I suppose an “About Me” page is where you would expect to read a third person professional write up on myself. Hmmm…. well that’s not really my style, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you “about me” in my own words. 
AbsolutePoker Super User Account - Implications for Poker Affiliates
October 15th, 2007 by Jeremy Enke
Well, here I sit in my office on a anything but a typical Monday afternoon. I suppose I could write about Sunday NFL Football, or even the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker. However looking at what is transpiring in the Absolute Poker super user account drama, I suppose I’ll write about this.
I’ll start by acknowledging when this whole thing started back in September, I was a bit skeptical. Believe me, being in this industry since the planet poker days….. I have heard my fair share of “online poker is rigged” stories. Over the weekend however, a new chapter of this ongoing scandal unfolded. The two main threads on this whole thing are here. The P5’s one is probably an easier read and more significant.
Consolidated Pocket Fives Threads
Basically AP support accidentally sent an excel file to one of the P5′rs upon request with the HH’s from the $1k tournament in question. Not only were the requested tournament hand histories in this file , so were all the hole cards of every player in the tournament. Allegedly the report also included email addresses, I.P. addresses, and user account I.D. numbers of all the players in the tourney.
Apparently someone with a user account that was very low (in the 300’s) meaning they were among one of the first 300 accounts to ever sign up at AP, was railing the alleged cheaters table throughout the entire event. The theory is that this user on the rail could have been the super user account, and the one feeding potripper. There is much more to this as well so feel free to read the threads directly.
If poker players were going to prove even further the existence of superuser accounts or that specific players could see others hole cards, this would be a pretty good piece of evidence. The fact that AP even sent an excel file like this reminds me of Sopranos scenes where people would have to go out and dig their own grave. So pop yourself some popcorn, pour a beer, or do whatever you have to do to get through the hours of reading all the threads and research on this. Once you do however, it is really hard to not “ask questions”. Something certainly is not adding up here.
Instead of getting into a whole new debate on the actual existence an Absolute Poker super user account, I’d rather discuss the implications for poker affiliates. You can read through the two posts above and form your own opinion just like I did on the matter.
Many forum members on some of the largest poker forums out there are calling for the forum owners to discontinue advertising both AP and UB. In fact I have even been asked to pull them from the PAW Network. From the players standpoint it is very easy. Put yourself in a super affiliates shoes however. Imagine you were easily making six figures every few months from AP and UB. Likewise now imagine you rank very high in the SERPS for some AP/UB terms and you consistently send players to these sites every day. Even worse, what if a large % of your income is from players on MGR?
#1 Do you really want to self implode your monthly MGR at Absolute or UB, and then see these same players go over to FullTilt or Stars where they’re not on your trackers?
#2 Even if you remove AP/UB from your site, does it make sense to openly advise people NOT to play there considering #1, as well as the fact that AP/UB controls the sending of your monthly affiliate revenue for those sites. If PocketFives for example decided to take down AP, and then make a huge story out of this, how excited is Chipleader or AP upper management going to be to send them their big affiliate check each month. And believe me, with the portfolio of sites the PSO network has, the money lost by removing AP/UB would easily be in the 7 figures each year. And this is regardless if AP continues paying affiliate revenue in good faith. This just on new sign-ups.
Clearly you can see now how this is problematic for affiliates. Yea Yea, I know some of the players or even smaller affiliates will argue that there should be no question and due to the evidence involved, AP should be removed. And how could P5’s, Pnews, or any site want their name attached to AP/UB throughout this scandal? I can see this side of the argument, however it’s about a lot more than just simply removing AP from their sites. Likewise many players want us big affiliates to help get the word out about this whole incident. For example, this should be homepage stories on PokerNews, CardPlayer, PocketFives, and every other big poker portal.
Ummmm, here lies the next problem. If we ever want to see online poker legitimized, regulated, or legalized, then this is not smart. The fucking idiots running the U.S. that are so against online gambling would love to see this happen though. This becoming a huge story does absolutely nothing good for the short term or long term growth of online poker.
Either way, whatever happens in this incident is such -EV for poker players, affiliates, and AP/UB. The sad thing is that I really like the team over at Chipleader. Despite their issues, they all seem to be very decent and sincere people. If there indeed was a massive breach in their security, I don’t think we can hold anyone at chipleader personally responsible. They work in the affiliate department and are all just caught up in a really shitty situation.
I haven’t decided what I am going to do in regards to AP on the PAW Network. As always, please share your comments and suggestions.
October 15th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
This is very concerning…because if it is true…it is probably not a ONE IN A MILLION - it must be happening elsewhere.
As for Chipleader, I like the PEOPLE there too…just not sure that things are working very smoothly!
Big Fish Poker Club
October 15th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Jeremy, I have to disagree with you about this not being good for online poker in the long term. This is good. This will make the card rooms aware that there are portals and people online willing to go to extremes to prove them wrong if they are not operating a legit business.
What would be bad, is if all of the poker portals continue to promote AP after this. This would lead other poker sites to realize that they can do whatever they want to affiliates, cause we rely on their revenue so were not going to drop them.
I have a feeling a lot of websites will be dropping AP in the coming weeks.
October 15th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Hey Justin,
Good point you bring up. That indeed would be very good for online poker. It will be interesting to see if sites drop AP in the coming weeks. Here’s one problem though, and think the 80/20 rule.
20% of the affiliates are probably making 80% of the overall AP affiliate revenue. So essentially these are the guys being asked to walk away from the huge CPA revenue they make from new sign-ups each month.
Epsecially if many of these sign-ups are coming from AP SERPS. The odds of recapturing that revenue with another room is slim.
I’m not saying portals won’t pull AP. But the financial implications are quite high for that elite group of top affiliates.
If I were a player though, of course I’d be pulling for sites to rip down all the AP advertising.
