Online Poker Cheating Scandal Revealed

In an impressive intelligence operation, a co-owner of the online poker room Absolute Poker was found involved in a cheating scandal that has been rocking the online poker world for about a year. The online poker cheater/operator had allegedly won $428,520 deceitfully in an online poker tournament was exposed thanks to a group of players with the help of Absolute Poker employee who either absentmindedly or intentionally exposed the email addresses of the players and spectators of that poker game.

The shocking findings on the suspected involvement of an online poker room owner in such a large scale scam would most likely to damage site's creditability. But will it shake the reliability of the entire online poker scene? And what about online backgammon? Or in other words, who can you trust?

Discovering the Online Poker Scam

It all begun when a player nicknamed Crazy Marco was defeated by a player named Potripper in the final of a major online poker tournament with $1,000 entry fees. Suspecting that the game was not exactly honest and fair, members of the online poker room, some of them pro poker players, encouraged Crazy Marco to ask for the hand histories of the game. The strange looking excel file sent to Crazy Marco in response to his request included not only the game's hand histories, but also all the players' hole hands and full information on the spectators of the game, including their IP and email addresses.

A lawyer, an accountant and an auditor, all of them are also online poker players, have teamed up to investigate the alleged case of cheating. They found that someone was constantly watching Potripper game, and that the playing pattern of the latter changed significantly when his devout follower looked elsewhere; he folded twice when he was out of view, then did not fold at all, until his opponent's hole hand contained a pair of kings. To their great surprise, the email address of the observer was on the Absolute Poker net. Further research led to Scott Tom, a co-owner of the site.

Can this Scam occur in Online Backgammon?

Backgammon, as opposed to poker, is an open information game, in which each player's position is visible to the opponent. In online poker, unlike live poker, the players can easily conceal their bluffs and hide this essential information behind the anonymity of cyberspace. Thus, there is not any inside information an online backgammon room employee can exploit for his own good and not a single significant security advantage to playing backgammon face to face.

In fact, online backgammon is much safer than live backgammon; one can't perform illegal moves in online backgammon or arrive at a play with a homemade dice. And if the loser in a real money online backgammon match denies his obligation to the pay the stake, it is not the winner's duty to collect the debt.

Or in the words of Phil Simborg, a veteran backgammon player and tutor: "I believe the on-line servers are EXACTLY the same as playing live. I firmly believe the rolls are random, fair, and honest… When I play backgammon for money, which I do enjoy at times, I love knowing that I don’t have to worry about getting paid, crooked dice, illegal moves, and other forms of cheating that can and does happen live."