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Absolute Poker was one of the most significant poker sites in the world. It had a large community of loyal poker players. Now, it’s a synonym for one of the biggest scandals in the world of poker online game. It’s ‘famous’ for the colossal poker cheating scandal dated in 2007. Naturally, both the site and the company are closed now for misappropriation of player funds. The scandalous events went on for seven or eight weeks in which players lost millions of dollars. The definitive failure came on 15 April 2011 during a legal activity known in the online poker industry as the indictment of Black Friday.

General information

Absolute Entertainment SA company was launched in 2003 by six college friends without any gambling experience. It was based in Costa Rica and licensed by the KGC (Kahnawake Gaming Commission). Generally, you should pay more attention or completely avoid online gambling sites located in Costa Rica. It is not necessary to have a license to operate in an online casino there. Speaking about KGC there has also been a lot of issues reported by the companies that collaborated with them. They were the main internet service provider for many gaming sites based in Costa Rica because it’s poor internet backbone. The KGC was also a byword for an illegitimate group.

The rise and fall of Absolute Poker

In the beginning, AP was a small online poker room offering only one poker game.

The most significant moment for the venue in terms of growth arrived in 2006 when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was enacted. The Act prohibited online gambling in the US, therefore the biggest competitors such as Party Poker, iPoker, Boss Media, Ongame, and Cryptologic left the American market. But for Absolute Poker it was the chance to become a big player in terms of traffic. They attracted new customers from America by offering them excellent bonuses, various game features, and rakeback deals. Another important moment for the company’s growth came up in 2008 when Absolute merged its player pool with Ultimate Bet’s one. So they created a new platform named Cereus Poker Network. This is how they entered the top ten of the largest poker sites on the planet.

In 2007 players began to doubt the Absolute Poker’s legitimacy. The online poker community noticed that there were the users winning too much such as Potripper, Graycat, Steamroller, and Double drag. Those suspicious users made impossible moves that not even a highly skilled poker player would ever make, but they were still winning a lot. The community kept telling that the winnings of the mentioned players are due to some cheating activities, and demanded an investigation.

Absolute Poker cheating scandal

On September 12, 2007, the tournament was held after which the community finally got the proof that Absolute Poker was cheating. The key figure to reveal the historical fraud was the player named CrazyMarco who participated in the tournament. He took a second place, but was surprised by the moves made at the final table and thought he got cheated. The player named Potripper made an incredible play that no one would ever make. It was clear that he was cheating. He had a lot of questionable moves and of course, he won the tournament.

After the tournament, Crazy Marco decided to contact Absolute support and request for his hand history. What he received back was the most surprising thing in this story. Instead of receiving only his hand history, they emailed him an epic document including every player’s hole cards. In the document besides the cards, there were listed IP addresses and e-mail addresses of all the players and observers that participated in the tournament. This was the beginning of the end for Absolute Poker.

Bloggers found out that the Potripper’s IP address was on Costa Rica, more specifically at Tom Scott’s (co-founder of AP) home or office. The document also revealed the presence of a “User 363” on every table Potripper played. Each time Potripper moved from one table to another, the superuser would also change a table. Generally, Potripper would fold before the “User 363” began watching. Other players couldn’t see “User 363” at the table, but he was present and he was spying on their cards. It was also revealed that his IP address was from Costa Rica too.

Who was spying on players’ hole cards?

The Absolute’s software company developed a feature that enabled any user logged with it to see all the opponents’ cards at the table. At first, it seemed to be added in order to test the software, but it turned that  Absolute Pokers’ founders were using the feature for cheating. This is how the famous “User 363” has been created. Why 363? Because the feature was added to the 363rd user registered in the system. The “User 363” couldn’t play the table game, it was only the observer of tables instead. So, how did the railbird lead to the massive cheating scandal?

The players involved in cheating would always start the game with this observing account that enabled them to see each opponent’s holdings. They logged in with one user and had the “User 363” watching the game and reporting them the other’s hole cards. These players had an unreal winning rate and knew perfectly when to fold and bluff. According to the players that alerted unbelieving betting patterns in different forums, those were the plays impossible to perform without insider information.

