccarat tables by more than half a dozen teams. The dealers and supervisors don't seem to have a clue. And of course, my Savannah move has been borrowed and is showing her stuff there as well. Italian roulette cheats are in town, doing their very strong pastpost slide moves, and whatever inside dealer cheating is going on, I will let you know as soon as I have it. Expect a lot of that, once the Chinese gangs get a foothold in the casino.

How long do I think this cheat barrage will last?

Well, if we take Atlantic City as an example, it will be a good 3 to 5 years.

If we take Foxwoods as an example...well, it could last forever! Why am I saying this? Simply because Foxwoods, almost two decades after opening, remains the easiest major casino in the world to cheat.

More Comments on Doyle Brunson as a Poker Cheat...But This Time it's in Brunson's Defense!

Rumors about legendary poker player Doyle Brunson being a cheat at poker have been circulating not for years but rather for decades. A well known cash player named Dusty Schmidt who also runs the poker instructional website Drag the Bar had called Brunson a poker cheat, that according to a poster on the 2+2 Forum named Shortbutsosweet who wrote, "Last I heard of him (Schmidt), he was calling Brunson out for cheating Andy Beal out of money. HAHAHHAHA is all I can say about him saying anything about what his thoughts on Brunson poker are all about. Also would love to see this guy take his roll and his mouth to Bobby's room for about a week. Lets see how long that 57 month winning streak could go then. Just saying maybe its time to take a step off that high high horse you ride. Something should start to click about the time Doyle Brunson is calling you out in his blogs."

According to Schmidt, he has never called Doyle Brunson a cheater and doesn't believe that he is one. Schmidt claims Shortbutsosweet had misinterpreted one of his blog posts from two weeks ago where he says he called Brunson the best poker player in the world. Schmidt now says that he has tremendous respect for Brunson as both a human being and poker player. He then goes on to say that "Doyle absolutely never told me to come to Bobby’s room and come play him (whatever this means). Doyle said that he would welcome any action from some of the young internet players who thought they were so great..."

My take: Well, this effusion of respect for Brunson makes me think that Dusty Schmidt is full of dusty shit! Come on, even if Doyle Brunson never cheated a penny out of a penny-ante poker game, can you really believe that? Schmidt more than likely has some ulterior motive for such ebullient praise for Brunson.

Casino Swim-up Tables For the Taking!/Bubble-Bluffing

I recieved a humourous e-mail this weekend from a would-be casino cheat. He revealed to me that he really doesn´t have the balls to try cheat moves with all those surveillance cameras jutting out of casino ceilings, but he said he'd heard about blackjack tables in swimming pools at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino as well as at other casinos. He said that there, inside the swimming pool, he'd gladly take a shot cheating the casino, not having to worry about surveillance cameras in a swimming pool because there weren't any.

LOL! Boy did I get a laugh outta that! I wrote him back explaining that the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino swim-up blackjack tables are indeed actually inside the pool but are housed inside a mini-island on which is built a gazebo-like structure that has the same old casino video cameras on its ceilings. The only difference between cheating inside the casino and outside in the pool, I told him, is that if you fuck up outside, there's always the chance you might end up drowning in the pool!

Another e-mail asked me a more intelligent question: Do all casinos really film every table and slot machine 24/7 continuously?

The answer to that is no, but I can't tell you which ones do and don't. Certainly almost all casinos give the appearance that they are capable of filming every inch of casino floor every second with all those bubbles above you everywhere, but some casinos are certainly bluffing in certain places. Trying to cut costs of operating the digital equipment (or in some cases not-digital equipment), casinos might be depending on the naked black bubble alone to curb the cheating by making cheats afraid they are constantly being filmed. I would say that in major gambling areas like Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Macau, it would be extremely rare that a functional camera is not operating inside the bubble, but in secondary casino areas, places like Eaatern Europe and South America, there may be some bubble-bluffing going on.

My advice: Just come up with a move to beat the cameras like I did with Savannah. Then you don't have to worry about cameras catching you cheat!