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new summary:
Pitbull Poker Background:
-sometime around 2000 Federico Schiavio, a high level IT employee of Binions, registered the domain wsop.com
-he began developing custom poker software to launch a poker site on this domain
-March 23, 2004 Harrahs begins legal action against Mr. Schiavio over the wsop.com domain
-April 19, 2004 Dimensus Ltd is formed. This is the parent company of pitbull poker.com.
-WSOP.com under Mr. Shiavio announces an arrangement with pitbull poker.
They begin using the wsop.com website to push pitbull poker.
It appears pitbull uses the custom software written by Mr. Schiavio
originally for the wsop.com poker site he was planning.
Kevin Baronowsky:
He is the registrant of the following domains:
pherx.com a pherehormone selling site
pitbullpokr.com(no typo) which redirects to pitbullpoker.com
xardplayer.com(no typo) also redirects to pitbullpoker.com
dsscanuck is a screen name it appears he used on a forum that discusses illegally accessing satellite television. In a discussion on that forum it seems
that he was busted by a government agency for selling illegal equipment and turned informant against his customers.
There are court records available online showing that Kevin Baronowsky appeared in court for this.
dsscanuck.com is now a blank website that holds banners for pherx.com and eczemaderm.com.
eczemaderm.com is a site that sells a steroid cream product and happens to be hosted on the pherx.com servers.
What puts all this together is that wsop.com was also hosted on the pherx.com servers.
It appears that Kevin B is the owner of pitbull. This has been confirmed by several former employees.
-March 10, 2009 Dimensus Ltd was dissolved, leaving no legal owner of pitbull. When this was made public Pitbull revealed a new company based in Cyprus
that they claim is the current owner.
Gaming License:
-Pitbull Poker used to say on their website that they are licensed and registered in the UK.
-They have never held a gaming license, but have lied about this for a while. All of their affiliates still think they hold a UK gaming license.
-They host their servers in Panama, which means they are legally required to hold a Panama gaming license. They do not.
-In reality, for all practical purposes they are under Costa Rica jusrisdiction, which does not require a gaming license and provides no oversight or
legal recourse for any wrongdoing committed by Pitbull.
Encryption:
Pitbull poker claims on their website to encrpyt communications between server and client. This is a lie. Hole card data is sent unencrypted. Pitbull
Poker has claimed that it is still secure, for vague reasons. As a technically savvy poster on 2+2 said:
"What Dave is referring to when he talks about their secret protocol, is a simple scheme where each card is sent as two hex values. The rank is sent as
a simple number, and then the suit is represented by one of four numeric values, which can be mapped from only a few hands. So they consider hex values
and suit mapping to be a secret protocol that only their wizard programmers can figure out. Any kid hacker would see through it in 10 seconds, and none
of it is encrypted at all. I can view my cards by sniffing my own connection from any computer in my home network, and if I were on a network node where
their traffic passed through (such as at their ISP), I'd be able to see all players' cards."
Cheating Allegations:
-there have been a number of seperate allegations that pitbull poker is cheating its own customers through the ability to see hole cards.
A summary of the playing style:
"When playing on pitbull, mostly at 2/5 NL I believe I have faced superusers. Their play has the following characteristics:
-Play tons of hands out of position and outplay everybody.
-Donk bets with perfect accuracy. By this I mean that they will lead for 20% of pot when I have air, every time I have air. When I have a real hand they
will check/fold. If I make a play at the donk bet they will call, and donk bet again on the turn for a small amount again, usually the same as on the
flop.
If I have a draw they will do this too, but if I hit the draw they will check/fold.
-They dodge my real hands with perfect accuracy. The same players that never give me any action when I have top pair seem to have no trouble calling me
with ace high when I have nothing. I know that this is a normal play and something I do too, but the problem here is that they are never wrong."
Security Department:
Dave Brenes, Pitbull Poker's online spokesman has repeatedly mentioned the Pitbull Poker security department. He claims they have investigated this
matter and found no wrongdoing. However he has ignored repeated questions about this security department such as the following:
-Who is in it?
-What is their background?
-who else have they worked for?
In previous communications with players Dave Brenes has appeared to handle all matters that would normally be handled by a security department and it
appears that they don't actually have a security department.
Hand Histories:
Until recently, pitbull has not had the capability to view more than 1 hand history at a time. This obviously makes it impossible to conduct and sort
of investigation or to make sure that there is no cheating on the site. This seems to go along well with the theory that they don't actually have a
security department.
Since these accusations have been made public, they have reworked their system so that it delivers hand histories in a useable format.
Unfortunately the system only stores hands for 90 days.
Players have requested these following hand histories for analysis:
1. All hands played by Rapala at 10/20 LHE, in which he claims he was never once called by a worse hand in 4 handed games. These hands are no longer
in the system as they were played too long ago. The player in question asked for these hands over a period of several months. Dave Brenes originally
told him it would be no problem and he would get them to him shortly. He put him off for a while and eventually told him it simply wasn't possible.
Here is a summary of the email correspondence, as written by Rapala:
"14th dec – me: first email asking for pitbull to investigate certain players I suspected of suspicious play
16th dec: pitbull support: support replies there is no collusion
16th dec: me: I respond saying I don’t think collusion, but more like they can see my cards. Can he send me their hand histories
17th dec: dave brenes: assures me players cannot hack their servers. Cannot give me their hands but can give me mine
17th dec: me. Great pls send me my hands
18th dec: ok which dates?
