HOW TEXAS HOLD’EM POKER WEBSITES ARE DECEIVING 50 MILLION-PLUS GAMBLERS ACROSS THE GLOBE

Online poker websites have masterminded the greatest fraud in the history of the world. Forget Bernard Madoff or the collapse of Enron, it is the realm of internet poker where a multi-billion-dollar scam is thriving unchallenged every day.

So what is the scam and how does it work?

Texas Hold’em poker is the most popular community card game in the world. It is fun, entertaining, and the cheapest card game in the gambling world.

Individual investments in casino tournament play are minimal, while the winnings can be justifiably huge. The earliest version of the game was played in Texas in the early 1900s but it was in the 1970s in the casinos of Las Vegas where its popularity began to grow.

Forty years later, due largely to the advent of the internet, the world’s poker playing population has now nudged 50 million people. And it is here, with your money, where the world’s biggest fraud was born.

Everyone knows that online Texas Hold’Em poker games are not the real deal. There are no real cards and no real skill, which means what you are actually playing against is a computer program manipulated by operators with total control of your money.

What isn’t well known, if at all, is that each hand of internet poker is individually programmed and encrypted, allowing the tournament operators to identify all losing and winning hands on every table in play. That’s why you always see a 10-12 digit number on the screen representing each and every hand.

These winning and losing “hand numbers” are cleverly catalogued to allow the operator to easily transfer each player to winning or losing seats at tables across the tournament.

It is through this “fixed” method of identification that the operators can manipulate each hand and control the players who either survive or are eliminated as the tournament progresses.

So what is the purpose of the operator determining who wins or loses by manipulation? It’s pretty simple – and outrageously lucrative.

First, the operators can place “ghost players” (not real players but invented usernames) on winning hands catalogued by the 10-12 digit number.  These ghosts win tournaments and most of the major prize monies.

The second reason is so the websites can track the data history of a player’s investment over a period of time. This information allows the operators to transfer the player to a winning seat for a small “consolation win” from time to time — ensuring the player stays hooked, as well preventing excessive winnings by any one player.

Using these sophisticated computer programs, it is easy to see that by placing “ghost players” in games, it is the operators themselves winning almost all of the tens of billions of dollars in prizes on offer. It’s as easy as A-B-C — and it’s going on right now on millions of personal computers across the globe.

Even worse, because of the ownership structures and unregulated financial havens where these websites are registered, there is zero accountability, integrity or transparency required by law. It’s an unchecked and unregulated scandal that goes on and on and on.

Let’s have a look at a simple analysis of online Texas Hold’em tournaments using the average number of players logged in to the major poker websites according to their own advertised figures:

Advertised Figures
Players per hr = 300,000
Average buys-in per hour = $100

Calculated revenue
Per Player per hour = $30,000,000
Per Player per day = $720,000,000
Per Player per month = $21,600,000,000 – $21.6 billion

Calculated income based on $10 rake fee
Rake fee per hour = $3,000.000
Rake fee per day = $72,000,000
Rake fee per month = $2,160,000,000

Based on the above are we to believe that the online Texas Hold’Em operators (immaterial to the commission structure) have  actually paid out $21billion through their banking to players? The answer is clearly no. No way.

Casinobusters.com investigations have identified more than 3600 usernames from four leading Texas Hold’em websites that have won a major tournament and NEVER, ever played again! What an amazing coincidence.

Consider this. Almost all of the world’s top Texas Hold’em websites are built from sophisticated programs but NONE OF THEM offer the simple option of following a player’s history or a hand-by-hand summary of a tournament winner. Nor do they provide details listing all winners and prize earners of their tournaments. There is no transparency and no accountability.

The prize money offered by the four major online Texas Hold’em websites tops $392 million a week. And yet the best 400 poker players in the world do not win major online tournaments. Most don’t even attempt to enter them or try their luck at the so-called “riches” on offer.

Instead, professional poker players travel the world in search of far smaller casino prize pools between US$1 million to $US8 million, competing in person against thousands of other players.

