As “The Poker Philosopher”, and in honor of one of my favorite non-poker blogs, I occasionally consider the ethical dimensions of a high-profile controversy or occurrence in the poker community. This is the first in a series of posts about the major players in the recent Poker Stars – Full Tilt Poker – Department of Justice settlement. Older editions of The Poker Ethicist are available in the archives.

Q: As you’ve probably heard by now, the Department of Justice recently approved a settlement in which PokerStars will buy the remaining assets of Full Tilt Poker, pay a fine to the DOJ, restore the FTP balances of non-American players, and ultimately re-open the site. American players (more specifically those of us who were Americans as of June 29, 2011), via a process yet to be determined, will be able to apply to the DOJ for restitution of our money. The online poker community, myself included, is understandably elated about this near-ideal resolution to perhaps the darkest chapter in our short history.

Many direct their gratitude towards PokerStars. The word “savior” has been tossed around liberally. Numerous Stars-sponsored players have expressed pride at representing the company. Short Stacked Shamus, in a characteristically entertaining blog post, paints PokerStars as the hero in a John Wayne-esque narrative of law-breaking and vigilantism. Dominic Kofert, CEO of PokerStrategy.com, sees them as the benevolent dictator of the new world order of online poker:

Once the acquisition is completed and Full Tilt goes back online, PokerStars, which already has a world-wide market share of around 60%, will have substantially grown the margin by which it is the largest operator in the world. With most competitors severely struggling, I will not be surprised if PokerStars/Full Tilt’s market share reaches 75% by the end of 2013.

For many, this market dominance will be something to worry about. However, judging by PokerStars’ conduct over the past years and assuming that the company’s great philosophy does not change now that PokerStars.com co-founder Isai Scheinberg has to step down, I think that PokerStars will act responsibly and with the players in mind going forward – as it has always done in the past.

Do we owe PokerStars our gratitude? Or was this just a savvy maneuver to acquire their largest competitor and establish a near-monopoly on online poker? Should the average player really be celebrating this deal?

A: To quote Grandpa Simpson, “A little from column A and a little from column B.”

Let’s start with the obvious: PokerStars isn’t doing anything out of the goodness of their heart. There’s been rampant speculation about why the company would be interested in Full Tilt. Did they seek its customer database? Good will with the DOJ? Good will with the online poker community? Re-entry to the US market? All of the above?

Your guess is as good as mine. Whatever their reasons, I believe Stars wouldn’t have purchased FTP unless they believed it was in their interest to do so.

I know they’re playing a game and acting strategically in their own best interest, but that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful. What I’ve always respected about Stars – I used to represent them myself – is that they are playing a long game, and that’s good for customers.

Among other things, PokerStars has just purchased a generous helping of legitimacy for online poker. Black Friday and subsequent revelations about the FTP “Ponzi scheme” made mainstream headlines around the world and surely scared away thousands of would-be depositors from other online poker sites. Making the affected players whole may not undo the public relations damage entirely, but it’s a gigantic step in the right direction.

The companies that have done the most harm to online poker – Full Tilt Poker, Ultimate Bet, Absolute Poker – were playing a short game. Common wisdom once held that no company would risk slaying the goose that laid the golden egg by stealing customer money. That assumption proved wrong. Principals at all of those companies chose a short-term windfall over an uncertain but potentially even more profitable future. In other words, they took the money and ran (or not).

In ways large and small, PokerStars has repeatedly demonstrated that they are in it for the long haul. It’s clear from their recent actions that they expect to be in the online poker business 10 years from now, and they’ve just made an investment that may take that long to mature.

That makes them a good company to work with, because it means that good customer service is in their interest. They want satisfied customers and repeat business. They want legitimacy and a regulated, predictable marketplace. Their business model seems to align with the interests of their players in a way that, at least in retrospect, FTP’s and UB’s did not (though also in retrospect, the signs were there: re-entry tournaments, anyone?).

Arguably, FTP and UB made the wrong choice, not just ethically, but financially. They may well have made more money by running honest businesses. Sometimes greed overtakes good business sense, and sometimes people are just short-sighted.

I’m grateful that PokerStars has so far eluded these pitfalls, but I don’t delude myself into thinking that they are playing sheriff out of an innate sense of justice. Nor have they claimed to be. In fact, I would distrust any company that did claim such.

I expect a large corporation to act in its own self-interest. If one tries to tell me they are not, then they’re lying, and that makes me suspicious. I’m far more comfortable in a relationship where I know what game the other party is playing and I can see how their interests align with mine. Both PokerStars and I have an interest in the long-term viability and legitimacy of the online poker industry, and that makes me glad to be their customer, even if I’m not kissing their feet. I’m grateful that they seem to have the foresight that some of their competitors lacked, and that even as they close this landmark deal they continue to work tirelessly to serve their customers.

That doesn’t mean that I’m sanguine about a single company possessing such a large share of the market. I feel better when a company, no matter how benevolent the owner (who, by the way, is stepping down as a condition of this settlement) or how strong the track record, feels that treating their customers right is good business and not simply “the right thing to do” as a matter of principle. Principles change, especially when there’s a lot of money at stake.

Thankfully PokerStars still has a lot of self-interested reasons to treat its customers well. They may soon face competition from gaming mega-brands like Caesar’s/World Series of Poker in a regulated US marketplace. They know that they can’t afford to rest on their laurels if they want to gain access to that market at all, let alone be competitive in it. It’s no coincidence that PokerStars’ own announcement of the settlement concludes with these words:

Our settlement acknowledges that both PokerStars and Full Tilt are eligible to apply for a license in the U.S. to offer real money poker when states or the federal government offer such an opportunity. We look forward to this opportunity and are confident that we bring tremendous value, regulatory experience, market credibility and financial integrity to the marketplace.

We’re optimistic about the future and we look forward to sharing the next chapters in our history with you.

My sentiments exactly.

The title of this post is in German because that’s where I am right now. My girlfriend and I have just embarked on a three-month Europe trip. My inability to play online poker has become a convenient excuse to travel the world, spending several months first in Canada and now in Europe. As far as occupational hazards go, these aren’t so bad.

In a sequel to my Gray Friday article entitled Three Days in Madrid, I described meeting two new friends after a last-minute decision to play the Grand Final of the European Poker Tour. Appropriately, both Soeren and Nico are also coming to Berlin for the EPT, and I hope to see both of them today. Nico and I traveled to Cannes for the WSOP-Europe a few months ago, but this will be the first time I’ve seen Soeren since Madrid.

In the last year, Nico’s home country of Spain has adopted legislation restricting its citizens to playing on Spanish-only sites, and Soeren’s home country of Germany threatens to enact similar legislation. Back in the United States, the patchwork of pending legislation at the state and federal levels is too complex for me to keep up with it. Although the holy grail would be legislation welcoming PokerStars back into the US market so that US players could compete against the rest of the world, at this point even the creation of a US-only market would be a vast improvement over the status quo.

For now, though, I remain a poker nomad. I play the EPT Berlin on Monday and hopefully the rest of the week as well. Last night a former student who lives in Berlin picked us up at the train station and took us to dinner. Soon we’ll be on to Amsterdam, where I hope to meet another former student and also spend some time with Richard “tzen1” Veenman, a member of PokerStars Team Online whom I first met in the Bahamas earlier this year.

A long-time blog reader offered us a couch to crash on in his Paris apartment, so that’s where we’ll be after the SCOOP. Then there’s hiking in the Swiss alps, hopefully meeting a student in Switzerland while we’re there, and then on to a small town in Germany for the wedding of one of my closest friends, who asked me to be his best man on this date in 2011.

