Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #03

By Adam Noone, 18/01/2008

Hold on to your (tin foil) hats – it’s conspiracy theory time again. This time the allegations are being made against Ultimatebet and are pretty much identical to those which rocked its partner site Absolute Poker towards the end of last year. A couple of high stakes cash players initially reported that they had suspicions about one particular account by the name of NioNio that had been logging some big wins against the best players on the site with some unusual betting patterns. Although not making some of the blatant plays that Potripper had on Absolute Poker, NioNio could not escape the scrutiny of the various software tools used by diligent high stake pros. Since the Absolute story broke, various suggestions have been made that a player on a hot streak might be a superuser account, but here for the first time there were numerous factors which when considered cumulatively meant that the idea merited further investigation.

Firstly nobody knew who NioNio was – amongst the high stakes community it would be rare for someone to be able to win so much money against the best players on the site without someone knowing who is using the account.

Secondly the statistics gathered on NioNio over several thousand hands showed that he was able to win whilst playing most hands, demonstrating a very high level of aggression on the river once the final strength of each hand would be known. There are also examples of individual hands where NioNio’s play seems to make little sense yet he somehow knows what the right decision to make is by the river. Furthermore, the statistics show that NioNio didn’t really run particularly above his expectancy in all-in situations with cards yet to be dealt. The money was being won seemingly without the need for good luck but when there were decisions to be made on the river.

Finally, having killed the high stakes games with no losing sessions, NioNio suddenly stopped playing on Ultimatebet on 4th September 2007 - around the time when the Absolute cheating story first emerged. Intriguingly a search for NioNio using buddy list software shows that the account hasn’t just been left inactive though – it doesn’t even exist on the system any more. Seemingly either the user went to the trouble of contacting Ultimatebet and asking for their account to be deleted rather than just not using it, or someone with administrative rights within the company made a decision that the account needed to be purged from their records.

All of these are reasonably explicable when considered in isolation, but when you put all of the above facts together it is easy to see why many people have concluded that there is a superuser at work on Ultimatebet.

Upon this being made public knowledge on the internet, several other well known high stakes cash players commented that they remember playing NioNio and feeling that something was not right at the time, but were not in a position to draw any serious conclusions over just a small hand sample. Pooling all their collective hand histories together though has given those trying to build a case for the existence of a superuser a much more accurate picture. In doing so, several other accounts have also been identified as possible cheaters. All exhibited similar tendencies when analysed with Poker Tracker e.g. high river aggression factor, none had any losing sessions, all had stopped playing at around the time when the Absolute story broke and all of the accounts had since been deleted.

Nat Arem had been an instrumental figure in discovering the truth about the Absolute Poker episode but had not had much involvement in this so far until he popped up with a very important piece of information. He revealed that a reliable source had informed him that NioNio and another name on the list of accounts under suspicion, Nopaddles, had not been deleted as such but had changed the usernames to Nymobser and Sleeplesss. Both these name changes had been actioned on the same day, appearing to confirm a link between the accounts in all likelihood, and both new names were still active accounts when searched for.

Within one day of this being revealed on an internet forum post, both Nymobser and Sleeplesss had also disappeared from the system. Whether they have undergone a further name change or been deleted entirely, it seems that someone is keeping themselves abreast of everything being posted and that one of two things has happened. Either someone from outside the company has contacted Ultimatebet at a time when these accounts are under intense scrutiny, laid claim to owning them, asked for them to be closed, and Ub’s support has gone ahead and processed the request. Or someone within Ultimatebet felt it necessary to make those changes. Neither explanation though really fits in with Ub’s public claims that all these accounts are being thoroughly investigated.

At the moment history seems to be repeating itself – five months ago a group of amateur detectives were building a case against Absolute Poker that eventually became so compelling that Absolute had to perform a U-turn as the evidence against them grew. Similarly the allegations against Ultimatebet started off as a little acorn but as numerous players chipped in with important bits of information, it has grown into a situation where most who are up to date on this now seem to believe there is a serious case to answer. It will take some very unusual and very compelling explanation from Ultimatebet to convince many that their observations are not in fact evidence of a superuser account at work.

The Absolute Poker cheating incident itself now finally seems to be fully resolved after the Kahnawake Gaming Commission released the findings of the audit it had conducted into the matter. The KGC found Absolute guilty on several counts as it had to, but the poker community as a whole has not been overly impressed with the outcome. Whilst stating “those person(s) responsible for the impugned activities are to be permanently removed from any role in Absolute Poker mind and management” it did not go on to publicly specify which individual(s) it wanted removing from the company – something many people had been dying to know.

The fine of $500,000 imposed on Absolute Poker was also far too lenient in the minds of many people given the sort of income that the site is still pulling in. What’s more, it’s unclear who the money is actually going to – there’s no indication it will go to the players who were ripped off, so is the KGC planning to keep it? If so it would be nice to think that it will in some way be invested in something beneficial for the game.

Hovard Lederer

The Aussie Millions main event is now under way but the preliminary events have been notable for the unusual variety of games on offer. As well as mixed stud games, Manila and mixed flop games there was also a tournament played without chips and cards on PokerPro machines. The very high rollers were also accommodated for with a A$100,000 buy in event (around £44,000) which was pot limit hold’em pre-flop and no limit post-flop. It turned out to be a bit too steep for all but 25 players but even this small field was able to generate poker’s latest million dollar prize due to the extreme buy in. England’s Mark Teltscher came close to winning it but lost heads up to Howard Lederer when the Teltscher’s flopped two pair fell victim to a runner runner bigger two pair.

Whilst we wait to see who emerges as the main event champion, further news from Australia is that Shane Warne is following hot on the heels of Boris Becker with a poker sponsorship deal. Warne has signed for 888.com and is set to enter several major tournaments this year including the World Series Of Poker main event. If he finds himself sat at a table with Tony G he might just find out what the art of sledging is really about.

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