^^^^^ What he SAID...

I don't have all the facts, I just have my opinion, which is that it's bad for a poker media outlet, or online poker community, to act as a promotional vessel for the companies that supply its ad revenue. It's bad for poker, and bad for the site, when the shit hits the fan like this.

I like Steps.

P5ers,

The past 72 hours have been really difficult for us here at P5s as things have gotten out of hand quickly in regards to the AP super-user situation. We have never faced a situation quite like this before; one of our trusted partners has been accused of serious security vulnerabilities, and the accusations appear to have merit. In fact, when this situation first came to light, our inclination was to dismiss it as another �online poker is rigged� post. However, after careful examination of all the facts presented, it�s just not possible for us to do that anymore.

Thereby, we have decided to indefinitely suspend any promotion of Absolute Poker, including site links, banners, and inclusion of future tournaments in the rankings. Please understand that this is not a conviction on our part; it's simply an acknowledgement that significant and meaningful questions have arisen about the security of their site, and until those questions can be resolved to our satisfaction, we don't feel comfortable encouraging our users to play there.

We're in the process of removing links and promotional materials--most of them are down already. Please be patient while we get this all set.

Looking ahead, we intend to work with Absolute Poker as closely as possible to get all the facts and decipher them from "Internet folk lore." In fact, we've been on several phone calls today with AP trying to find out what they know about this situation and how they�re dealing with it. We�ll continue to press them to try and find out more. They�ve also invited us to have full access to their office and systems, and we�re hoping to be able to use that access to find out more about what went wrong. Anything and everything we discover will be reported here on the site, and hopefully it will shed more light on the situation.

In closing, I'd like to say that we all want what you want---for online poker games to be safe, fair, and trustworthy. We hope that our decision helps us all in realizing that goal.

Best,

--Adam

If it wasn't for sites like this we wouldn't have a forum to even talk about problems with the different sites, nevermind being able to put together all of the evidence that was collected by different people over the last few weeks. I've also never noticed any "soft play" by this site just because they receive revenue from a site. At least they didn't move threads about this to a moderator only forum like was initially done at 2+2.

shaniac is one of my original poker heroes, but this post is ridiculous... p5s is handling this perfectly, and, especially judging from Adam's "open letter" above, we can expect more on the way in the near future.

the only reason p5s is able to offer all of the amazing things they offer FOR FREE is because they serve as a promoter/advertiser for so many poker sites. and, like dyzalot said, one of those things is a forum where people are able to "out" these sorts of activities and spread the word more easily so that these types of scams can't continue.

this absolute fiasco has been going on for weeks (months yet? sure feels like it)... you want a new feature article on it every day?

edit: f steps tho.

I think Shane wants stories on the front page about the scandals, rather than more advertising for poker sites.

I don't have much respect for the intelligence of the poker community* but I'm hoping that the last few weeks will make people realize that these big sites like PocketFives.com have their own agenda. If P5s was run by pokerstars would it really look any different? Obviously there wouldn't be ads for other sites but almost every other part of this "community" would exist in an informercial.

The next time you read a PocketFives article on someone's achievements or on a list/ranking system or even a personal anecdote the article will almost certainly be promoting the idea that tournament poker is essentially a game of skill and that the esteemed members of this community work hard and excel at it. You probably won't read an article about how many of the ranked players are near broke or staked or about how even the big winners go through huge downswings because tournament poker is actually mostly luck and it takes hundreds (or even thousands) of tournaments to know what your actual edge is.

I'm not writing this to rant about PocketFives being an evil entity or that I'm having a shocking revelation. Adam and I have gone back and forth over this stuff in AIM conversations for over a year about "why don't the rankings include ROI." I've been adamant lately that the AP ads need to go down and it looks like for once my side won. I think PocketFives provides an important service to the players and I don't mind that its goal is to promote the industry. After all PokerStars is pro tournament poker and obviously biased and they provide an even more important service. And I love PokerStars.

