Poker Discussion
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I heard about it vaguely on N82s blog a while back, and heard that they were at the Rio shooting it earlier today. As far as I know, it's gonna be about the AP/UB scandals, but I doubt its scope will be limited to that. I really dont trust the mainstream media to present this honestly; instead, I think it's gonna be very damaging to online poker in general and might set back the cause. Ive got a bad feeling a bunch of wannabe politicans will be lining up before the elections to make this an issue again. Anybody heard any specifics? Am I just being overly negative about this? Any chance this will be good for poker?
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people in the know, have been saying its going to be a real 'hatchet job' on the poker industry. hopefully it will help the government realize that it needs to be regulated to protect players from losing their money. not from gambling addiction however, but from playing against players on cheating sites like absolute and ultimate bet
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i know 4 real just what the poker community needs more negativity and more money leaving the poker economy... whoopi!
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Well if the big names in the poker industry were smart they would embrace the story and help 60mins to the fullest extent possible.
Its going to hurt online poker, but it might be a good spring board to getting it regulated in this country.
People are going to play online poker no matter what. Appealing to governamnets constant motherly urge to protect its citizens might get some mileage.
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Wouldn't it be nice if poker players would actually take a stance against websites allowing blatent cheating. Possibly by withdrawing their money from said sites...
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From Change100s blog today, they were interviewing Raymer and Hellmuth. Raymer might do well for our cause with some strong points; I dont trust Hellmuth to do anything other than bitch or shill for UB. And god knows if theyll edit it hard to take away anything good Raymer says. I seem to remember on N82s blog him saying he did talk with them by phone, and that they were also talking with Adanthar, so maybe itll be comprehensive..but Im still not comfortable about it.
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Josem and DanDruff did interviews. I think Adanthar did also. I decided against doing it, for a lot of reasons. Hopefully it presents a fair overall picture of online poker.
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 epicatc: | |
I really dont trust the mainstream media to present this honestly; instead, I think it's gonna be very damaging to online poker in general and might set back the cause. Ive got a bad feeling a bunch of wannabe politicans will be lining up before the elections to make this an issue again.
Ever since the scandals broke out, that's how I've felt. All that those of us who care can do is to keep lobbying our politicians and fight for our rights of individual freedom.
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That's funny: set back "the cause". What exactly is "the cause"?
I remember that two or three years ago the conventional wisdom was that sites would never be involved in cheating their customers because it would result in them losing their huge cash cow and going out of business. Instead, when "the unthinkable" happened (twice) it simply exposed the enormous amount of greed fueling online poker.
Online poker operators are so greedy that they cheat thier customers to make even more money than they are already raking in. Online pro's are so greedy that they'll endorse a cheating site on the heels of a cheating scandal (Josephy and Lynch: "but we believe they are headed in the right direction now," lol). Online poker players are so greedy that they'll continue to play at the cheating sites because, even with cheating factored in, they believe they still have an edge on "the fish".
It's so disgusting that and even though I enjoy playing online poker I look forward to seeing these scandals get broad exposure. Online poker is so cancerous that it needs a mastectomy.
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The cause is keeping the online poker economy thriving, keeping the sites honest, and heading towards legalization and regulation instead of heading closer to real prohibition. In recent months and years since the UIGEA, it seems that poker players as a whole have done a good job lobbying for our cause - namely, promoting poker as a game of skill and disassociating it from cheats, scammers and criminals.
I dont condone the actions of UB or AP, obviously, and I will never put a dime on there again. And you seem to think that all online players will keep playing there; I'd guess among pros its split about even. I agree that there needs to be regulation and oversight to keep the games clean - however, I am 100% certain that Stars and FTP are and always will be clean. But for the industry as a whole, yes, there needs to be a watchdog. But that comes from legalization and regulation, and until that occurs, it will depend on the legitimate sites staying legitimate and the players that choose to play on less-trustworthy sites to keep their eyes open, as is the case with AP/UB. If you choose to play on a potentially shady site, it's up to you to protect yourself or dont play there anymore. It's like going to backalley dice game and crying when you get robbed - nobody made you play there.
What will NOT help is one of these shock-news shows reporting the story as if every site is rigged and full of cheats, all online players are addicted, and further associating poker in general with the scumbagginess that we've worked so hard to separate from since the boom. If a couple politicians like Kyl decide to seize upon the issue after a news show does an "online poker is killing your children" episode, the game as a whole may be euthanized, not mastectomized, and you wont be able to enjoy the pasttime you apparently despise at all.
Let's make it clear - the AP/UB fiasco, loathesome as it was, is one freak occurrence in the history of online poker, perpetrated only because those behind it were high-ranking officials in said companies. Online poker as a whole, on the sites end, is 99% clean despite their actions. Ive never heard of anyone outside these companies hacking a site. Most deceitful behavior has come from multi-accounting players, which is a separate issue, and an unavoidable one, but not one that means that online poker should be shut down. And as far as the apparent greed of the players goes, I'd like to see you turn down a five-figure endorsement deal that requires basically nothing from you.
The main problem is that everybody is in it to maximize their own return, which is fine - just some dont see down the road to the money they might lose if, by playing on or endorsing scummy sites, those sites thrive to cause scandal another day and shut the whole game down for everyone.
THAT'S what we're trying to avoid - more cheating and the total shutdown of online poker in America. And if you think drawing mainstream attention from people that dont understand the game is going to help, not hurt, well, you are uninformed. Most people dont understand poker as a game of skill, and still think of it as lotto-like gambling full of degenerates and lowlifes. Any mainstream exposure the game gets, that isnt prefaced by a detailed explanation of why poker is a game of skill and how it works, will hurt all of us.
