Reporting on Absolute Poker; or, If a Tree Falls

Caught part of Keep Flopping Aces last night. Jennifer Newell (a.k.a. California Jen) joined Lou Krieger as co-host, and they had Todd “Dan Druff” Witteles on to talk more about the Absolute Poker scandal and its aftermath.

I only picked up the show about fifteen minutes after it began. As far as AP is concerned, what I heard essentially reiterated ground already covered several times over. Witteles -- who spoke for just about the entire 35 minutes or so I heard -- made almost all of the same points on Wise Hand Poker back in early November. There was an interesting bit toward the end about bots starting to pop up more frequently on certain sites, but otherwise I’d heard it all before. (If you missed the show, you’ll just have to wait for it to appear in the RSS feed.)

Of course, just because I’ve heard it all before doesn’t mean a lot those listening in have. As was pointed out on the show, not many people are even aware of the AP scandal, never mind up to speed on what happened, how it was discovered, and how AP and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission chose to deal with the matter.

This point briefly came up on the show. Krieger mentioned how he’d been writing about the scandal on his blog, and also referred to the series of articles Newell has written about the scandal for Poker Player (here is the first). He then said [to Newell] “I think that essentially it’s you and me and maybe a little bit of Gary Wise and that’s about it.”

Gonna have to disagree with Krieger there on that last point. Others have written about -- and continue to write about -- the scandal.

It is true the mainstream “poker media” (i.e., the poker mags I wrote about on Wednesday) aren’t really providing much in the way of true, unbiased reporting on the matter. But, come on. It’s not as though no one else is writing about Absolute Poker.

For example . . .

Haley Hintze has written eight articles on the scandal for Poker News:

Tough Times for Absolute Poker (October 18, 2007)

Absolute Poker: 'We Had a Security Breach' (October 19, 2007)

Absolute Poker: Consultant Cited in Latest Statement (October 21, 2007)

Absolute Poker Situation: Unattributed Statement Released; Seif Video Names AJ Green (October 31, 2007)

Absolute Poker Situation: Unofficial Interim Audit Statement Released (November 9, 2007)

Absolute Poker Situation: Q&A with Nat Arem, Part 1 (November 9, 2007)

Absolute Poker Situation: Q&A with Nat Arem, Part 2 (November 16, 2007)

Absolute Poker Situation: Kahnawake Gaming Commission Releases Final Audit Results (January 12, 2008)

Poker Listings has also had a number of articles reporting the scandal:

Absolute Poker debacle results in audit (October 18, 2007)

Absolute Poker reports security breach (October 20, 2007)

Absolute Poker condemned by poker players (October 22, 2007)

Absolute Poker fall out far from over (October 30, 2007)

Absolute Poker issues update on scandal (November 10, 2007)

Poker rooms respond to online security questions (November 20, 2007)

Absolute Poker investigation nearing end (November 23, 2007)

KGC releases Absolute Poker report (January 13, 2008)

Absolute Poker responds to KGC report (January 15, 2008)

Final Thoughts on Absolute Scandal, PCA Bannings (January 18, 2008)

Additionally, Poker Pages has weighed in on the matter from time to time:

Absolute Poker Cheating Blamed On Employee (October 19, 2007)

Further Details Emerge in Absolute Poker Scandal (November 9, 2007)

Absolute(ly) Poker Scandalous (November 12, 2007)

Kahnawake Gaming Commission Releases Absolute Poker Findings (January 12, 2008)

Absolute Poker Responds to KGC Report (January 13, 2008)

Is There Integrity in Online Poker? (no date)

Should also mention this one -- For Cryin’ Out Loud, You Are Not Being Scammed at Absolute Poker! (September 25, 2007). Poker Pages probably regrets jumping the gun, there. But at least they were trying to cover the story.

