Absolute Poker – Promote with Caution

I’m sure most of you are aware of the issues surrounding Absolute Poker, but for those who aren’t I thought I’d write up a post about it, and my thoughts on the issue.

First, here’s a quick cliffnotes that I posted on one of my sites earlier today:

Approximately a month ago, some concerns came up about a “superuser” account that was able to see all hole cards, and was killing the high stakes games.  This was mostly based on hand histories where the only explanation was that the account was able to see everyone elses cards during play.  Absolute ignored the issue, and it got lost in the shuffle…

…until last week.  Player Crazy Mark came 2nd to a player by the name of Potripper in the 1k.  Crazy Mark was suspicious about the hands and asked for a hand history to be sent him – and Absolute accidently sent him the master hand history, that contained EVERYONES hole cards on every table.  This then revealed that there was definitely something fishy going on, and most probable cheating.  A most recent update now has evidence that the cheater is actually Absolute Poker themselves, with the CEO of Absolute, Scott Tom allegedly behind it.  You can read all the drama at our friend Adanthars blog, here.

So to quickly summarize – there’s a lot of speculation, and also a lot of damning evidence, that there is an account at Absolute Poker that allows that account to see everyones hole cards.  There’s also speculation and some more possible evidence that the CEO of Absolute is actually behind this.  At first I was willing to give Absolute Poker the benefit of the doubt on this, and waited to see how they would actually respond to the issue, however with the latest news coming out, as well as Absolute and Chipleaders non-response to the issue, I’ve pulled Absolute Poker, and also Ultimate Bet, from all my sites.

Does this mean I consider them guilty of everything circulating about them?  Of course not.  I’m a very open-minded person, and I generally like to see both sides of the argument, and wait for an accepted conclusion before acting.  However this is something that can dramatically affect my business, particularly as a lot of my players and target market are 2+2ers or P5ers, players who are aware of these issues.  I’ve built up a strong trust with my players, and it would be wrong of me to continue to promote a poker room while they have these allegations against them.  Furthermore, I’m absolutely furious(pardon the pun) that Absolute haven’t came out to discuss this issue yet.  They ignored it the last time, and after two business days still have not commented on the issue, and that is very insulting, both as a player and an affiliate.  How am I meant to promote a room, when they have these strong allegations of cheating and fraud surrounding them?

Of course – for some affiliates they could see this as an opportunity.  With all the big sites stopping to promote Absolute, they could jump right in and try and bump themselves up in the search engines as promoters of Absolute.  I’m not going to tell affiliates to stop promoting Absolute or Ultimate Bet – but I WILL state that you really should proceed with caution.  Not to be a scaremonger or anything, but if the accusations are true, particularly in regard to the CEO…there’s a chance, hopefully a very small chance, that they could just vanish into the night.