I still haven’t answered any of those big questions, but I’ve managed to orient myself and muddle my way through a messy situation by focusing on what’s important to me: relationships with family, friends, and my girlfriend; traveling, meeting new people, and having new experiences; and making the best of any situation in which I find myself, doing my best not to look to the past with resentment or longing nor towards the future with fear or anticipation.

How did Black Friday affect you? What has your life been like for the past year? How do you feel on this important anniversary?

It reminds me of some of the teenagers I’ve met through my work in urban public education. Many of these kids come from circumstances that force them to grow up early. For a variety of reasons, they may be responsible for not only themselves but younger siblings from a very young age. Many have seen violent crime and drug addiction up close, in a friend or family member if not personally.

Consequently, they can seem deceptively mature. One minute, you can be having a deep, serious conversation about religion or education and you feel like you are talking to an adult. Then suddenly your 15-year-old interlocutor will ask you a question like, “Is Bush a Democrat or a Republican?” or just interrupt himself mid-sentence to go run after a girl he’s interested in, and you remember that you are still dealing with a child.

That’s how I felt reading Haseeb’s “confessions” and Daniel’s interviews. These are individuals who have achieved incredible success at a very difficult game, who are dealing with staggering sums of money, and who are suspected of perpetrating some very complicated and serious fraud. It’s an adult situation, and while at one moment they seem to recognize the gravity of it all, in the next they are offering ridiculous, frivolous justifications for their behavior: ” It’s one of those things that happens and that everybody does and has been guilty of at one time or another” (Haseeb on the 25/50 heads up PLO session that he played on the Girah account) or “Maybe I should have confronted Haseeb, but coming out and saying something publicly is nothing but the most sanctimonious mother fuckers would ever do.” (Daniel on why he wouldn’t have said anything even if their chipdumping had resulted in Girah winning the Lock Poker challenge illegitimately).

Of course there’s the open question of to what extent anything that these guys say can be believed. The naivete is there either way, though. Either Haseeb and Daniel really did stake Jose for $100,000 without investigating his results, or they expect the poker community to believe they did. Either they really did think that chip-dumping was the best way to get the money into Jose’s account, or they expect us to believe that they had no idea the dump would give Jose the lead in the Lock challenge. In either case, the naivete is staggering.

Time and again, these scandals that rock our community seem to be caused at least in part by extremely immature individuals who take their ethical cues from a very small and specific peer group and are at best out of touch with the larger context of their actions. How many times have we heard that “everyone” was multi-accounting the Sunday Majors (Bonomo), “everyone” was buying accounts (Mizzi), “anyone” would take a UB sponsorship if money were thrown at them (Sebok et al) etc.?

It’s possible that these are just ex post facto justifications, but I’m often inclined to believe them simply because the perpetrators make so little effort to hide what they are doing. Josh Fields was busted for multi-accounting because one of his friends bragged about him winning a major tournament on an account that wasn’t his. Instructors used to produce videos all the time where they played on other people’s accounts, as though the fact that it made for better videos justified the harm done to their opponents. Dan Flowers produced instructional videos in which his HUD showed tens of thousands of hands’ worth of data on opponents with whom he’d played only a few hundred hands, clear evidence that he’d purchased datamined hand histories.

All of these players were probably aware that they were doing something a little shady, but the fact that they made so little effort to hide suggests that they honestly didn’t believe it was that big of a deal. In some sense, they were right. Of the players I mentioned in the last two paragraphs, Fields is the only who is still persona non grata in the poker community. A shocking number of players support accused cheats in the “no big deal” defense, and sponsors (who remember are often relatively immature suddenly-wealthy individuals themselves) are generally willing to overlook these things. Likewise, if they are good players and/or fun to hang out with (by the way, isn’t it shocking how many of these folks caught cheating were already making tons of money on the up and up?), other members of the community are surprisingly quick to forgive them as well.

There’s a pervasive sense in our community that skirting (to be generous) ethical lines is no big deal if “everyone else” (meaning your small circle of similarly situated and self-interested friends) is doing it, if it is convenient or profitable for you (for some really laughable ethical reasoning, check out this thread about US players playing over a VPN), or if the only victims are “fish” (Tommy Angelo is the only poker player I’ve ever heard condemn the practice of berating opponents simply because it’s a bad way to treat other human beings rather than because it’s bad for the game).

This self-centered mindset where the only ethical compasses are one’s own self-interest and the approval of one’s immediate, usually biased peers is fundamentally immature. Even more immature are the half-assed apologies and justifications and the general attitude that pristine ethical behavior can’t be expected from poker players.

Well, maybe it can’t be expected, but it ought to be demanded. We all probably ought to be more skeptical than we are about our competitors. We also ought to demand better behavior and have higher consequences when people fall short. It seems like even after a player acknowledges wrongdoing, he rarely makes any effort to rectify the problem. See Cates’ unwillingness to repay money he won when playing on the Girah account for a recent example.

Poker players aren’t saints, and I’m not saying that an ethical infraction ought to get you shunned for life. But I do think we ought to demand a little more, from others and from ourselves, before we let it all become water under the bridge. It’s the mature thing to do.

Some of you may have heard that Phil Hellmuth overslept yesterday morning and was getting blinded off in the tournament. Apparently Mike Matusow called security at Phil’s hotel and got them to enter his room and wake him up. I didn’t know any of this at the time, but I was still at my starting table with Russel Rosenblum and Sorel Mizzi when Phil came dashing into the Amazon room, with a floorman shouting after him about whether he knew which table he was going to.

Russel: I wonder if the floor is going to scurry to get me to my seat if I show up late.
Me: I don’t understand why Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke aren’t getting the kind of shit that the Full Tilt guys are getting.
Russel: I don’t want to say too much here, but Phil and Annie are just paid spokespeople, whereas the Full Tilt guys may have been somewhat more that that.
Sorel: That’s… putting it very carefully.
Me: Yes, sorry, I know that. I guess I misspoke. I do understand why they don’t get as much shit as Lederer, but people still put money on UB because Phil and Annie were endorsing them, and those people are never going to see that money. I just don’t think Phil and Annie should be getting invited on stage at the WSOP like they’re the best and brightest in the poker world.
Sorel: But they’re just sponsors. They aren’t on the inside. They don’t know anything more about what’s going on behind the scenes than you do.
Me: Based on what I knew, I wouldn’t have worn a UB patch.
Sorel: But come on, if they are just throwing money at you…

I had to change the subject at this point, because the irony and Sorel’s total lack of self-awareness was getting too much for me, and I nearly said something pretty rude to him.

Security is Called

The table broke not too long after, which was very welcome, though my new table was still pretty tough. I went on a nice little tear and chipped up to 170K while acquiring a relatively aggressive table image. Blinds were 400/800/100.

I opened to 2200 with 33 in the CO. A loose French player called me on the BTN, the SB folded, and the BB, who’d been quietly chipping up with very few showdowns and seemed pretty table aware re-raised to 6800 with about 45K behind.

I wasn’t getting the right odds to setmine, and online I’d just fold this even though I suspect the guy is light. I don’t want to get it in pre, and it’s just going to be too hard to figure out where I stand post-flop. In live play, however, the added information available through tells makes it a little more feasible and call and evaluate, and that’s what I did. The BTN quickly folded behind me.