October 15th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
At first i passed all this off as an angry affiliate/player trying to extract revenge but after reading the countless posts from respected members at 2+2 and P5 I have started to change my mind. It sucks for me since I planned on promoting AP very hard with my new site.
I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet, I guess I’m just waiting for AP to make a statement that isn’t total BS. The thing that worries me the most is their silence….are major online poker sites like AP ran by people obviously stupid enough to remain silent these last couple days?…A very scary prospect IMO
October 15th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
….I can’t quite figure out how to go back and fix all my spelling errors….
October 16th, 2007 at 12:17 am
I see that Bonuswhores has already removed Ap and UB but PSO, Tightpoker and Pocketfives has not. I was under the impression all these sites were owned by PSO?
Holy crap I just had dejavu.
My guess would be the larger sites won’t remove AP or UB. If anything they’ll move them down their lists but I just can’t see people dropping 6-7 figure accounts.
When it boils down to it AP fucked up by trying to cover it up. If they would have come clean things probably wouldnt have been so bad.
October 16th, 2007 at 6:14 am
Just cant figure out why AP doesnt take a more honest and open approach to this. Im sure not the hole company is “rigged” so why not really dig into it. As the situation is now they have already lost a lot of business i guess.
October 16th, 2007 at 6:19 am
On a sidenote: still playing with the click here thingy. Would for sure signup for PAW if wasnt allready a member.
October 16th, 2007 at 6:43 am
If you are interested in learning more about this “incident” but don’t want to comb through pages and pages of P5 & 2plus2 threads - visit http://www.justingoff.com
October 16th, 2007 at 6:46 am
For some reason only the first half of my above post showed up! For the record I am not Justin and he doesn’t know I posted a link to his blog… but his blog contains the best summary of everything that has happened involving this issue that I’ve seen this far, and it’s definetly worth a read!
October 16th, 2007 at 8:49 am
What is everyone’s opinion on promoting UB as a result of this (due to the connection and all)?
October 16th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Absolute Poker Referral Code, this can’t be good for business.
October 16th, 2007 at 8:58 am
I noticed some of the bigger sites have indeed taken down AP. Although I don’t think AP would stupid enough to close down affiliate accounts because of this, let’s hypothetically say Jeremy removes them from the PAW network.
What if AP did close down the PAW Network affiliate account? What would happen to my revenue share. To be honest I really don’t want to lose that just to prove a point.
I know you have to make a decision Jeremy, but I really hope if you do remove them, us on the PAW network don’t get screwed.
G
October 16th, 2007 at 9:56 am
I will not promote AP or UB anymore. Feels weird to promote a room that is associated with cheating and super accounts. I guess all rooms out there are able to create super accounts but I hope they are not using them like AP did. And the overall security with the XLS files are just terrible. I would never play at AB knowing that my personal details might be accidentally sent out to the wrong persons.
Yuck…
October 16th, 2007 at 10:53 am
From what it looks like absolutepoker needs to admit there are people who can see hole cards and fix the problem , stop trying to hide and hope it goes away , it wont .
As for chipleader , ever since they took over from AP and UP , it has been nothing but problems , Missing Stats , closed accounts , opening of second player accounts for affiliates for no reason . Just a mess , Im giving them another month to fix everything up , and if it is not done there history
October 16th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Anyone who still thinks that nothing shady happened, clearly hasn’t read all the facts.
I am glad this blog is also looking at the incident from the poker affiliates perspective. AP has really put affiliates of their site in a bad spot.
We are being asked to make a decision between our paychecks and our credibility.
Great blog Jeremy, keep up the great posts.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Wow wow wow. This whole thing is going into a downward spiral for AP. I just read this on 2+2 and figured I should share with the other affiliates.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12523924&an=0&page=0#Post12523924
October 16th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
“If PocketFives for example decided to take down AP, and then make a huge story out of this, how excited is Chipleader or AP upper management going to be to send them their big affiliate check each month.”
I guess this is going to be put to the test.
Fortunately I never really promoted AP, so for me to remove them is no big deal, but even if they were one of my better rooms, its prob better to not so actively promote them until this thing gets resolved. I think it is their responsibility to conduct a criminal investigation because these are some pretty big allegations.
October 16th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
I have been lurking here for a while and never posted a comment just read the threads. I can’t even begin to imagine what position this puts the big affiliates in.
A few months ago I said ya I would pull a room without a doubt but when you start talking about someone’s mortgage, or income to support thier families it’s easier said than done. ( no I do not make money from AP)
To have to decide between your lively hood or your credibility. I think criminal charges should be laid as they would in any other industry for theft.
All things aside this can’t possibly be good for business and I would have to disagree with you Justin. Looking past the affiliates and the players, how is this going to look to the media in the US?
How can someone defend and try to fight for online poker and a players right to choose a safe and secure room when there is this BS flying around. it doesnt look good from an outsiders perspective… add some hype from the media and more skeptics and where does it get you?
October 18th, 2007 at 12:09 am
The leaked tournament information referred to by Jeremy has been converted into graphically-viewable hands, as seen here on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FczbS7FiWSM
October 24th, 2007 at 8:53 am
To answer my previous question it looks like UB is gonna have to go now also.
February 17th, 2008 at 1:02 am
What about the changes the AP/UB have been making to their affiliate stats interface? They are making it very confusing. And the requirements to have to change our affiliate codes on all of our sites? What a nightmare… Their service has always sucked big time. They never answer questions sufficiently, usually replying with a non-answer and acting like they have resolved your question… They suck. I worry that my commissions are about to develop a leak and start to disappear. They are a horrible affiliate to join. If I were a person thinking of starting an online poker campaign, I’d stay the fuck away from this shitty company.
Does anyone else share my view about the horrendous affiliate interface change?