Absolute Poker Costa Rica Trip: Part 1
As many people know, Absolute Poker allowed me to visit their Costa Rican offices the week of Oct 29th-Nov 2nd. I accepted the offer in conjunction with PokerNews.com, who paid for the trip down. In addition, I am doing a series of Q&A-style reports for their site, one of which is already up.
Also, a special thanks needs to go to the PokerSourceOnline guys. Mike and crew were great about hosting me, feeding me, driving me around, etc. I stayed in the PSO compound with Adam and Cal from PocketFives and I really appreciate all of the generosity during my 12 day trip. Everyone there has a friend in Atlanta if they’re ever in the area.
I’m going to do this trip report in multiple parts. First, I’m going to start by stating my general conclusions in a categorized manner.
Things that I do not agree with, but cannot disprove:
1. Scott Tom was not involved
2. AJ Green acted alone
3. Scott Tom is no longer involved with AP, UB or any related company in any way, including ownership interest
Things that I am reasonably confident are true, but cannot prove or say for sure:
1. AJ Green is no longer involved with AP, UB or any related company in any way, including ownership interest.
2. The cheating was perpetrated via a backend access tool called “Servman” that wrote hand histories to the page before hands were completed.
3. The aforementioned backend access software can no longer access hole cards before a hand is completed.
4. The reason Servman could see hole cards was due to a code change made by AP programmers in mid-June 2007
Things that I am very confident of and I have proof for (although I cannot reveal the evidence for all of the points):
1. MCBILL did not cheat when he won the $100K Absolute Poker Dream Package
2. OSCAR133 is not Oscar Hilt Tatum (one of the AP execs mentioned in the investigation) and did not cheat during his tourney wins early in October 2007
3. Absolute Poker was operationally run, to a significant degree, by AJ Green
4. Absolute Poker does not have significant poker knowledge within their organization
My future blog entries will address each of those types of points in three different parts. I will also write a trip report style blog entry for things unrelated to Absolute Poker conclusions.
Related posts:
- Absolute Poker Costa Rica Trip: Part 2
- Absolute Poker Costa Rica Trip: Part 3
- Absolute Poker Costa Rica Trip: Part 4
- PokerNews Q&A Part 2: Absolute Poker
- Nearing the end of Costa Rica trip
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Comments
“4. Absolute Poker does not have significant poker knowledge within their organization”
The most telling statement, methinks.
I thought I heard you say on your radio interview that when this whole thing broke, people were sending you HH’s from over a year ago (i.e., before the software upgrade) that revealed everyone’s hole cards. Did I hear right? Does that mean the hole cards could have been seen during play?
[...] am still going to post my reasoning for the conclusion in this post. I will likely be posting that stuff this [...]
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Fascinating, Nat. Will be reading here & at PokerNews with interest. Thanks again for the effort.