Moving on, Life’s a Bluff has offered some poignant commentary:

Absolute Mess (October 22, 2007)

Happy Halloween (October 31, 2007)

War of Words (November 14, 2007)

Online Poker Is Rigged (January 11, 2008)

Absolute Poker Punished (January 18, 2008)

Pokerati, in addition to passing along some of the above-mentioned items, has had a number of posts on the matter, as well. Here are just a few of them:

Absolute Issue Raises Serious Questions (October 17, 2007)

Mark Seif, Absolute Respond with Call for Investigation (October 17, 2007)

Absolute Admissions: You Buyin’? (October 19, 2007)

It's On: Mark Seif v. Dan Druff, Round 1 (October 31, 2007), in which California Jen passes along the RawVegas vids

Mark Seif Speaks (November 1, 2007)

What Cheating Looks Like (November 1, 2007), in which Dan links to the YouTube Potripper vids

Absolute Issues Statement Claiming No Super-User Account. Yeah, Right. (November 9, 2007)

Absolute Cheating Report Released (January 11, 2008)

Unpeeling the Absolute Onion (January 12, 2008)

Absolute Poker Releases Statement (January 12, 2008)

Big Poker Sundays devoted a lot of time during its initial episodes to the story, as have other podcasts such as Ante Up! and the old Rounders, the Poker Show (now Two Plus Two). Oh, and Dugglebogey was already drawing cartoons about it back in September.

And, while I’m at it . . .

Playing Catch-Up (September 23, 2007)

Absolute Crap (October 19, 2007)

Would You Like to Leave Absolute Poker? (October 21, 2007)

Cleaning Out (October 24, 2007)

Poker Still "a Game Subject to Chance" (Even for Cheaters) (October 30, 2007)

World Upside Down (November 6, 2007)

Update on the Updates (November 11, 2007)

Get Ready to Rumble (November 17, 2007)

Absolute Apathy (January 4, 2008)

Something Is Missing Here (January 14, 2008)

CardPlayer Sez Go On & Play at Absolute Poker (February 5, 2008)

Absolute Poker "Security Summits" (In Search Of) (February 13, 2008)

And I haven’t even mentioned other forums and blogs that have reported (and continue to report) on the scandal.

No, I think for anyone interested, there’s plenty of information out there about the problems at Absolute Poker. That’s the problem, though. For a variety of reasons, ain’t a lot of folks all that interested.

A month-and-a-half ago, Gary Carson pointed out the pointlessless of blogging about the Absolute scandal, explaining the generally lackadaisical attitude of most poker players’ towards cheating ensures such efforts will largely fall on deaf ears.

Carson’s probably right. Indeed, sometimes I think even those who are interested in the scandal aren’t listening all that closely.

Doing the "What If?" Shuffle (the sequel)

In my last post I decided to track down the answer to a question about how the shuffling software works over at PokerStars, a site where I play frequently. After one of those very common “what if?” situations (I had folded a hand preflop that would have flopped a straight), I wondered about a comment I had heard on the PokerDiagram podcast regarding online sites and how they “reshuffle” the deck all throughout the hand. I wrote an email to PokerStars and they told me that, in fact, they only run their randomizing program once prior to the hand and thus “set the deck.” This meant that when you decide to fold that four-flusher on the turn and the fifth of your suit comes on the river, you can correctly torment yourself with the woulda-shoulda-couldas. If that’s your cup of tea.

Anyhow, since the fellows on PokerDiagram play on PokerRoom (a site on which I do not play), I decided to send PokerRoom an email asking how their shuffling software works. In his comment on that post, derbywhite said not to “hold your breath waiting for a reply” from PokerRoom -- good advice, as they have yet to respond (over 48 hours later). But I was already wearing my detective hat, so I decided to keep snooping. I thought I’d ask around at other sites to find out what the “norm” was. Doing so would serve a few purposes: (1) I’d find out whether other sites, like PokerStars, only shuffle the deck once prior to the hand or not; (2) I’d learn a bit about how shuffling software works, generally speaking, and how sites defend the integrity of their games; and (3) I’d perform an informal survey of the level of customer support at each site.

I looked on Poker Listings -- a helpful site that gives tons of information about fifty or so poker sites -- and picked out the ten sites that currently have the highest player volume. Those sites (from highest volume on down) are PokerStars, PartyPoker, PokerRoom, Hollywood Poker, Ultimate Bet, Paradise Poker, Doyle’s Room, Poker Share, Full Tilt Poker, and Pacific Poker. (PartyPoker has the highest cash game volume, but PokerStars makes the top of their list because of its frequent high-entry tourneys.) I had already contacted PokerStars and PokerRoom, so I sent a similar message to the other eight sites asking them about whether the cards were reshuffled during the hand or not.

