Poker is one of the most lucrative activities in the world today. Be it a tournament as big as the World Series Of Poker or just a bunch of drunk guys trying to get lucky at a Vegas casino, or even someone at home sitting in front of his laptop playing online poker, there is always money to be made at any given time.
This fact is a blessing but also a curse because where there is this much money going around, corruption and greed is not far from it. Across online poker history and even online poker sites, there have been several high-profile scandals that have rocked the poker world over the years.
In this article, we will be looking at some of the biggest scandals in online poker history.
Absolute Poker And Ultimate Bet Super-User Scandals
A poker scandal that shocked the poker world featured two huge poker rooms Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. In September 2007, allegations surfaced from players that someone playing on Absolute Poker had access to a super-user account and could view the hole cards of other players.
Similar allegations were leveled against Ultimate Bet not long after, in January 2008. In the Absolute Poker incident, players undertook a comprehensive examination of the hands of the now-famous “POTRIPPER” alias player.
During an examination of hand histories, it became evident that “POTRIPPER” could somehow see “through” the cards, since his decisions in several areas did not appear regular or natural. Although their opponents had solid but second-best hands, he always knew when to bluff, when to throw away a hand, and when to bet large.
Absolute Poker eventually confirmed the existence of super-user accounts and agreed to compensate players $1.6 million. That was a substantial sum, to be sure, but it paled in comparison to what emerged a short time later.
Players raised similar red flags for a player known as “NioNio” at Ultimate Bet at the start of 2008. The information was sufficient to warrant an inquiry by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, and their findings were alarming.
The Commission determined that there was certainly cheating going on, and that it has been going on for quite some time – since January 2005.
It was also found that Russ Hamilton was the mastermind behind the entire super-user operation at Ultimate Bet, and the harm caused by these actions was believed to be more than $20 million.
Subsequently, a phone call tape surfaced in which Hamilton acknowledged being the mastermind of the entire plot. This effectively ended his career in the poker world, and he never attempted to refund any of the money stolen from the players. The process of repaying Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker players did not begin until 2017.
The Ultimate Bet and Absolute poker scandals hit the poker community really hard.
Black Friday Scandal (arguably the most significant in the poker world)
April 15th, 2011 is known as “Black Friday” because it was the worst day in poker history. That was known as the “death day” of online poker in America. The Pandemic has seen a little revival of Online Poker though.
What actually distinguishes this controversy from the others on this list is that the poker community hasn’t entirely healed almost 12 years later, and may never totally recover from what happened on that tragic day.
Many poker players lost money on Black Friday. Several pros relied on the money they made playing online back then, leaving them with a lot of uncertainty. When the DOJ took down the largest poker sites on Black Friday, it was like getting laid off from a job for many poker players.
Previous to that day, poker platforms like Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars operated in the United States as unregulated sites. Then it all came crashing down on Black Friday, when the DOJ indicted the top three poker sites, leaving thousands of American poker players worried that their remaining account balances would never be seen.
PokerStars repaid outstanding player amounts within a few months, and subsequently paid off those funds after acquiring Full Tilt Poker.
When legal and regulated poker sites launched in three jurisdictions — Delaware, New Jersey, and Nevada — in 2013, it was the sign of progress made as regards to online poker in the United States since Black Friday. Michigan and Pennsylvania followed suit in consequent years. It’s been a long road to legalizing poker in the United States.
Nearly a decade after Black Friday, just 10% of the country has regulated poker sites in operation, but that percentage is expected to rise in the coming years.
Postlegate poker scandal
Mike Postle and Stones Gambling Hall are involved in yet another cheating scandal that has rocked the poker industry. Former Stones Live broadcaster Veronica Brill brought some suspicious behavior by Postle during live streams to the notice of Stones Gambling Hall officials.
The poker community gathered together and viewed hundreds of hours of tape after a series of tweets shed light on the problem. Postle was apparently unbeatable in places that left professionals dumbfounded.
The general agreement was that Postle was receiving knowledge about his opponents’ hole cards. The catch: Stones Live is broadcast on a delayed basis, thus it has to be an employee or staff member conveying the information.
The First Multiple accounts scandal
Multi-accounting is now common knowledge in the online poker world, although it wasn’t so in the mid-2000s. The usage of multiple accounts by the same person constitutes this type of cheating.
Some online poker players not only establish numerous identities, but also enter them into the same tournament to obtain an advantage over the competition by using various email addresses and internet connections.
The first well-known gamers to be outed for multi-accounting were Josh “JJProdigy” Fields and Justin Bonomo, formerly known online as ZeeJustin. To obtain an advantage in tournaments, the two used six distinct accounts.
Poker Cheating “Prodigy” Jose Macedo
Dubbed the Portuguese poker prodigy, José ‘’Girah’’ Macedo admitted to staging a hole-card-sharing scam. He admitted to convincing players to play against a certain player on the iPoker network during his “coaching sessions” with these players.
He convinced players to allow him to “sweat’’ their play and watch them online over screen sharing, while also playing in the same game under the user name “sauron1989.”
The account “sauron1989” was, despite Macedo’s claims of being an easy-to-beat whale (or weak player,) playing too well and players that he coached became suspicious. They discovered that the respective Skype accounts of Macedo and ‘’sauron1989’’ would often log on and off at the same time, which confirmed their suspicion that Macedo was using Skype as a superuser account and scamming them.
Macedo apologized and stated that he will repay the players with interest. There was more to the controversy, however, because two other users of the prominent poker community where Macedo was a member, Dan “Jungleman” Cates and Haseeb “DogIsHead” Qureshi, were also involved because they bankrolled Macedo.
Macedo lost his Lock Poker sponsorship as a result of the cheating incident, and one year after being dubbed a poker prodigy, he vanished from the poker world.