Absolute Poker at first rejected all accusations of being involved in cheating and announced an internal audit. Soon after, since the pressure from players didn’t stop, they admitted the existence of the account used for cheating. They informed players that one of their consultant from Costa Rica had breached the software and used the master account to spy and cheat. AP started refunding the players who lost their money and paid out about $1,6 million. Unfortunately, the overall sum to pay was around $45 million, and the website had never repaid it in full. They are still refunding their aggrieved players. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission also decided to investigate allegations of cheating and in 2008 they fined Absolute Poker $500,000 for the cheating scandal but didn’t suspend its license.

The final failure: Scott at large, Brent in prison

In 2011, executives of Absolute Poker, Scott Tom and his step-brother Brent Beckley, were indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice. They also seized the AP domain, so the site is definitely unreachable since then and the company is out of business.

Brent turned himself in and he was sentenced to 14 months in prison, but released after 9 months. Tom was in Antigua when all happened and decided to stay there in order to avoid prosecution. He returned in the U.S. last year and pleaded guilty to rule Absolute Poker. He is waiting to be sentenced for his crimes.

Was Tom Scott behind Potripper as many believed? Or there was someone else who was using his computer and his account? We can only guess what really happened. But the representatives of Absolute Poker have never revealed this information.

First impression

The site doesn’t exist anymore. It’s obviously one of the blacklisted casinos. So, we are not able to provide you with any useful information or description of the site. We got nothing about the software provider, T&C of the game, how their customer service was like and if the players were satisfied with the site or no.

Games and software

Here we were lucky! After several days of research, we found the game list that was available on Absolute Poker. Those were: Texas hold’em, Seven Card Stud, Hold’em, Razz, Omaha hold’em, H.O.S.E. and H.O.R.S.E. Sportsbook, casino or other games were not available. The games were playable both online and on PC or Mac.

Absolute Poker was offering a 150% sign up bonus, reload bonuses and rakeback equal to 30% of the amount the players paid on tour fees and spent on a cash game. Besides, there were some exciting features such as Rabbit Cam, Instant Hand-replayer and Bad Beat Jackpot.

They worked hard in order to create as large a community as possible. So, they built its loyalty program named Fame. It was one of the world’s most beneficial loyalty program that enabled players to turn their points into cash. Besides, Absolute points were redeemable for tournament entries, vacation packages, tech toys, event tickets, and poker gear. The players earned these points with every hand when played for real money.

Nowadays information about AP’s software provider is unavailable. The only data we achieved is that the AP’s software company was based in South Korea, but we couldn’t find out its name.  Still, according to our findings, the software was miserable. The position of the fold and the raise buttons were so confusing that often took the players to misclick. Actually, these buttons weren’t in the same position compared to the other online poker rooms. The bet slider options were as well useless, especially in pot limit games. After Absolute merged with UltimateBet the software was refined.

User experience

Since the site went offline years ago, it’s quite impossible to reach out any information about user experience except for the bad software that we mentioned above. When we tried to do our research, all info we could find on different sites and forums was related to the cheating scandal or questions about refunding the players. If you go back in 2011 you’ll see two types of comments: what happened to Absolute Poker, why the site is unreachable and what will happen with the players’ account balances. So, we could say that there aren’t any satisfied players.

Pros and Cons

If we go back in the beginning when Absolute was growing we could even say that they had attractive bonuses, appealing layout, and beneficial loyalty program. So they created a huge customer base and attracted high stakes players but for all the wrong reasons. They were spying on players’ cards, stole them money, denied that there were insiders involved, co-founder Tom was hiding for years and so on. There are definitely much more cons than pros.

Our verdict

There was a lot of mystery about Absolute Poker cheating scandal and it’s quite obvious why it has been blacklisted. Luckily, from its failure we can learn some important lessons: do not play on sites with a suspicious license, avoid games that don’t provide you with full info, stay away from online casinos based in Costa Rica. So, if you ever meet a gambling site behaving like this, please click the x button and forget about it. You should read the reviews and research gambling forums before you start playing an online game.

Casino rating

Customer support: 0/10

Cashout time: 0/10

Software: 0/10

Jurisdictions: 0/10

Total: 0/10

Even though it would be fair to reward the customer support with a big 10 for revealing the cheat, we’ll give them a fat 0. It is still unknown whether they sent the document by mistake or by intent, but we are happy that Absolute Poker doesn’t exist anymore.