(Note: Some well-known sponsored players are invited to play on poker websites for promotional purposes.)

BAD BEATS

THE ODDS OF LOSING A HAND WITH A FULL HOUSE
CASINO PLAY – 1/5600
ONLINE PLAY – 1/120

Bad beats (just plain bad luck) can happen in poker. It’s possible to get beaten on a straight, flush and even a full house — but very, very rarely. In live casino games it happens in about 1 in every 5600 hands. But on the Texas Hold’em websites it is 1 in 120!

A high pocket pair beaten in a live casino game happens 1 in about 850 hands. In the online world it is 1 in 14 hands. And most online poker players believe it was a real bad beat, when in fact all it was is a pre-ordained outcome by the operator using the identification program. Most losing players then lick their wounds and move on to the next tournament …. and on it goes.

The 10% fee or rake charges for services provided on the major poker websites would not be enough alone to pay for their massive infrastructure requirements. The only way they could survive and thrive was through unscrupulous methods of revenue. Maintaining billions of dollars in revenue just can’t come from this 10% rake.

Many land-based casinos barely break even offering these margins and services to their patrons.

CASINOBUSTERS SURVEY

Q: Have you ever won more money than you deposited?

5228 respondents
NO – 94%
YES – 0%
(No comment – 6%)

Casinobusters.com recently conducted a survey of 5228 Texas Hold’em players in 18 countries. The key question asked was: Have you ever won more money than you have deposited into these online Texas Hold’em websites? 4929 answered NO and another 299 declined to comment. The numbers speak for themselves … you just can’t win playing online poker tournaments.

So can they be stopped?

A major breakthrough came on “Black Friday” on April 15 this year when the FBI brought indictments against some of the major owner-operators of the poker websites over bank fraud, racketeering, money laundering and other gambling-related offences. Kingpins including Isai Scheinberg and Paul Tate, of PokerStars, Raymond Bitar and Nelson Burtnick, of Full Tilt Poker, and Scott Tom and Brent Beckley, of Absolute Poker, could face 30-year jail sentences.

But it must be noted – these arrests had nothing to do with the fraud Casinobusters has identified here, rather they were the result of the discovery of the illegal transfer of funds the websites were making from US punters.

Credit card giants American Express and Diners Club have always assumed their responsibilities by refusing merchant facilities to the poker websites across the globe. But strangely, not Master Card and Visa Card (outside the USA). Why?

Are they awaiting a global class action before withdrawing their merchant facilities? Why won’t Master Card and Visa Card impose a world-wide ban and stop the fraud in its tracks?

America is leading the way, closing the major poker websites, including PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, to all US-based players.

But more must be done, and fast. Casinobusters.com believes US and other international authorities must subpoena Visa International, Master Card International and all third-party gateways operating in the US for all records of deposits into these websites to establish the true extent of this global fraud.

So far, the FBI has issued restraining orders against 76 accounts in 14 different countries, including the US, Switzerland, Denmark, Luxembourg, England, Canada, Germany and Ireland.

The names associated with the accounts under the restraining orders are all connected to the online poker companies.

Countries including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom must also move to protect their citizens from the poker deviates and save the billions of dollars in gambling revenue being lost off-shore.

Casino Busters International has provided a detailed copy of its findings to The Department of Justice in New York. The CBI findings will also be presented to the Federal Government of Australia, The governments of the United Kingdom and Canada.

In the press:

Poker scam hit as Gold Coast whiz turns FBI super-grass
www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/poker-scam-hit-as-gold-coast-whiz-turns-fbi-supergrass-20110416-1ditj.html

Eleven Charged in Manhattan for Fraud in Online-Gambling Money Laundering
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-15/internet-poker-entrepreneurs-charged-with-fraud-money-laundering-by-u-s-.html

Online poker fraud revealed
http://www.theage.com.au/national/online-poker-fraud-revealed-20080930-4r8f.html

As we continues our investigations, Casinobusters.com warns all online poker players to limit their play to small micro buy-in events and free roll play – and to never, ever play cash games.

If you must play, learn the proper way