The flop came 742r. BB bet 7500, and I called. The turn was another 4, and he checked. At this point he had barely a pot-sized bet left in his stack, and I think there are a lot of hands he wouldn’t check, including big draws and vulnerable hands like medium pairs. This was either an elaborate trap with like QQ+ or he was giving up.

I had no delusions of getting him to fold a hand better than mine, but I didn’t want to give him a free card or a shot at bluffing a scary river, so I bet 9000. After a bit of thought, he moved all in for 24,500. Now I had to think.

This is another spot I simply wouldn’t get myself in online. Before I bet the flop I’d have a plan for whether I was going to call a check-raise. Live, though, there is more room to figure out exactly which part of his range he has and what he’s up to. I let him sweat for about 3 minutes and then counted out the chips for a call. He looked uncomfortable. I placed them gently in the pot. He tapped the table. I tabled my treys. He whistled. “Very nice call, sir.” He showed AQ. Q on the river.

Where it gets really crazy is that while he’s still stacking his chips, three guys from security walk up to him. Two of them stand back, flanking a third who taps him on the shoulder. “Finish stacking your chips and then we need to ask you a few questions, sir.”

Naturally the whole table is staring at this scene trying to figure out what’s going on. The player in question looks totally nonplussed. He stacks his chips and then leaves the table with them. “That beat was so bad it was criminal!” I quip after he’s gone, earning me a few groans from my tablemates.

The guy returned after just two hands and seemed unperturbed. Curious about what was going on, I said to him, “I wish they’d come a hand earlier.” He laughed. I heard the player next to him asking him what happened, and he said it was something to do with a friend of his and that everything was fine. He remained at the table until late in the day, when he shoved AJ over one of my raises. I called with 99 to eliminate him and win back about a quarter of what I’d lost to him in that earlier hand.

French Fish

As I previously mentioned, the guy on my left was a loose and generally bad French player. Blinds were 500/1000/100. A tightish player in the HJ opened to 2500, and I called with 77 in the SB. The poisson re-raised to 11,000 with 15K behind. I was pretty sure I was going to fold but gave him the old stare down first.

He’d been watching a movie on his iPad, and when he saw me looking for a read, he pressed play and turned his attention to his screen. I could see perfectly well that he wasn’t cheating, but I wanted to get a reaction from him, so I told him to put the computer away during the hand.

He removed his headphones and looked up at me. “What?”

“You can’t be on your computer during the hand.”

He sneered. “Whatchu going to do? Time.”

“You’re calling time on me?”

“Yes. Time.”

“OK. Put the computer away.” He made a point of putting his headphones back on and pressing play. I looked over at the dealer, who was doing nothing. She hadn’t even called the floor to clock me. Of course by this point I had all the information I needed to fold, but now I was upset that the dealer wasn’t enforcing the rules.

“Player has called time,” I informed her.

She turned to another dealer who was waiting to push her after this hand. “Am I supposed to call the floor if a player has asked for time?”

The floor finally got called and came over. I informed her that I twice asked this player to stop using his computer during the hand. She ignored me and started telling him that he would have 70 seconds to act.

“Time was called on me,” I told her.

“OK then you have 70 seconds to act.”

“Are you going to do anything about the computer?”

“First you need to act on your hand.” I folded without a second’s thought.

“You can’t be on your computer or phone while you have a live hand,” she informed him and walked away.

I thought there was some chance that his reaction was also an act and that he was trying to make me angry to get a call. He said something to me after the hand, though, which made me think he was legitimately upset.

The very next hand I got black Queens in the CO and opened to 2600. I was 110% sure that the poisson would at least call. He angrily threw 7500 chips into the pot. The blinds folded, and after a cursory glance at his stack (he had about 35K behind), I shoved a stack of orange into the pot. He snap-called and turned over TT like it was the nuts, which it pretty much was in that spot. I think there’s a legitimate chance that his angry chip tossing was an act and that he thought he was baiting me. I got no reaction when I showed the QQ.

The dealer went to deal the flop, and there was the Tc in the door. The other two cards were also clubs, so I had a lot of outs, but none of them got there. I calmly counted out an appropriate number of chips and passed them to him.

He finished the day with over 300K. I’ve got 135K, though, so no complaints here.

In this case, GT employed much better phraseology than I did. This is an excerpt from the de-translation of the excerpt from my blog that was quoted in Hungarian on the site. Note the bolded phrase, which I swear I am not making up:

“Yesterday I accidentally found it in a spam email in Mail, which informs me that my account is $ 1,040.26.The letter 2010th February 19 dátumozású was only yesterday, but stumbled as the spam filter caught. I thought this is something a refund of the UB Hall of frauds.”

In 2007 and 2008, I had an active account on Ultimate Bet. I played in their bigger tournaments and in cash games ranging from 5/10 to 25/50 NL. When the extent of the cheating that had taken place on UB began coming to light, I withdrew the entire balance of my account and have not played on there since.

On January 24, I discovered an old e-mail from UB , dated 2/19/2010, in my spam folder. The e-mail informed me that I had $1040.26 in my account and encouraged me to come play on the site. I do not know for certain where the money came from. My best guess is that it was a superuser refund, but to my knowledge (it could also have been lost to a spam filter, though I think the other email got scammed primarily because it was an auto-generated advertisement), I never received an e-mail or anything explaining that I would be getting a refund.

The old e-mail that I stumbled upon was NOT a notification that money had been credited to my account. It seemed to be an advertisement sent automatically because I had not logged in for a while, informing me that there was money in my account and encouraging me to return to UB to use it.

I have no intention of playing on UB anytime soon, but I downloaded the software and logged into my account intending to withdraw the $1040.26. Upon logging in, I received a message that my account was unavailable and that I needed to e-mail support, which I did:

I attempted to log-in to my account this morning and received a message
saying it was unavailable. I assume this is because it has been quite
some time since my last log-in. Is there something I need to do to get
access to the account and its contents again?

The next day, they responded:

We checked your account and we are pleased to inform you that at this moment, your UB account is in good standing and has no security blocks or restrictions. Please try to log in once again, and in case you experience any other issues, please let us know.

It’s not clear whether they are saying that there was never a restriction on my account or that they lifted whatever restriction there was, but in any event I was able to log-in successfully. I was not surprised to see that my account balance was $0. I wrote back immediately:

Thank you, I was able to log in successfully today. Unfortunately, there
seems to be $1040.26 missing from my account. Allow me to explain:

Several years ago, I decided to stop playing on UB. I cashed out my
balance, deleted the software from my computer, and never logged in again.

Yesterday, quite by accident, I found an e-mail in spam folder informing
me that I had a balance of $1040.26 in my account. This e-mail is dated
2/19/2010, but because it was caught by my spam filter, I never saw it
until now. I am assuming that this was a refund I was issued in
connection with the cheating that occurred on UB.

Upon logging it in today, I find that I have a balance of $0.

Obviously, I would like to know what happened to the $1040.26. If you
could please look into this and get back to me, I would greatly
appreciate it.

The next day, the money was back in my account, no questions asked and no explanation given:

We are pleased to inform you that your account has been reactivated and you should now be able to log in. Also, we have put back $1040.26 to your UB account.

When playing in our poker room, please abide by our Terms and Conditions at all times.

Important: Sometimes players experience difficulties logging in from the lobby after having their account reinstated. Please follow the instructions below to ensure that you can access your UB account without issue.

1. Open the UB software.
2. Go to a table.
3. Choose an empty seat to sit down.
4. Proceed with the login process from there.

We appreciate your patience in this matter. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any additional questions or concerns.