I guess I'm posting because it occurred to me how a lot of people don't necessarily think objectively about the media and this sort of thing. Many people never notice how a news segment on a new drug sometimes ends with "paid for by GlaxoSmithKline." Don't expect PocketFives to hire Woodward and Bernstein.

*there's a sucker in every poker game

Shaniac,

I have to agree with you on this point. There is an undeniable NEED for an objective 3rd party to oversee onlline poker as an industry. I also agree with you that this was almost successfully put to bed, that is until AP goofed and released the HH from the AP tournament. I just don't see p5's as that 3rd party.

"The next time you read a PocketFives article on someone's achievements or on a list/ranking system or even a personal anecdote the article will almost certainly be promoting the idea that tournament poker is essentially a game of skill and that the esteemed members of this community work hard and excel at it. You probably won't read an article about how many of the ranked players are near broke or staked or about how even the big winners go through huge downswings because tournament poker is actually mostly luck and it takes hundreds (or even thousands) of tournaments to know what your actual edge is."

WTF! Tournament poker is no more or less a game of skill than cash games are. Different skills perhaps but skill none the less. I also find it hard to believe that many of the top 100 are "near broke" seeing as how I am towards the bottom of those rankings and no where near that state. And if pokerstars owned this website then I doubt you'd ever be able to post anything negative about them, which obviously isn't the case here. And why would you want ROI used? Wouldn't hourly rate be a better indicator of skill? Your whole post is condescending.

Except it isn't the bloggers who kept this issue alive or did the work on putting all of the pieces together. It was mainly members of P5's and 2+2, go figure. Not that bloggers don't help but I don't see you or shaniac submitting articles about the scandal to be published here. If P5's and 2+2 didn't exist, would the AP scandal ever been blown wide open as it is now? Its funny how you guys are railing against the very kind of sites that allow open discussion on topics like this that may have gone unnoticed otherwise.

One of the issues with most of the online poker media, (P5's, Cardplayer, Bluff Magazine, pokernews) is that they rely heavily and almost exclusively on advertising sales from online poker websites. This creates a conflict of interest and sometime a heavy bias towards "positive interest" stories. It even appears at times that Cardplayer.com acts as a press release platform for these sites.

The question that must be asked is why do these lead poker media companies continue to ignore important issues such as multi-accounting despite their profound importance on the future of online poker and poker in general? Just follow the money and the answer is simple.

It is now clear that poker media companies must diversify their portfolio of where their sales come from. Seeing Pepsi, South West Airlines or hot jobs.com ad's would even be a welcomed change from the stale online poker white noise we are constantly subject to. The long-term sustainability of these media companies will be at risk if they ignore the long-term implications of continuing to "selectivly" cover the poker world.

Is it time for a new pokermedia company with a mission of content over profits?

- Rudy

There are 2 ways to look at this. P5's is a media source as well as a stand-alone enterprise. They simply cannot take the info that they get from their users and sell it on the front page as fact. If in fact they are a media source then Shaniac is right, there should have been investigative efforts launched as soon as there was a hint of an issue.

But, if you look at P5s as a stand alone enterprise that has made an impact in the online world because of their ranking system and the success of its forums, you cant expect the site to act any differently than you or I. We have to have facts presented to us to be able to make a decision.

I dont think that P5s has placed itself in the media business but more in the fulfillment business for its members.

Shaniac is right in theory though, where are the Cardplayer and Bluff stories? They are media sources for the Poker community.

While I agree with you on the media outlet part, I wouldn't exactly consider P5's to be one. I don't think there "reason to be" is to be a news outlet reporting about online poker. Obviously Bluff, Cardplayer and the other poker magazines are the ones that should be covering and reporting on this story. As for the other argument, perhaps I just don't realize how good I am? I always find it difficult to believe that most of the other ranked players aren't doing at least as well if not better than myself. Also note that the "ranked player" you refer to was ranked prior to the new system being implemented.

So what happens to your unused step entries after the pca occurs?

sheets

"although I really should update my blog and with this content"

Do that, yes. Get the word out everywhere. I want to kill AP ASAP.