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As a former pre-UGIEA high-stakes limit and no limit pro, I have to say the evidence is somewhat damning, but lets go by issues:
1.) Issue one, blatant chip-dumping in highstakes NL games. There have been 3-4 hand histories of several thousand dollar hands where on the river, player A bets everything aside from $1. Player B raises and Player A folds. This is just blatant chip-dumping and obvious fraud. There is no legitimate poker explanation, and for stakes this high, I really cannot believe this was an accidental misclick for thousands more than one time. Frankly, this kind of activity with this much money is enough of a red flag to me that I will almost certainly never play at Absolute again.
2.) The Pokertracker stats are pretty damning. The one caveat I really have here, is that the sample sizes I've seen posted on 2+2 and in other threads are only running 3-500 hands deep. I think that it is probably possible that a player could cherry pick the right hand histories to create what looks like an unreasonable set of stats, but it would be fairly unlikely. If players had this kind of sample size over something like 5,000 hands I think it would be inarguable that it is not legitimate poker. What is particularly alarming and Absolute will need to clear up is:
a.) river aggression stats I've seen are pretty much impossible. One player over 500 hands had an actual infinite river aggression factor. That means he literally raises or folds on every single river, and supports very strongly the claim that he is able to view an opponents hole cards. On the river he knows 100% whether he has the player beat or whether the player likely has so bad of a hand that they pretty much can't call a river raise.
b.) Some of the accounts I've watched have made extremely strange preflop actions that only make sense if they could see other cards. For example, a hand history where in a 150/300 6-handed short game, a player open calls with 10/10 in middle position. 10/10 is a no-brainer raise when you are opening a pot from any position in six-max. The Small blind coincidentally had pocket aces this hand which seems to me like he knows that if he flops a ten, he can smash the pocket aces and if he misses on the flop he will have no problem knowing where he is at in the hand and folding. Lots of equity here. Another example, a player open limps q/10 suited on the button when the small blind has pocket aces again. A huge part of short-handed preflop play is the folding equity you gain from raising a wider range of hands because the overall hand strength is much lower, and you are additionally forcing people behind you out making for larger pots where you are essentially in control of the hand by being in position. Limping on the button with almost anything doesn't really make sense unless you are specifically trying to trap the blinds and let them see a cheap flop when you have a big pair.
c.) the NL stats and hand histories I have show some ridiculous calls with hands such as ten high, jack high, etc to win very large pots in situations where no high stakes player could call regardless of the strength of their read. I could see calling with ace and king high in a few situations, but even when you have a particularly strong read, there is essentially no situation in which you can legitimately think your ten high is the best hand and call down a pot-sized bet.
With those three very glaring problems, I'd say I'm leaning about 85/15 towards absolute being rigged vs not rigged, and I'm pretty much the last online gambling is rigged theorist you could possibly find. I've dressed down a number of people for claiming casinos have rigged blackjack and the like on well-known and regulated software, but this looks like a legitimate problem. I think another explanation is simply that there are super-user accounts used for admin and security purposes by the company (to check for collusion, chip dumping, etc) and somehow players either hacked their way into obtaining one, or they are working with someone in absolute security who changed the security level setting to that of a security worker.
That being said, I have fairly intimate knowledge that at least Poker Stars is specifically not rigged.
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