Listening Back to Back in the Day

There’s a lot that’s interesting swirling around with regard to online poker and where it’s going these days. (Or not going, if you’re here in the U.S.)

But that’s standard -- that is, for there to be all sorts of stories, scoops, sensations, and scandals associated with the online version of the game. Has been the case ever since I started writing this blog more than eight-and-a-half years ago.

In fact today I took a break from reading the latest to look back a little at some of the issues being discussed not long after I started this sucker, thanks in part to my having randomly happened on a folder on an old computer full of poker podcasts.

The shows are all from late 2007 and early 2008, back when I remember having to download podcasts in order to hear them. That above is a crude screenshot of the folder -- if you’re curious you can click the pic to enlarge it. Looks like more than 40 different shows represented in the folder. Just by chance I decided to dial up one from exactly seven years ago today -- the 12/2/07 episode of “Big Poker Sundays” hosted by Scott Huff and Haralobos Voulgaris which aired on the now-defunct PokerRoad site.

The show covered various topics of the day, including a story about an infamous instance of “ghosting” involving the soon-to-be-let-go Managing Editor of BLUFF, Chris Vaughn, and Sorel Mizzi. Shane “shaniac” Schleger called in, too, to talk more about the state of online poker including current worries about multi-accounting, ghosting, and what was then a recent development regarding cheating on Absolute Poker. (I was even surprised to hear a quick reference to Hard-Boiled Poker in there, something I hadn’t remembered at all.)

Listening to the show sent me back to some articles online as well as some old posts here, including this post written the day after the BPS show that mentions some of what was discussed. Think I’ll probably next have to back up a few weeks with these and listen again to the first discussions of the Absolute Poker cheating scandal as it was just starting to break.

Speaking of, during my clicking around through some old HBP posts I landed on this one from February 2008 compiling lots of early articles about AP. Talk about a rabbit hole.

I’ll spare you all the little twists and turns I’ve been clicking my way through tonight, though will say I had a chuckle over this article (from mid-September ’07) from someone expressing utter disbelief that any cheating could have happened on the site, as well as this follow-up (written a week later) adamantly confirming that position, then adding the following:

“I've also spoken with an anonymous source who has had contact with individuals at Ultimate Bet and a few other sites, who notes that no such super user exists on those sites, either. Why, then, would Absolute Poker be the lone site that finds a need to create a super user?”