MORE DETAIL EMERGES ON ABSOLUTE POKER CRISIS

16 November 2007

Poker News interview cautious but interesting


Followers of the unfolding cheating crisis at Absolute Poker.com will have some absorbing reading over the next few days as Poker News publishes a clearly extensive interview with Nat Arem, one of the main player investigators who uncovered the debacle at the online poker site.

Poker News commendably and as an independent observer, financed a trip by Arem to Costa Rica to look into the "Holecard-gate" scandal that has rocked the online poker site following indications that up to $800 000 or more was involved in cheating tournament play perpetrated by a company insider over a period of at least 40 days (see previous InfoPowa reports). Straining its credibility, the company at first denied that anything was amiss when players uncovered the scam.

In the first interview, Poker News introduces Nat Arem as the driving force behind thepokerdb.com website. "Arem, though young in years (25), nonetheless brought extensive poker and technical expertise to the informal investigation as he and many others searched for answers, and Arem himself was the first to discover key information which strengthened many players' suspicions," says the preamble.

Arem reveals that he initially declined an offer by Absolute to travel to AP's offices and ask more questions concerning the affair. While Arem was unable to accept the initial offer for various reasons, there was still incentive for him to make the trip, to see if he could gain any insight into the allegations. To avoid any possible impropriety, or the appearance thereof, PokerNews subsequently agreed to send Arem to Costa Rica, and have him report back on what he found.

Arem starts the interview by explaining how he became involved at a stage when Absolute Poker was denying that something was wrong. He was sent the now notorious full Excel file that a player had perhaps mistakenly received from Absolute Poker (see previous InfoPowa reports) and started to study it closely with other expert players, eventually uncovering an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence that pointed to Absolute Poker insider involvement.

He refers to a "new head" of Absolute Poker without disclosing this individual's identity or who the "old" head had been.

During his visit late October to Costa Rica, Arem visited the AP offices on two days and met with the Gaming Associates auditors called in to investigate the issue on the evening of Sunday the 4th November. He was told that he could see what he wanted, except for data reserved for the audit. The restricted data included information on all of the known cheating accounts.

Arem goes on to discuss the question on every online poker player's lips: "How was the cheating done?"

"I was not able to view the cheating method first-hand," he says. "AP told me that the vulnerability had been fixed and therefore was not available for viewing.

"However, the method used to gain hole-card access was described to me as a backend tool called "Servman" that wrote the hand histories before hands were completed. As originally developed, the "game log" supposedly did not display admin-level hand histories until the hand was over. I was told that a software change in mid-June 2007 changed this feature so all hands were written to the database as the hands progressed. The timeline makes sense in a number of ways because there is significant independent evidence that AP was testing their 8.0 client in the mid-June timeframe. Therefore, it's likely that the company made a number of changes to the code on their live-game server to allow for testing of the beta client. I do not know which programmer(s) made the changes and I'm not sure whether it was a mistake or ordered by a higher-up. I was not able to examine source code of the client."

Arem was also told which of the cheating accounts nicknames applied to account #363 - a reference that appeared in the suspect Excel file, but says: "I am not at liberty to state which of the four is #363. The NDA [Non-Disclosure Agreement] that I signed at the AP offices prevents me from stating the aforementioned information."

Regarding the period in which cheating took place, which Absolute Poker has subsequently claimed was over a 40 day period starting August 14, Arem cannot be certain, but says that he has not seen any suspect hand histories outside of the August and September 2007 timeline.

"Considering the claims that the aforementioned software change happened in mid-June, it is not yet clear if there was cheating in June and July as well," he points out. "What seems most likely is the software change was noticed and exploited a month or so after being put in place. This lends some credence to the idea that the software change was a mistake and unknown by the AP executives in Costa Rica and Panama. Therefore, the most current theory is that the cheating was limited to August and September of 2007."

The interview becomes more interesting when Poker News asks Arem about Absolute's aknowledgement that something was wrong around October 18.

Arem reveals that on that day Absolute Poker informed people at poker portal PocketFives.com that they were going to admit an internal breach regarding the hole card vulnerability alluded to earlier.

"As it was described to me later, AJ Green went to people at Absolute Poker and admitted what he had done. I don't know if that is true," Arem warns. "But once Absolute agreed to admit the internal breach, the investigation shifted from one of "digging for dirt" to trying to understand exactly how everything happened. I, along with many others, spent hours and hours searching for information on how the breach occurred, how long it occurred for, who was involved, etc. I spoke to many current and former Absolute employees about the company's backend systems and what sort of mechanisms would allow hole cards to be viewed.

"My personal feeling is that a number of people knew. I think the lower-level employees were largely kept out of the loop and did not know what was going on. But as you get higher up in the company, I am told that a number of employees knew about the breach and felt that it was in everyone's best interest to cover up the whole thing as best as possible."

Arem adds: "However, it also seems as if those people who knew before the 18th only learned what was going on a short amount of time before the 18th. I don't think there were a large number of people who knew what was going on when the cheating itself was going down. I consider my sources to be very reliable; much of the information that they have provided has checked out elsewhere and I have no reason to believe that they would be misleading me on this matter."

The Gaming Associates audit of Absolute Poker is also discussed in the interview, and appears to have been planned as a three week exercise with the investigating team visiting South Korea, Quebec in Canada and Costa Rica and a conclusion date of November 9. The final audit report will apparently be released to selected media and poker information portals, as has been the case with previous statements by the company.

After meeting with three of the four man Gaming Associates team, Arem appears satisfied with their independence, reputation, competency and reputation

"....my personal opinion is that they are truly looking for holes in the AP story. They were genuinely interested in my take on things and I found them to be among the most credible people that I've talked to about this whole subject. I shared a fair amount of information with them and I hope they can put it to good use in their audit," he concludes.

Part 2 of the Poker News interview promises to be more revealing, casting light on the various personalities alleged to be involved, and how the scandal was handled.

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa