September 4, 2008
I Beat Absolute
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll have heard about the cheating scandals involving super user players over on Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. Since this is my first time commenting on any of this I’ll say one thing:
Disgraceful!
And then I’ll point you in the direction of the Hard Boiled Poker by Short Stacked Shamus who’s coverage and research of the scandal has been nothing short of excellent.
Once I heard about the problems over at Absolute I immediately logged in to see if I had any funds there, it turns out I had $20 left in my account run up from a free bonus $10 they had given me earlier in the year. Nothing too exciting but $20 is $20 and I wanted to make a point of cashing out – as I hope all of you have – to show them this kind of thing is not tolerated by the poker community. So, into the cashier I go, select payouts and…
Your Available Balance of $ 20.15 USD is insufficient to carry out a payout request. Our minimum payout amount is $ 50 USD. Thank you for your cooperation.
#$@! that’s a bit cheeky. Fair enough though, so now I have two options:
- Play on a site that has cheated it’s players and try to turn $20 into $50.
- Deposit $30 and withdraw the $50.
There ain’t no way I’m depositing any of my actual money so option #1 it was. Off to the SNG’s where I proceeded to break even after about 5 in a row.
A new strategy was required and then it dawned on me: Blackjack! Heck it was their money I was playing with anyway…
Did I mention I’d been drinking?
After the first 10 or so hands betting between $1 and $5 per hand I was up to around $40 and looking good. Then the beer and the gambling gods worked against me and about 20 hands later I was pushing my last $2 onto the table. I thought they’d got me but what happened next was the luckiest streak of -EV gambling I can ever remember having. I turned that last $2 bet into exactly $51. It was a thing of beauty I tell you, doubling and winning, splitting and winning, blackjack after blackjack after blackjack. I tell you, I felt like a member of the MIT blackjack team (except there was no skill involved).
Needless to say I quit as soon as I got to $51 and promptly withdrew my funds. No problems with the processing and a couple of days later the $51 was sitting where it belongs, in my PokerStars bankroll.
So long Absolute, I won’t be back.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:22 am
Absolutely Fab.
I’ve never used the site, but judging by www feedback in general, i don’t think i ever will be!
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:06 am
Absolute is cheater, dont play there…
November 14th, 2008 at 5:26 am
I heard a lot of bad thinks about absolute… And this is one more reason not to play at absolut.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:48 am
60 Minutes is airing a story about this tonight, should be interesting, althought I expect it won’t have much of an effect.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm
60 minutes’ story was quite good, quite ominous. All I know is that I will never use Absolute Poker again, and I’m sufficiently nervous using any other online poker service as well. They’re absolutely (no pun intended) right that the same thing could be happening on any number of online poker services and we might never know the difference. I’m sorry that you were actually affected by this scam, it sucks.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Hi,
This is Doug from Tucson, Arizona. You have an active and interesting poker blog, and I thought you would be interested in knowing about this. I have recently started an innovative online poker game and poker community at Weevos. This exciting game will be marketed and branded as WevozPoker and the membership is by invite-only. I wanted to personally share this invite with you. You can learn more here: http://www.weevos.com — it would be great to know your thoughts about it.
Wishing you a Happy New Year 2009!
Doug Thompson
Marketing Director
WeevosPoker
February 11th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Interesting story.
February 28th, 2009 at 6:46 am
That min. withdrawing amount of 50$ sucks monkeyballs. Full Tilt also does that, it makes you loose the resting dollars you have on your account^^. Nice blog dude.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:58 am
look up my website
http://poker-proffesional.blogspot.com/
April 11th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Absolute is a bull.
April 20th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
I cnat believe people are still playing on UB/Absolute after all the scandal. I’ll never play at either site again.
May 1st, 2009 at 12:07 pm
You ranked 53rd for the top 100 poker blogs. Congrats :)
http://www.anskypoker.com/2009/04/top-100-poker-blogs-of-2009/