After withdrawing the funds and confirming that they were safely in my bank account, I asked for an explanation as to why the money was removed from my account. Here is the response that I got:

Thank you for contacting us.

In regard to your last message, please be informed that funds were on hold since we found out that your account was inactive for more than 6 months.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any additional questions or concerns.

I find this suspicious for a few reasons:

1. I don’t know at what point the money was removed, but my account had been inactive for well over 6 months when the initial e-mail “reminding” me about the $1040.26 was sent.

2. The money was not automatically restored to my account when I re-activated it. More than 24 hours passed between the time that security informed me I could log in to my account and the time that the money was restored to my account.

3. Significantly, the money was not restored until I asked about it, but was restored immediately when I asked about it. In retrospect I wish I had allowed more time to pass before asking, just to see what happened, but it seems to me that they had no intention of putting that money back into my account had I not inquired.

In their defense, the User Agreement does state that

If you do not access your Account by logging onto the UB servers and using the Services offered by UB for any consecutive period of 180 days your Account will be deemed inactive, and may be deemed abandoned.  UB is entitled to charge you periodic administrative fee(s) during the period that your Account remains inactive, up to the extent of your Account balance.  Without limitation, if your Account is deemed by UB to be abandoned, your Account may be closed, this Agreement may be terminated, and/or UB may take the other actions or remedies set forth in Section 8.2 of this Agreement.

The primary reason that I have problem with them confiscating money from the account in this case is that, as best I can surmise, the only reason that there was money in there at all was because of the cheating that occurred on their site. In that case, this was a refund that I was issued when I was no longer an active player and would have no reason to realize that this money had been added to my account. I’m sure I’m not the only person to receive a refund after cashing out my account never to return, and it doesn’t seem right to me that they can take this money back after 6 months of inactivity.

I gave them one last chance to explain themselves before posting this:

Thank you. I am still unclear on what happened, though.

Where did this $1040.26 come from? Was it a refund from the Russ Hamilton/superuser incident? If so, why was I not informed that I had received this refund?

What does it mean that the funds were “on hold”? Would they have been returned to my account if I hadn’t asked about them?

This was sent on February 4, 2011. It is now the 21st, and they have not responded, so I’m posting this as a PSA to others who may be in a similar situation and generally as yet another warning that UB is still engaged in shady practices.

Cliff’s Notes: I stopped playing on UB years ago and cashed out my balance. For some reason, possibly as a superuser refund, $1040.26 was credited to my account without my knowledge. I eventually found in my spam folder an old advertising email from UB telling me there was still money in my account. When I logged in, the money was gone. I wrote to ask why, and they returned the money with no explanation. When further pressed, they told me the money was “on hold” because of my extended inactivity but did not respond to further questions. I was able to cash out the money.

It’s bittersweet, but I’ve decided to leave UB.

I have nothing but positive things to say about UB and my experiences with the brand, management team, and dedicated employees who work hard every day to deliver a terrific online poker experience for players like you.

I’ve sincerely enjoyed wearing the UB patch, but it’s time for me to move on.

So why am I leaving UB? In a nutshell, professional and personal growth.

Translation: “They can’t afford to pay me and/or I don’t want to go to jail.” There’s been some speculation that perhaps Annie no longer wants to be associated with some of the biggest scumbags in the industry, but she’s stood by them for some time through a huge cheating scandal and repeated attempts to cover it up. Something has changed, and I’m guessing it’s their willingness or ability to pay her.

From Phil Hellmuth’s Twitter:

Making a BIG move…leaving UB. Truly lots of great memories, but it’s time to move on…Mutual decision…Looking forward to BRIGHT future!

The future’s so bright he has to wear shades… everywhere he goes… even indoors.

This one is less of a surprise. Phil was never as public in addressing UB’s problems as Annie was, and recently he’d stopped appearing in public with the UB logo.

Again, it’s hard for me to believe that this was purely a PR/branding decision. Although the man practically invented the idea of a poker celebrity, the UB brand was at its worst years ago but he is just now leaving. It was all about the money for him, even moreso than for Annie, and presumably they can no longer pay him what he believes himself to be worth.

These two announcements lend urgency to a warning I made earlier this month:

When [disreputable sites like Cereus] decide to close up shop, it will likely be without warning, and they may well take your money down with them. This wouldn’t even have to entail outright theft, though I wouldn’t put that past them, either. An unexpected occurrence such as a major crackdown on their payment processors could render them suddenly illiquid. If you believe that Cereus keeps player deposits in a separate account that is not used for operating expenses, I have some real estate to sell you in Florida….

Joe Sebok is still drinking the Kool-Aid:

Speaking of Team UB, while it’s true that two of our members have moved on, don’t think that we aren’t restocking the talent. We’ll be announcing our newest Team UB member next week and I am crazily pumped about it. UB has, and will continue to have, a whole new look and feel for our team and our newest signing exemplifies that, so stay tuned for that announcement next week. Going to be a bit of a doozy.

In related news, I’ve got a big announcement to make tomorrow

Their flawless software that is now the best and most secure in the industry apparently produced this little gem in the UBOC O/8 event the other day. The bet sizes were all screwed up, enabling people to limp in for 15 at the 50/100 level, and for the player in the Big Blind to move all in. Their response was to cancel the tournament, refund buy-ins, and offer a freeroll for affected players with about $10,000 in UBOC championship event buy-ins added.

Thanks to TwoPlusTwo poster FreeFalling for this awesome image!

While the grist for Cowboys Full is plenty interesting and contains more than a few entertaining stories. McManus’ specific treatment thereof is hit-or-miss. The historical chapters are mostly well-researched and -written, but the more contemporary ones feel rushed (on the author’s part) and laborious (for the reader). The former sections I enjoyed as a sort of anthology of obscure poker lore, particularly those focusing on the presidents and military leaders who loved the game. I found McManus’ treatment of present-day subjects such as the UIGEA, the WSOP, and the Ultimate Bet cheating scandal, however, to be long on trivialities and short on research and nuance.

Overall, Cowboys Full will be an entertaining and informative read for anyone, professional or amateur, interested in poker. Needless to say, the game has a rich history, and McManus ably expounds upon the ways in which it intertwines with the history of the United States. The knowledgeable insider, however, will be disappointed by the author’s perfunctory treatment of contemporary controversies. Worse, those who haven’t closely followed such issues themselves may even be misled.

Early chapters survey the origins of gambling, playing cards, and the games that preceded poker. Documentation from this era is scant, but McManus seems to have done his homework. Quoting records as diverse as ancient religious texts and the diaries of Civil War soldiers, he traces the emergence of the game we have come to know as poker.

By the outbreak of the Civil War, poker was a widespread pasttime, and Cowboys Full offers more than a few examples of ways in which it influenced the thinking and tactics of generals on both sides. Of course, misrepresentation and bluffing played a role in military strategy for millenia prior to the development of poker. What is significant, and what McManus highlights well, is the extent to which military leaders from the Civil War on articulated their thinking using the language of poker. He makes a compelling case that the game actually helped these men (and, in at least one instance, women) learn and refine such tactics.

For example, during World War II, America attempted to deceive the Axis about its plans by dropping dummy paratroopers on several potential invasion points prior to D-Day. What’s really cool is that they also dropped these dummies at Normandy, hoping to convince their enemies that this was yet another bluff. When their troops later stormed the beaches, they benefited from what poker players would call a “reverse tell”- relying on past bluffs to convince your opponent he has caught you in yet another, when you in fact possess considerable strength.