The first to respond was Paradise Poker. Within 15 minutes I was directed to a page on their website with a fairly detailed description of their shuffling software that appears written for programmers. I battled through it, however, and toward the end found my answer. Each time they run the program, they create what they call a “seed” (referring to the shuffled deck). They then update the seed very frequently (again, like PokerStars, incorporating lots of input such as players’ mouse and keyboard movements), including during the hand. As they explain, “The updated seed is used for dealing cards during each card dealing round, and since a hand always lasts longer than it takes to inject 2000 bits of new random data, all subsequent cards will be dealt using a seed which is completely random and which is completely unrelated to the seed used to deal the previous hands of cards.” So Paradise reshuffles throughout the hand. Asking “what if?” is even less meaningful over there, as the cards would not necessarily have come out the same way.

Pacific Poker sent a response shortly afterwards (within 30 minutes), and while they also sent me a somewhat technical explanation of the process, the support person helpfully prefaced that with this handy sentence: “I am enclosing an explanation but in answer to your specific question it is done on every card.” Then came Hollywood Poker's response (within 45 minutes) which begins in uncertainty (“I cannot say for sure how does the random number generator works [sic] in shuffling and dealing . . . ”) but concludes by saying that at “each phase in a single hand, the cards are generated at the moment it is shown on the hand or table and not pregenerated in the deck.” Soon afterwards, Poker Share sent a terse but clear response that “the deck is shuffled after every card, rather than after every round.”

Like poker players, detectives are always looking for patterns. And I was seeing one. Of the first four sites to respond, all four reshuffled the deck throughout the hand. I wondered if I might be approaching an "industry standard" here -- one that PokerStars didn't necessarily follow . . . ?

Full Tilt Poker got back to me within 90 minutes or so with a detailed message defending its software’s integrity (but not really addressing the question). However, FTP did direct me to “a newsgroup link to a simplified explanation by Perry Friedman (one of our pros) of how our random number generator works.” I followed the link which didn’t seem to feature Perry Friedman at all but did include a transcript of a chat session involving Howard Lederer. There Lederer explains that over at FTP “the remaining cards are shuffled during the action.”

In his comment to my earlier post, mattastic had said he thought FTP reshuffles throughout the hand and he was right. Incidentally, Full Tilt has incorporated a new feature in its games that seems doubly useless, given this information. After you have folded, for the rest of the hand you can hold your mouse over your avatar to see what cards you folded, in case you forgot. (There is a thread in which some were discussing this new feature -- and related issues -- over on the Card Clubs Network Forums over the past couple of weeks.) But since they reshuffle the deck during the hand, the only thing that is significant about the cards you folded is that no one else will be receiving them. In other words, the only person who gets this information is the one person for whom it is utterly meaningless!

The only other site that responded to my message was Doyle’s Room. (I never heard from PokerRoom, PartyPoker, or Ultimate Bet.) Within an hour or so Doyle’s Room got back to me with a valiant but ambiguous reply that didn’t really answer the question. They did, however, tell me if had any further questions to contact Gaming Associates, an independent agency that consults with many online gambling sites. I sent them the question, and looking at their response it appears I’ve got the whole team buzzing over there:

Of the seven sites that responded, then, six of them reshuffle throughout the hand. And Mr. Pedley here (who probably knows a bit more that you or I do about the subject) says that “generally” speaking that is the way it is done -- online sites don’t usually “set the deck” the way PokerStars does.

Based on this information, I’m guessing that PokerRoom -- as Henry and Zog were saying on the PokerDiagram podcast -- probably does as most of the industry does and reshuffles throughout the hand. There’s probably an advantage, security-wise, in doing so, I would imagine, although I’m not too concerned about the integrity of PokerStars’ games. Nor am I that concerned, really -- despite the length of these last two posts -- about whether I should have played that 58-offsuit when the flop came 746. Hard enough to live in the world as it is without worrying over what it might have been . . . .

Photo: Tom Neal from the 1945 film Detour (adapted), public domain.