What a Week for Online Poker
If you haven’t already, you should read this thread from 2+2
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=208114
It’s a summary thread for those of you that don’t know about the cheating that has been going on at Ultimate Bet. Looks like someone stole over a million from the users on that site.
There’s also a thread about pokerroom being used for money laundering or credit card theft/fraud in the region of a couple hundred thousand bucks
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=204850
That one is kind of long so the cliff notes version is some guy had ridiculous stats on a pokerroom skin in SNGs, found out he was chip dumping/colluding and opening up several accounts to do so. Not sure what the motive is yet, but good guesses are credit card fraud (opening up fake accounts on stolen cards) or some sort of money laundering scheme.
This is real trouble for the online poker industry, folks. The DoJ tells us that they shut down internet poker because of money laundering, cheating, underage users, etc. and poker players just scoff and tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about. Well, maybe they do, and we were the ones in the dark. If online poker continues to run amok like this, I don’t know how long the industry will last and while I don’t play online very much at all, I am sure that this is going to hurt for poker players everywhere – killing interest in the game, drying up the player pool, reinforcing the negative connotations around the game, etc.
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Comments
I haven’t had a chance to read the full article on 2+2 yet. I just kind of skimmed it and read the cliff notes.
it’s scary to think/know this really does exist.. it’s not looking good for online poker. regulation probably needs to happen to save it. People aren’t going to want to put their money on any site (new players anyway).
Also, how will this effect pros, sponsorships, and general money flow in the poker industry?
One more thing…. these spam posts have got to go.. they’re really annoying.
Why do you think Pokerstars is so safe? The very fact that you can not datamine at PS makes finding out something like that almost impossible. Just currious? Alright off to the Bellagio.
Nice post, I’ve been following these and yes it’s pretty dire. This makes me even more of a Pokertstars devotee since it’s rather hard to imagine it happening there. I just joined Ongame but ugh, after reading that I’m not exactly fired up to play.