With the advent of the Cold War, poker logic extended increasingly into American diplomacy and politics as well (though McManus also includes far earlier examples of this as well, including one bluff which convinced France to sell off the Lousiana Territory at fire sale prices). Though most US presidents played poker, Eisenhower and Nixon were particularly avid players, and McManus argues that this influenced their handling of the Soviet Union. Then again, it was Kennedy calling Khrushchev’s bluff during the Cuban Missile Crisis that provides the single best illustration of Cold War diplomacy as poker played for the highest possible stakes.

Cowboys Full takes a turn for the worse when McManus turns his attention back to the game itself. His treatment of the “first World Series of Poker” intriguingly suggests that the famous days-long match between Johnny Moss and Nick “the Greek” Dandalos may never have occurred, at least not in remotely so dramatic a fashion as legend suggests. From there, however, he quickly becomes bogged down in a long and tedious recitation of past WSOP winners, including in some cases the winners of side events, along with largely uninteresting personal details about them.

This brings him to online poker, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, the cheating scandals at Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, and some predictions about the future of poker. Here, McManus slips from journalist and academic to cheerleader and propagandist. Whereas past chapters seemed thoroughly researched and often challenged received wisdom, these last nakedly present the author’s own opinions (including, quite irrelevantly, on the failures of George W. Bush’s presidency), quote directly from interested industry sources without any attempt to provide alternate viewpoints or balanced evidence, and in some cases just plain get the facts wrong.

To be clear, it’s not that I disagree with the author’s positions, on either poker legislation or our former president. It just doesn’t strike me as good journalism or good advocacy not to at least give the other side its due. McManus makes quite clear, for instance, that he believes the UIGEA to be an irresponsible, ill-advised piece of legislation. Yet he makes no attempt to explain the concerns of its proponents or why anyone supports it. Whether those arguments hold water is for the audience to decide, but they deserve a fair portrayal.

The bottom line is that if you’re interested in poker, you’ll like Cowboys Full. There are plenty of humorous anecdotes and great stories that even your non-poker friends will get a kick out of. It was only frustrating for me because I felt the topic had so much potential, especially in the hands of a writer of McManus’ caliber. Just take the last few chapters with a grain of salt, and you’ll be very happy with this book.

I decided to play the Bay 101 because of the combination of a nice location, great structure/tournament director (thanks Matt Savage!), and interesting people I thought it would attract, both because of the area and the number of pros who play as “shooting stars” with $5000 bounties on their heads.

At the outset, they distributed the bounties evenly, with one or two at every table in the 5 and/or 7 seats. I was fortunate to get probably the single softest bounty in the field at my table: 2007 WSOP main event champion Jerry Yang was seated to my immediate left. He was very quiet, but friendly enough. To my surprise, he made a lot of hopeless bluffs, especially in the early stages of the tournament. That’s not exactly how I expected him to play, which is maybe what he was going for. I called him down correctly once with 8s 4s on a Js 8h 3s Qd 3d board.

I did some splashing around in the early going, got into pots with weak players but couldn’t make anything happen and bled away about 10% of my chips in the first hour. I lost about the same in the next hour, but then just before the first break I picked up 77 in early position. Blinds were 50/100, and because the table was playing very loose, I just min-raised to 200. Small pairs are hell to play out of position in big pots, so I was mostly looking for set value.

A young, boisterous Asian kid who seemed to be a local regular rather than an internet phenom re-raised to 650. It was the first re-raise we’d seen at our table all day, and I was very sure what he had. I called, and got a nice but not perfect Tc 8c 7s flop. There was only 1300 in the pot but 16K in the effective stacks. This guy seemed like exactly the sort to overplay a big pair here, trying to “protect” his hand, and I wanted to get the money in before a scare card came off. I was afraid that if I check-raised him he might just call, which I didn’t want. So I led out for 900, he raised to 2K, I moved all in, and he called so quickly that for a second I was afraid he might have TT. But he turned over AA, looked disgusted, and failed to hit his two-outer. I went into the first break with nearly 35K, well over the average of about 22K.

After the break, blinds were 100/200. I called a raise from a tight older Japanese guy who seemed not very good with Ah 7s in the SB. The flop came AJT with one heart, and we both checked. The turn brought the Qh, giving me a flush draw and the idiot end of a gutshot to go along with my top pair. To a more aggressive player, I check here, but against this guy, I decided to bet out 700 instead, thinking he’d call with a lot of draws and worse pairs that he wouldn’t bet.

Instead, he raised to 3000, leaving about 3000 behind, which was pretty much the worst thing he could do. Especially from this player, this was a very strong line. I didn’t want to shove, because I was sure I did not have the best hand. It was very close between call and fold. I ultimately decided to call, but in retrospect I’m not sure that was best. The river was an off-suit 4, and I check-folded. I’m still not sure whether leading out on the turn was actually better than just check-calling. Even if I also check-called the river, it probably would have cost me the same but I would have seen my opponent’s hand.

I ran into a few interesting spots against Yang where his bounty influence my decision. In one, I opened to 500 with KJs on the button, and he made it 2000 from the SB with 8000 behind. Ordinarily I would fold, but relataive to this many chips the $5000 for busting him is a huge overlay. I opted to call and fold to a shove on a T74 flop with none of my suit. He told me he had KK, and I decided that even with the bounty my call was a bad one.

A little later, he had position and a somewhat deeper stack and repopped my 500 raise to 1500. I called with QTs and again check-folded a flop that whiffed me entirely. That one I think was justified.

The guy I’d busted was replaced with Bill Gazes Edler in the 7 seat. Bill wasn’t actually a bounty, but because he was known to a lot of the dealers and sitting in the bounty seat, he had to keep explaining that he wasn’t actually a shooting star. I don’t think he actually felt snubbed at not having a bounty, but it would have been funny if he did since dealers kept assuming that and shouting for the floor when he was all in.

It was unfortunate for me that he wasn’t a bounty, because I ended up busting him. The last hand before our first break, blinds were 150/300/25. Gazes Edler, sitting on about 12K, raised to 1000 UTG+1. I called with 88 in the SB, expecting him to be very strong, and Maria Ho (who had replaced Yang on my immediate left) called in the BB. I had about 20K, and she covered me.

The flop came Jd 9d 8s, and I had to think about how I wanted the money to go in. If we check to Bill, he probably bets, then I have to raise and Maria folds probably every hand worse than mine. Instead, I led out for 1800. Maria called, and Bill moved all in. I put on a show of thinking about whether to call, hoping to entice Maria in with a wider range, but she was paying no attention at all, which was actually bad for me. Either she was already planning to fold, or she had a huge hand and was doing the classic Caro “weak-means-strong” pretending to have no interest in the hand. I finally shoved in, and she quickly folded.

Bill actually had TT, giving him something like 40% equity, but my set held up. He was very gracious about it, chatting with me briefly about the hand, then clapping me on the back and saying, “Use them well my friend.” Definitely left a very favorable impression with me.

There was a middle-aged Asian guy with bad teeth but a good sense of humor who initially seemed pretty fishy. In the early levels, he was playing almost every hand, often limp-calling raises out of position. As the blinds got bigger, though, he tightened up a bit, got a bit more aggressive, and started playing reasonably well post-flop. He still had his leaks, but for a while I was really overestimating how bad he was, and it cost me.

