Rumors continue to circulate regarding suspicious play at Absolute Poker

Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen in the online poker community, but a recent press against Absolute Poker led by several high limit players and a couple of moderators at 2+2 has grabbed the attention of several people who would normally dismiss ‘online poker is rigged’ claims.

All of what’s being reported is, of course, 100% allegations at this point, and nothing more. As far as we know there’s been no official word from Absolute Poker at this point on the story. At present there’s really nothing more than the suspicions of some well-respected players, backed up by fairly thin statistical evidence.

The original claim of impropriety focused on the play of a few accounts now believed to be the same person: Greycat/Steamroller/Supercard, and stemmed from a thread in the High Stakes Limit section of 2+2. That thread has since been moved to a moderators forum, but you can find it in Google if you search for “high stakes absolute players” and view the cached versions of the search results. The critical summary post in that thread from well known high-stakes limit pro DanDruff:

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.

Dan then followed up with a post on NeverWin:

Some people are taking me out of context.

I never “verified” that a superuser account on AP exists that can see hole cards.

I do not have any proof of the existence of such an account.

However, I will say that I am becoming increasingly suspicious of this Greycat/Steamroller/Supercard/etc character. At first I laughed off these cheating allegations, calling them absurd. However, upon inspection of data presented to me by others, I am starting to take the accusations seriously.

I have been asked by certain people involved to keep most of the specific pertinent information away from public forums.

At this time, I am respecting those requests.

I can say that, either way, this only affects the highest limit players.

Meanwhile, the main thread on the issue on 2+2 continues to grow, led by a moderator of the BBV forum, and a cliff notes thread on this issue is descending into mass comment-chaos as well.

The speculation is that the original thread is being held in the mod forum while all available evidence is complied and presented to AP - but that’s just speculation. We’ll update this as some more facts emerge.