18 dec: me - I reply with relevant dates
18 dec: dave: - sorry we it will take a few days
22 dec: dave – sorry the tech crew are on holiday, wont be able to get hands until 5 jan
10 jan: me – I don’t have my hands, pls send asap
12 jan: dave – sorry more tech issues, new system means it will take a few more days
9 Feb: - me: been a month, where are the hands?
12 Mar: me – I email pitbull support asking whats happening
17 mar – dave: replies that db manager was unable to make room for the request and now has heavy task load blah blah blah
29 April: me – I’m still waiting
27 May: me – I write final snotty email saying I found his silence very damning
He doesn’t respond.."
The following is an email sent by Dave Brenes to this player on March 17th:
"Hi Brent,
My deepest apologies but the DB Manager was never able to make room for your request since there was always something happening that prevented him to do
it. The request is made, however we lost the DB manager and another programmer in less than a week, thus our organizational structure and the task load
has been forced to be redistributed altering the course of requests and pending projects. I will give my absolute dedication to follow up on your
request but I need to deal with an unexpected issue that is putting to wait all my tasks related to the IT department. I hope to give you more answer
during the week. Cheers!
Regards,
Dave Brenes
Network Manager
Pitbull Gaming"
This email becomes rather humerous when you realize it was sent only 7 days after Dimensus, the owning company of Pitbull was dissolved!
2. We are also seeking the hands that were played by Pigbot at 2/5 NL and above. He is a winning high stakes player on many sites over a long period
of time and is convinced he was cheated in HU games.
These hands are more than 90 days old so are no longer in the system.
3. Hands played by fluffychester at .50/1 NL and higher. Some of these hands are still within the 90 day timeframe but the player has been IP banned
and can't access his account. It is interesting to note that a script had been written to retrieve bulk hand histories. The day this player tried to
use it, the hand history server became accesible. By the time the server came back online several days later the player was banned.
Pitbull Poker have sent this player the last 1000 hands he played. Unfortunately these hands were played after the player realized he was being cheated
and was avoiding the cheaters. This means they are useless.
Pitbull has demonstrated they have the ability to give these hand histories, and are simply choosing to withhold the relevant ones.
It is also interesting to note that prior to all these accusations, hand histories remained available for more than 90 days. Some hands stayed in the
system for 7 months. Only now that they are accused of cheating have the old hands been deleted.
Originally the hand histories were in a format that could only be accessed 1 hand at a time and it took nearly a minute to retrieve each hand. They
were in graphical format so couldn't be easily converted into a useable format.
Now that they have been made accesible in a text format they have deleted all old hands.
Software Issues:
-Players have had their cards dealt facedown many times.
-Several players claim to have been able to see their opponents hole cards during a hand.
-Blinds are often assigned incorrectly. It is not uncommon to be the big or small blind several hands in a row in a non HU game.
-Player notes written for one player become notes for a different player.
-Player notes dissapear.
-In PL games, the PL betting cap is incorrectly calculated.
Summary of lies told by pitbull poker:
1. Claimed to have a UK gaming license. They told this to their affiliates who put this info on their websites. Pitbull says they never claimed to
have a UK license.
2. Dave Brenes has told players in the past that hand histories can easily by given to them in bulk. He later said this is not possible. One of these
is a lie but we aren't sure which one.
3. Claim to encrypt data. This is a blatant lie.
4. Claim to be a member of the Interactive Gaming Council. They are not.
5. They told pokernewsdaily.com that Dave Brenes was on vacation to get him out of a scheduled interview. This was proven to be a lie thanks to a
messenger conversation he had with a former employee who took screenshots of the conversation.
Former Employees:
The following was written by an apparent former employee of pitbull:
“I worked doing contract-based design for Pitbull for about a year and a half from my home in Canada. I got involved with the company through another
(reliable one) I had worked with previously. Long story short a few months ago Kevin (owner and my main contact) just stopped talking to me out of the
blue and ended up screwing me out of thousands of dollars that owed me and kept saying he would pay.
After that happened I got in contact with another ex-employee who I worked with (living in CR) who Kevin had told me quit. Originally I was looking to
her just to see if she could provide me with a phone number I could reach Kevin at. It was then that she informed me that she had not quit, but that
Kevin had “fired” her and few programmers, screwed them out of a bunch of money and moved offices/changed numbers. Apparently, this guy owes a lot of
people money.
After talking to her further, and following the threads on this (2+2) forum, I asked her about Pitbull’s software. She said that everyone working from
CR knew that Pitbull Poker’s CS could see everyone’s hole cards and there was cheating going on. Currently I am trying to get her and the programmers to
come forward with this information. “
The person that wrote this has given me info in the past that proved that they worked for pitbull at some point.
Other people have come foward that claim to work in the gaming industry in Costa Rica. They say that it is common knowledge in Costa Rica that Pitbull
cheats their customers. They are working on gathering testimony from former employees to help prove this story. It is unproven at this point.
They are no longer responding publicly on forums, and they refuse to answer any difficult questions. It appears there is little that can be done as
they are under no effective jurisdiction.
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