Blinds were 200/400/50, and he hadn’t limped in in ages. He called for 400, and a very tight/straightforward South Asian guy named Bobby (probably not how he spells it, but I didn’t ask) on my right made it 1600 on the Button. I was in the SB with AKo with 40K. The LAG had about 24K, but Bobby covered me and I didn’t think I could get AK in pre-flop profitably against him. I elected to just call the raise, expecting both of them to overplay top pair if they flopped it, such that my implied odds were very good.

The limper made it 6K. Even though he was pretty LAG, he’d only limp-raised once before, and it was with KK. I thought for a long time and folded. He showed me the 6h, and I kicked myself for an awful weak-tight fold.

Towards the end of the night, I was moved to a new, tougher table. There were three shooting stars there: David “The Dragon” Pham across the table from me, Annie Duke a few seats to his left, and Kenny Tran on my immediate right. If Annie recognized me, she didn’t give any indication of it, as she has in the past.

For her part, she was looking rough. It’s a popular assertion on 2+2 and other poker forums that Annie is unattractive, but when I first met her three years ago, I thought she was pretty good looking for a 40-year-old mother of four. Now, though, there were rings under her eyes and a darkness in her face, perhaps a physical manifestation of the slow corruption that affiliation with Ultimate Bet was exacting on her soul.

The first time that she raised my blind, it was 400/800/100 and she raised to 2200. Kenny Tran called in the SB, and even before I looked at my cards, I was thinking squeeze. I looked down at 85s, straightened in my seat a bit, looked around, capped my cards, did some mental arithmetic, and raised to 8000. They both folded very quickly.

Kenny Tran, as I’ve already said, was on my right. On my left was a big, kinda doofy Italian guy whom I’ve seen around at Foxwoods and the WSOP. He and Kenny got into a conversation about how many players would be left at the end of the day, and the Italian somewhat off-handedly said that he’d take the under on 50.

“Ten thousand dollars?” Kenny asked.

“Book it.” And just like that, a $10,000 prop bet was made. There was some quibbling over details, such as what would happen if exactly 50 players remained (technically, the Italian had volunteered to take the under, but they confirmed the accuracy of the posted number with the tournament director before finalizing the bet, and in that time they renegotiated that 50 would be a push), but there was no doubt in my mind that either man would pay if he lost.

“Cash only,” Kenny said.

“Bellagio chips?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. But just like, no check.”

“Check? You’re talkin’ to the wrong guy, check. I haven’t had a checking account since… I was born.”

“OK, good.”

“What about Circus, Circus? Will you take Circus, Circus chips?”

Kenny laughed, but then the Italian leaned over and whispered to him (though I could hear, because I was sitting between them), “Seriously, I’ll get you cash no problem. I won’t have it tonight, but a lot of people owe me money, and they will pay me by Wednesday. One hundred percent.” Kenny waved him away, no problem, and I believed him as well. Like I said, he was Italian.

Maria Ho was moved to the same table I was, and despite reraising me three times at our last table, had generally been staying out of my way. She went so far as to open limp her button when I was in the BB, but I found AKs and popped it to 4K. She re-raised to 9K and change, but I had only 30ish left, so I just shipped it in. She tanked for a long time, staring at me, commenting on the tension in my neck, etc. but eventually folded. Although that is what I wanted her to do, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have minded a call either.

Two hands later, the action folded to me in the SB, where I had 99. I raised to 2500, and the Italian called. The flop came KJx with two diamonds, hardly what I wanted to see. I checked and reluctantly called a 2500 bet.

Bink! The turn was a 9, and I checked again. Unfortunately, so did my opponent.

Even worse, the river brought a T, putting four a straight on the board. I bet 4500, which he hemmed and hawed and called, only to crow about the bad beat when I showed my set.

That table broke with only half an hour left in the night, and I got moved to a new one with Freddy Deeb, Joe Sebok, and Daniel Alaei. The first hand I played, I raised Deeb’s blind to 2400 with 44. He called and led into me for 5000 on an AQx rainbow flop. It seemed pretty unlikely to me that he had a super strong hand, so I called, figuring I’d turn my hand into a bluff if he checked the turn. He bet 13K, though, and I folded.

As for how the day finished up, most of you know how it went for me. There were exactly 50 players left, so the bet ended in a push. And there were more than 200 registered for Day 1B before the night was up, so I’m assuming there was good turnout today. Most likely we’ll need to play down from 140 or so to 36 tomorrow, which should take roughly the same 10 hours as yesterday. Hopefully I’ll still be among the 36, as tables will be 6-handed on Day 3!

Don’t worry, I’m not about to give them another chance. However, their e-mail also reminded me that I had 67,000 unused UltimatePoints, which are their frequent player reward. Turns out that was enough to get a Nintendo Wii and a Nunchuk controller, so that should be on its way.

That was a fun little surprise, since I pretty much never buy any kind of consumer goods except for the occasional CD or book. After taking so much (actually, to my knowledge UB didn’t actually steal anything from me), it’s nice to see UB giving back!

Resolution 1: Focus on Short-Handed NLHE Cash Games

I pretty well kicked the tournament habit, but my focus wasn’t exclusively on short-handed play. I played a fair bit of full ring NLHE as well when the games were good, and I don’t regret it. Over about 170K hands played at 6-max tables at Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker (Poker Tracker 3 doesn’t collect UB stats), I ran at about 2 BB/100. This covers stakes from $.5/$1 (for a Poker Savvy video I was recording) to $50/$100, which is the biggest I’ve played.

Over 27K hands of heads up NLHE, I ran at nearly 4 BB/100. Sadly, a few ill-fated forays into 25/50 heads up nevertheless left me down about $35,000.

I say that I don’t regret expanding into full ring because over 60K hands I ran at about 4 BB/100.

As most of you know, tournaments did still prove profitable for me thanks to a very deep run in the main event of the WSOP. For the year, I had an ROI of just over 100%, which is in line with what I hear the best tournament players tend to expect. Of course, with a sample size of 261 mostly huge-field tournaments, that’s not a very meaningful number. It’s scary to think how much a single card could have changed the course of my year. Change a few rivered Aces to deuces and I leave Las Vegas penniless. Then again, gimme an Ace on the river against Scott Montgomery and maybe I leave Las Vegas a millionaire. That’s tournament poker.

The real issue with tournaments is that they are mostly a lot less interesting than cash and it’s much harder to put an equivalent amount of money in play. Basically I could either chase the circuit around the gruddiest parts of the US (Reno! Atlantic City! Tunica!) or spend less time playing more money 8-tabling 5/10 NL Deep in the comfort of my own apartment (and underwear, if I damn well please).

Goal 1: Play no more than 400 tournaments (Achieved)

This one wasn’t even close. I played just 261 tournaments, almost exclusively big buy-in, large-field events. In fact, the average prize pool in the tournaments I played was over $900,000. I still enjoy playing the biggest events like the Sunday majors, the FTOPS, and the WCOOP. However, I no longer feel any urge to play something like the 100K Guarantee on a random Thursday night.

The one good thing about tournaments is that they force me to put in hours. If I’m playing one or two tournaments, I’ll generally have 6-8 cash games going on the side for 4-5 hours whereas playing exclusively cash I’d probably play 8-10 tables for just 2-3 hours before getting bored.

Goal 2: The average buy-in of the tournaments I play will be at least $500. (Failed)

I missed this one, coming in at an average buy-in of $427. If you disregard four freerolls that I played, I can get this number up to about $460, but I still played too many small buy-in events. I was also thinking I would play at least one other big B&M event besides the WSOP, which I didn’t end up doing.

