SportingLife Poker 17 Sep -- Where there's gambling, there's cheating. But usually, giants like Absolute Poker are able to crush the rumours of foul play that inevitably pop up. Unfortunately, this time the allegations of rigged online games has marred the company's image.

Several high-stakes players and a couple of moderators at one of the most famed online poker sites, Absolute Poker, have been accused of rigging the games in their favour.

Naturally, everything is still speculation, but the claim is bold. A player believed to operate under a number of aliases (Greycat/Steamroller/Supercard) is thought to be involved.

Get a load of what well known high-stakes limit pro DanDruff says:

I’ve played a whole lot on AP this year, especially over the summer.

Oddly enough, I missed out on most of the Greycat/Supercard/etc. games due to sheer coincidences of timing (basically I’d be out or sleeping when he’d show up). Still, I played about 10 sessions with the guy, including one heads up, and noticed exactly what everyone else is noticing:

1) His hand selection pre-flop is so bad (especially 9 handed) that he should be losing a fortune against the top-flight players he’s been facing. Instead, he’s been winning big almost every session.

2) It is very rare that he will fold if you miss the flop.

3) When you are holding a huge hand, he folds often.

Basically, yes, he plays like someone who can see your cards. But that’s nothing new to anyone on this thread. I’ve played against legitimate players who have run so well that I’d swear they could see my hand if I didn’t know better. We’ve also all seen examples of huge donks running up amazing short-term streaks that we never thought were possible — including odd plays that leave us scratching our heads.

So what’s the difference here? Perhaps nothing, perhaps something. But the evidence we’ve seen so far, some anecdotal, others more damning, makes this worth another look.

Before I go on, I can confirm that Greycat, Supercard, and the other suspect accounts posted here ARE indeed the same person. This isn’t an assumption or a guess. It’s a fact. PM me if you want me to explain this part further.

So we have this Greycat person playing on multiple accounts — sometimes chipdumping between them — and playing the highest games Absolute Poker has to offer. He plays both limit and no limit, yet top regular players from both games report the same suspicious experience with him.

He has won a ton of money (does anyone have the exact figures?), and rarely seems to lose.

If he is cheating, I think I know how he’s doing it.

Long before Greycat showed up, there was some concern that AP had a “superuser” account, created by its software developers. This account, created strictly for testing purposes, would be able to see all cards of all players in all games. As a software programmer by trade, I can tell you that such an account would be very helpful in the development and testing process for a complicated piece of software like AP. I referred to there being “some concern” that such an account exists. I say this because I have some circumstantial evidence (which I can’t share in public) that this is true, but I don’t have any proof. Furthermore, prior to this Greycat situation, I had no reason to believe that this account ever fell into the wrong hands.

But what if it did fall into the wrong hands? Perhaps someone could have hacked it. Perhaps a rogue ex-developer of the software could have passed some info along to an accomplice. Perhaps a lot of things.

The fact is that, if Greycat did get access to such an account, he’d pretty much be doing exactly what he’s doing now. Yes, maybe some subtlety would have done him better (so as to avoid this suspicion), but history is full of criminals whose otherwise brilliant capers were foiled by just a bit too much greed.

It’s time to stop guessing and get some answers here. Obviously AP will never admit their system was compromised, even if it were true. That would pretty much be the equivalent of poker room suicide. We need to put together a concrete plan of action to either prove this guy is a fraud, or prove to ourselves that we’re a bunch of paranoid fools. Either way, we need to prove something. In the next post, I’ll give my suggestions on what I feel we should do next.

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