Nat Arem's Blog

I am going to start taking the pages on this blog a little more seriously. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, the links in the upper right that currently say About Me and thepokerdb. I just updated the About Me page a few minutes ago with more current information. I will be updating the thepokerdb one soon. I’ll also add a bunch more. Specifically, I want to make a good photo gallery for the pictures that I’ve taken over the years.

Also, I have not forgotten my promised Absolute Poker trip report. I’ve been extremely busy on another project of mine called DonkBluff.com (which is basically done now except for a few feature additions and security shore-ups). It’s a pretty specialized idea that I developed at the request of a certain individual and I can’t see more than 50 or 100 people ever using the site even after I fully build it out. It’s simple on purpose, although once people login there are way more features than are viewable from the homepage. Anyway, it’s taken up a bunch of time this week and it’s something that I put off because of the Absolute Poker scandal, so I decided to finally get it rolling. So those trip reports are coming soon.

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.

I’m part of the lead story on the homepage of PokerNews! They’re quite a big deal in case you’re unaware. Sick.

The link to the article is here.

I did an interview recently with holdem radio on a show called “The Tournament Trail” with Earl and Jen. It was a great time and a really fun talk. Both of the hosts knew a lot about the scandal and they really let me ramble a lot, which I always enjoy. I got into a bunch of peripheral issues like my feelings on online poker regulation and even why lots of sites use the KGC-controlled hosting facilities near Montreal. The direct link to download the show is: http://www.holdemradio.com/media/tt110707.mp3. Also definitely check out their website at the link earlier in the paragraph.

Also, a few weeks ago I was on the premiere episode of pokerroad‘s “Big Poker Sundays” with Haralabos Voulgaris and Scott Huff. You can listen to it online in their little flash player here or you can just download the episode here. Unfortunately I was on my cell phone in a parking lot freezing my ass off, so the interview isn’t an A+. I also was unable to hear a lot of what was going on, so I sound pretty dumb when they’re trying to kick me off the air at the end. It was fine though, they seem like good guys and I hope the new site goes well.

This is terrific stuff. You really can’t even pay for entertainment like this. If you’d like, you can read the post here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12854238.

Or here’s a summary.

Jimmy “gobboboy” Fricke sent an email to Full Tilt Poker about being sponsored in Aussie Millions because he got 2nd last year. It was a normal, short and well-written request. Full Tilt Poker responds with a normal response about how they don’t accept solicitations for that sort of thing and that they have a marketing group to decide that stuff, etc. Nothing special so far.

But then gobboboy noticed that there was an internal email still in the message that went undeleted by Full Tilt support! It read as follows:

From: Howard Lederer
Sent: Sat 11/3/2007 7:21 PM
To: Robert H. Wolf; Ray Bitar
Cc: Jason Newitt
Subject: RE: Aussie Millions. (KMM4237266I19928L0KM)

The guy’s a freak and a very weird dude. He is also quite young. I think we should stay away.

Howard

My new email address is XXXX@XXXX.com. My “tiltware.com” address will not work soon. Please update my contact info accordingly. Thanks.

That is hilarious. Not only did the guy send out Howard’s response clearly meant for four people, he also did a number of other things.

1. He publicly revealed the names of three of the most important decision-makers in the company: Howard Lederer, Bob Wolf and Ray Bitar.
2. He signed his own email (you can see it in the 2p2 post) JD, but yet revealed his own name of Jason Newitt. I’m assuming he’s Jason D. Newitt or something like that.
3. He showed that the legal arrangement between tiltware, Full Tilt Poker and whoever else is a sham — These are the guys running the site, they’re hardly a software outfit.

Considering the legal sensitivity regarding this stuff, it seems like a terrible idea to even make it possible to do that. I’m hoping for Jason’s sake that Jason Newitt is not his real name and I hope for all of their sakes that the DOJ does not care to see a poker-only gaming case go to court.

Note that I would never publicly out the names of gaming people for obvious reasons, but these guys did it to themselves.

Awhile ago when I switched over to this new blog software, I made a post saying that I would link any poker blogs who also link to me. That offer still stands. Comment on this post with your blog link if you’d like to be added. On a contrary note, I am going to start looking regularly at all of the blogs that I link to. If they are basically inactive (like no posts for a month or more and like one in the last six months), then I’m going to remove them. Obviously any blog can be re-added if it becomes active again. I want good poker blog links for my readers. While I don’t have time to monitor the quality of content at all times, I can check up on quantity and whatnot.

Also, I’ve never actually sold ads on my blog. I kinda like having it be mostly ad-free except for PSDollars and some of the other projects that I’m involved in. But I am curious what I’m missing out on, so I’m going to accept two ads of 160×100 (same as the PSDollars ad on the left). Both will be displayed below the PSDollars ad on the left and I’ll run them for 30 days at a time. I have no idea what they’re worth, so email me with offers at “natarem” at gmail.com. First come first served if I get offers that I think are worth it. Some basic traffic stats are around 1,000 hits a day (most people just view one page, so it is a not a sticky site) and around 35,000 uniques in the last 30 days (thanks AP situation post). I usually get way less uniques than that, but I do have a fair amount of AP-related stuff to post in the near-future related to my trip to Costa Rica that I’m currently wrapping up.

Anyway, it should be interesting. If the offers are retarded and not worth it in my mind, then I’ll just scrap the plan and continue on as usual.