Goal 3: Play at least 250,000 hands of NLHE cash. (Achieved)

This was a very modest goal, and I would have been pretty ashamed if I couldn’t hit it. There are people who play this much in a month. In fact, a guy from 2+2 recently won a prop bet that required him to play 600,000 hands in November! Granted I have no desire to 24-table 50NL for 13 hours a day every day, but still I really ought to play more.

Not even counting UB or the occasional live game, I played 256, 587 hands. Over that sample, I came out at 2.54 BB/100, which is good but far from spectacular. Even in the biggest games the best players are making twice that.

Of the limits where I spent most of my time, here’s how it shook out:

30K hands at 10/20 NL 6-max at 3.9 BB/100

50K hands at 5/10 NL FR at 3.9 BB/100

66K hands at 5/10 6-max 0.4 BB/100

31K hands at 3/6 6-max, 1.1 BB/100

13K hands 2/4 6-max 4.9 BB/100

And for those who are curious about my play style, here are a few of my numbers with exactly 6 players at the table:

VP$IP 21 PFR 16 W$WSF 45% WTSD 24% W$SD 53%

For those who don’t speak Poker Trackerese, I played 21% of my hands, open raising or 3-betting a raiser 16% of the time. This is just slightly on the tight passive side. I think a style like 22/18 would be a little better, and in general I probably call too many raises.

When I saw the flop, I won 45% of the time, which is on the low end of acceptable. Again, this could be a result of calling raises with too many speculative hands, of giving up too easily, or of not playing aggressively enough.

I went to showdown in 24% of the hands that I played and had the best hand at showdown 53% of the time. The latter figure is good, but the former is a little high and suggests that I am not bluffing or value betting quite as much as I should.

My ten most profitable hands, in order: AA, KK, AKs, TT, AKo, 33, QQ, JJ, AJs, 99. This is pretty much what I’d expect, though obviously TT belongs behind JJ and I’ve probably just been running good with it. And of course AQs probably belongs up there ahead of 33, again just a result of variance I suspect. Actually I do tend to use AQ as a pre-flop semi-bluff quite a bit to 4- or 5-bet all in, and when called I’m usually dominated, so that could also be what’s holding AQ down.

I think the more interesting thing to see is my ten least profitable hands: 86s, A3s, 98s, AQs, 42s, 97s, 43s, 65s, JTs, 54s. I was surprised to see that they are all suited. Probably this is because I generally don’t play the off-suit versions, but apparently I am not playing my suited connectors so well either. Again, this corroborates the theory that I may be calling too many raises. I’ll have to work on that.

The other confounding factor here is that, as with AQ above, I tend to use suited connectors as range-balancing hands. This can be tough to conceptualize, but the fact that I am 5-betting all-in with AQ may make my entire 5-betting range more profitable because it generates additional action for my AA and KK even though it costs me money in isolation. The same could be said for the suited connectors. This is what makes it so difficult to analyze poker hands discretely.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss my progress towards my second resolution for 2008: Keep Getting Better at Other Games.

Needless to say, the Post story was better than the 60 Minutes segment. Authored by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Ira Rosen, it explored the cheating and the means by which it was discovered in considerable detail. Best of all, it kept the focus on UB and AP rather than painting all internet poker sites with the same broad brush. The overall theme of the story was that cheating occurred and that, although the perpetrators were not substantially punished, the players were able to uncover it and force restitution to be paid.

The 60 Minutes story was a bit more sensational, with references to the Wild West and cards “tumbling out of the computer”. It was also a bit more entertaining. After he declined to return their phone calls, they took several pretty funny shots UB cheater and former WSOP world champion Russ Hamilton, who won his “considerable weight in silver” along with the 1994 title.

The only thing that struck me as truly irresponsible were the multiple references to online poker being “illegal”. Technically speaking, certain financial transactions between banks and online poker sites are illegal, but the actual playing is not. It’s pretty bad for a highly respected news program to misstate a verifiable fact like that, particularly given that many people from 2+2 called and e-mailed producers over the weekend to point out the error before the show went to air.

Also troubling were the ominous closing comments of Todd “Dan Druff” Witteles about how cheating was probably going on undetected at other sites. He’s already said that he regrets this comment, and while I don’t think the overall message that cheating is possible and players should be cautious is a bad one to send, Witteles and 60 Minutes didn’t communicate it in the most responsible way. There’s no reason to speculate with no evidence about what is actually happening at other sites, only to speak in broad terms about what has happened, what could happen, and most importantly (and largely lacking from the coverage) what can be done to prevent it in the future.

It would have been nice to hear about Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to regulate and tax internet poker. And if they really wanted to discuss the legality of playing poker online, they should have spoken to prominent legal scholars like Charles Nesson and I. Nelson Rose.

Still, on the whole they largely confined their comments to UB and AP, identified the most prominent perpetrator, embarrassed the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, and portrayed the complicated details of the situation in a way that should make sense to the general public. I continue to be of the opinion that if we want greater legitimacy, we in the poker community must be willing to air our dirty laundry.

After a lot of reflection and thought, I have decided to separate myself from the Ultimate Bet brand. I hope that everyone will respect my privacy, as I wish to not go into the decision in any great detail at this time. At this point in time I just believe that the things I’m trying to accomplish in my career are not in sync with the Ultimate Bet brand.

1. Cheating at Ultimate Bet- Ultimate Bet’s press release carefully avoided the word “cheating”, instead using the phrase “unfair play”. Mike and Adam resolved to press Leggett to use the word cheating, but surprisingly he employed it readily and without prompting.

2. Refunds- Leggett also referred many times to “refunding” money that was stolen from players. I’m really surprised by this choice of words, because it seems to imply that Tokwiro is returning money they have rather than compensating affected players out of their own pockets, which is what they claim is happening. I find it very strange that they don’t make a bigger deal out of the fact that they are doing this. I mean, if they were actually taking millions of dollars from their own coffers to replace money that they didn’t steal, you’d think they’d jump up and down about what an amazing thing it is they are doing for their players. But Leggett constantly refers to it as a “refund” and could not sound more dispassionate when he insists, “We’re very upset that someone was able to do this on our site, to our players.”

3. Stolen From UB?- Leggett repeatedly refers to money stolen “from our players, from our site” as though money were taken from them as well. I’m pretty sure he actually means that it was stolen through or using UB rather than from UB. It’s like he’s trying to portray his company as a victim in all of this as well. I guess if their story is true, then UB is a victim, because their reputation is shot to hell and they are on the hook for all the money.

4. Coughing- Leggett clears his throat constantly, pretty much any time he’s asked a tough question. It’s hard to say, though, whether he’s nervous because he’s lying or nervous because he’s getting grilled.

5. Absolute Poker Cheating Deal- Apparently, Tokwiro, which also owns AP, struck a deal with the perpetrators of the cheating on that site. In exchange for a detailed explanation of how the cheating was carried out, they agreed not to release the names of the individuals or attempt to prosecute the crime. This is new information and certainly inconsistent with the allegation that that cheating was carried out by owners of the site.

6. Kahnawake Gaming Commission Fine- Leggett confirms that the KGC fined Tokwiro $500,000 for the AP incident in addition to the cost of the audit that was performed. I really wish Mike and Adam had asked what the KGC was doing with this money. Since when does the regulator get to issue arbitrary fines and then keep the money for themselves? Yet as far as I know the KGC hasn’t said or done anything publicly with that money for the affected players.