And any serious poker player will tell you - even after explaining the nature of poker statistics, variance, demontrated returns over significant sample sizes, complex equity math etc. to relatives and friends, even then most people still dont get it and see it as gambling. That's with a poker player who they trust explaining the ins and outs in a positive light. I really doubt a shock-value news show will present it that way; if anything, a ton of people who didnt care about online poker one way or the other may well be opposed to it now - THINK OF THE CHILDREN and all that. And at the very least, hundreds and thousands of fish will swim away and never come back. That is the best case scenario.
All Im ranting about is this - we need to all be promoting the game in the best positive connotation, protecting ourselves as best we can, and encouraging the fish to stick around. If we can stay the course, then maybe in the next few years it will be legal, taxed, regulated, and thriving - as it is in most of Europe. If we are passive, or as negative as PuertoKid, then we might lose online poker entirely. And not only do I love the extra money in my bank account, I love the game. And I think it's worth protecting.
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>Online poker as a whole, on the sites end, is 99% clean despite their actions.
You are obviously making that up as you have no way of knowing that. The reason the cheating was discovered (reminder: never by the sites themselves) is that it was so blantant it could be proved mathematically.
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Of course I'm conjecturing. But if you disagree, cite a case that disproves me. Name one person who has hacked the RNG on Stars or FTP. Show me a situation outside of the UB/AP scandal where you've been taken advantage of. I say 99% because out of the tens or hundreds of billions of hands played online, a few thousand have been proven to be fraudulent. Maybe there's a few tens of thousands more where there has been collusion, and in many cases (on the good sites at least), the colluders have been caught. Id guess a large number of members of this community, without asking for investigations personally, have been refunded for playing with caught colluders. Really, the chances that you've been cheated in any one out of hundreds of thousands of hands are very small. Id be more worried about multi-accounters or bots, and those are also a very small concern in the big picture, affecting a tiny percentage of online players and hands. Id guess that the vast majority of online players will go their whole lives without being cheated. Id also guess that youre a lot safer playing in a low/mid-stakes ring game, MTT or SNG on Stars or FTP than a live private game or home game, where cheats and team players have run rampant for decades.
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So you are arguing that I should prove your conjecture is wrong when you full-well know that even if you are wrong it would be nearly impossible to prove it? That's the same as me asking you to prove that there has been no other cheating. You can't do it, and it doesn't make sense for me to ask you to do that. The point is, the only cheating that has been caught has been outright blatant cheating. There is no regulation of or transparency into the industry. The players themselves are unwilling, as a whole, to boycott sites that are caught red-handed cheating their customers due to greed. It's all built on getting as much money as possible from bad players--ethics be damned.
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I disagree - players report and catch colluders on a daily basis. Is it possible that there are very smart cheaters who have hacked the system, but keep their winrates low enough to avoid suspicion? Sure, it's possible - it will always be POSSIBLE. That being said, is it likely? Is it likely that there are cheaters who are grinding out 8 bb/100 at 200NL or something to stay under the radar, and who are disciplined enough to not let their wins get significant enough to be detected? even if there are, is it likely that YOU or I, out of the millions of players, will ever be cheated by one? Honestly, I play exclusively on Stars, and their security and support has proved itself exemplary on numerous occasions. I feel 100% safe at all times there and have never seen one thing that leads me to believe otherwise. When you sit in a live game in a casino, how do you know the dealer isnt cheating you? YOU DONT. But the chances are overwhelmingly against it, just like they are at reputable online sites. If you cant stop seeing monsters in the closet and assuming that there are cheaters everywhere, then, well, stop playing, poker isnt for you. But dont ruin it for the rest of us by bringing down unwanted exposure that can end online poker permanently. Just stop playing. I am sensible enough to know that whenever I put money into a venture, be it poker - online or live - or investing, buying goods over the internet, etc - that I run a tiny risk of being cheated or robbed. We all do. Dont blow that out of proportion. You say its impossible to produce evidence - to the contrary. If you have no evidence other than caught cheaters, than you're the one conjecturing. Like I said, there have been billions upon billions of hands. the chances that more than 1% of those have been fraudulent are incredibly slim. dont say "you cant prove there hasnt been cheating, so assume there is" - say "until Im given something to worry about that indicates XX% of poker hands are unfair, I'm going to go with the available data (caught colluders/hackers) and conclude that they represent an miniscule cross-section of poker hands total". Im extrapolating from the known cases - colluders caught, AP/UB hackers, even multi-accounters caught to make an informed guess at the big picture. You're saying "this happened once, so we must assume that it happens all the time" That is not a logical leap there. And if you believe that, stop playing, that simple. And on another note, you say players as a whole refuse to boycott cheating sites - again, many did, many didnt. I dont think the vast majority stayed on them, or left them. Id guess about half the top pros stayed, from the comments they made at the time, most of the semi-serious players left, and most of the recreational players didnt hear about it.
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theres alot of reasons people enjoy playing online not just because of the fish theres fish live to.The reason I like it is because I have to drive for an hour to get to a casino.Then I get in a tournament and lets just say what if after I make the drive get in tourny and get coolered in the first few hands its not like online where I can just hop in another tourny on top of that the gas to go there makes things even more expensive.
I think if the government was smart they would legalize it then maybe some of the casinos in vegas and Atlantic city would start online sites and have it all regulated also increasing competition which would create incentive for sites to make sure the game is honest and fair.
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