7. Joe Norton Not So Corrupt- This made me laugh out loud. After Leggett cites the KGC fine, Mike and Adam ask if the KGC is really so independent, given that former Kahnawake Grand Chief Joe Norton is the sole owner of Tokwiro Enterprises. Leggett, who not surprisingly seems to have a close working relationship with Norton, says that Joe didn’t found Tokwiro until he was out of public office. He then adds that this is no more corrupt than a US Senator going to work for a lobbyist after he leaves office. That’s a real high moral standard they’re holding themselves to….

8. Return Visit? After the interview, Mike and Adam decide to keep inviting Leggett back every few months in an attempt to hold him to his timeline and insure that his promsies are kept. This is a great idea, and I hope they’ll stick with it.

Bobby Mamudi, an industry analyst and managing editor of the London-based Gaming Intelligence Group, said the new cheating incident is another blow to the reputation of Kahnawake’s gambling industry. “They definitely do seem to be losing credibility and not doing too much about it,” he said.

The article also includes more empty promises from the KGC:

Murray Marshall, legal counsel to the gaming commission, said that Kahnawake’s regulation is among “the tightest in the world” and said similar frauds have occurred in casino gambling and banking. “We would obviously prefer to prevent all possibilities of this kind of thing happening, but no system is infallible,” he said.

Tightest in the world? What does that even mean? How did the same shit get past them twice? Not only did they fail to identify cheating that amateur internet sleuths could and did identify, but to my knowledge there are no documented incidents of the KGC actually doing anything except for fining Absolute Poker after the fact. Their tight regulation hasn’t managed to catch or prevent any malfeasance.

The article also raises the troubling specter of legal action against the online gaming industry by the Canadian government:

The federal government considers the 400 or so poker and sports-betting sites operating from Kahnawake to be illegal, but, fearing a confrontation, both the federal and provincial governments have been reluctant to intervene. Last March, however, an aide to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said the government was studying ways of shutting down the gambling, possibly by targeting financial transactions with illegal Internet operators.

Let’s hope that doesn’t come to pass, and that future news outlets that cover this and other internet poker stories handle them with the same thoroughness and even-handedness that the National Press does here.

The theft was uncovered through the collective effort of several 2+2’ers who were high stakes regulars at UB affected by the theft, most prominently trambopoline, dlpnyc21, josem, and also Nat Arem. 2+2 Moderator Cornell Fiji composed a thorough summary of what is believed to have happened along with the damning evidence that goes well beyond what UB admits in its press release.

In this new thread, Cornell is once again doing an admirable job exposing all of the deception in the press release. I’m not going to try to summarize it all, but basically it is at the very least a shameful lapse, and more probably deliberate negligence, that UB’s security didn’t notice any of this until 2+2’s amateur investigators compiled undeniable evidence. If security isn’t tracking win rates and investigating the play of the biggest winners in the biggest games on the site, what exactly are they doing? How is it that amateurs with nothing more than Poker Tracker databases can unravel this stuff, but a supposedly professional security team cannot?

Moreover, UB claims that it knew nothing about the potential for its software to be exploited in this way. But UB is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises, which also owns Absolute Poker, which was the subject of another scandal where a similar vulnerability was exploited from the inside. It’s absurd for them to claim that they couldn’t have anticipated this, and it’s disgraceful that they either didn’t anticipate it or actively facilitated the theft.

Nat Arem had a chance to question one of their representatives, but don’t expect too much new info from that Q&A session.

Like Absolute Poker, UB tries to reassure its customers by pointing to its “regulatory agency”, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. Aside from the gross incompetence (or worse) demonstrated above, there’s another big problem with the KGC: Joe Norton, the owner of Tokwiro Enterprises, is also the former Grand Chief of the Kahnawake Mohawk tribe of Montreal! In other words, there is nothing independent about the KGC.

During his time as Grand Chief, Norton was accused of more than his share of shady dealings and corrupt bargains. Though members of his tribe accused him of being a puppet of the Quebec government, he also had a well-publicized (in Canada) clash with Canadian police and soldiers.

In a lot of ways, this latest scandal is very discouraging and disheartening. However, both UB and AP were eventually forced to admit that something had gone wrong and to return player funds that were stolen. This demonstrates the power of the online poker community to exercise some level of independent oversight over the sites where we play. Ideally, this will discourage other sites from trying anything shady in the future. However, if the only ramification for UB, after all this time and effort, is that they have to return the funds that weren’t theirs to begin with, then this will not be much of a deterrent.

So what can we do? I’ve got some ideas, and I hope you’ll offer others.

1. Boycott AP and UB. I never played on AP, and I’ve pulled all of my money off of UB. If a scandal like this doesn’t bankrupt UB or at least crush their market share, then it will not be a deterrent to any future malfeasance by them or anyone else. I was probably one of maybe twenty people regularly playing 25/50 NL on their site, so hopefully my action will be missed, as will that of other high limit players who refuse to play there.

2. Stop endorsing them. High-profile players like Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth need to end their affiliation with UB. It is downright unethical for them to be encouraging people to play on this site. Similarly, Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy should be ashamed of himself for signing with them this week. He claims he was convinced of their desire to change, but based on what he’s said publicly about this, it doesn’t seem like he was especially well-informed about the allegations nor that he went to great lengths to question whomever he spoke with from UB’s management. Then again, he is supposedly a pretty shrewd businessman, so perhaps he knows something I don’t. But I think he ought to either say a lot more about why he has confidence in UB or stop encouraging others to play there.

3. Ask tough questions of other sites. I’m no expert on this, but personally, Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker are the only sites I’m comfortable playing on right now. Still, I think it would be best to get specific, public statements from them about the nature of their security, why their software is not vulnerable to the exploits that led to the theft on UB and AP, who regulates them and how, etc. UB and AP have been able to hedge, make misleading statements, and deny responsibility because in many cases they had not made explicit statements before these scandals about the nature of their security. As players, we should have a more explicit understanding of the level of security the sites will provide. There should be measurable benchmarks and pre-agreed ramifications for them if something illicit happens on their site. If 2+2 could create a Players’ Bill of Rights or something, thousands of us could ask sites like Poker Stars, FTP, and especially UB to agree to it as a condition for our business.

4. Create a genuinely independent regulatory authority with teeth. Similar to (3), there should at least be an independent regulator whom sites could voluntarily hire to certify the security of their software. Then we as players could refuse our business to anyone who didn’t pay for that certification. There’s probably money to be made here if it’s done right, and it would be a huge boon for online poker generally.

5. Legalize and regulate online poker in the US. Obviously I think this would be a good thing anyway, but as much as opponents of poker may try to use scandals such as this as arguments against legalization, I believe they are actually arguments in favor. Not that government involvement is a guarantor of legitimacy, but it’s got to be better than the legal netherworld in which internet poker currently exists. Once again, there’s money to be made here.

6. Spread a genuine understanding of the issue. Casual players have a right to know about the security issues at AP and UB, and its in our interest to have them playing on the more reputable sites where we are taking our business. At the same time, we don’t want to be fearmongers turning the poker world off to internet poker in general. We need simultaneously to inform people that UB and AP are unsafe but that there have not even been any plausible suspicions raised about extensive cheating at sites like FTP and Poker Stars. I honestly feel that the risk of cheating on those sites is barely higher than it is in brick and mortar casinos and much lower than at underground poker clubs. However, I’ll feel a lot more comfortable vouching for the credibility of those sites if and when some of my above suggestions are implemented.

“Speaking of winning the Sunday Guaranteed…didn’t “urbandb888″ win that back on November 4th? Why, so he did!”