EPT Dublin - Main Event

221 players pitched up to play Day 1a of the Main Event

48 players survived from Day 1a, with Andy Black amongst the leaders. Here are the chip leaders

Mike McDonald 67250
Dave Colclough 59350
Phidias Georgiou 55475
Kristian Kjøndal 53150
Jacques Zaicik 48225
Andrew Black 45675
Simon Christensson 45000
Christoffer Egemo Hansen 43050
Kevin Vreeswijk 42725

Eric Seidel, Barny Boatman and ElKy have all busted

Prizes up for grabs

1 € 532,620
2 € 297,800
3 € 178,680
4 € 127,630
5 € 105,510
6 € 83,380
7 € 66,370
8 € 47,650
9 € 30,630
10 € 30,630
11 € 23,820
12 € 23,820
13 € 20,420
14 € 20,420
15 € 15,320
16 € 15,320
17-24 € 10,210

Potripper Controversy

Things have been raging about the Potripper controvery for a while now.

To summerize, a long term internet pro CrazyMarco came second to Potripper in Absolute Poker's biggest tournament (the $1000 buy-in). He was so suspicious of his play, which included some outrageous calls, that he asked for the hand histories.

The hand histories sent included a little more than perhaps Absolute would normally send out, in fact it contains IPs of players, email addresses of players, and similar for the observers as well.

One of these observers tracked Potripper for the entire tournament. You'd have to say that was unusual.

After considerable investigations it transpired that this observer ID belonged to a consultant of Absolute, who had somehow managed use his high status position to breach elaborate security to create a superuser account which count see the hole cards. He ran this ID alongside (railing) his Potripper ID (part of his cover-up), so he could see the cards as he was playing.

If we fastforward to the present, Absolute has done initial investigations and confirmed the breach and have compensated players, and people who had there personal information leaked.

Security has been tightened, but they are also undergoing a far more detailed investigation and review to ensure that any person affected isnt out of pocket and to ensure the matter doesnt happen again.

The problem with employing systems experts is probably always this sort of temptation to them, and the online industry will have to learn a little from high cash volume activities in the real world. Activities such as the elaborate security at bricks and mortar casinos, where all employees with potential access to minipulating events to steal money are monitored by an elaborate chain of security levels, where huge numbers of people would have to be in cahoots for activities to go undetected. Similarly, high level IT professionals need to have similar monitoring by others who do not "touch the money", and in turn those doing the monitoring need to be monitored. It is too much to expect to be able to just trust employees/consultants with access to core code in a "cash" industry. Many more levels should, and inevitably will, be put in place to prevent a repeat of these events.

TheV0id stripped of WCOOP title

He appeared from nowhere to take down the biggest tournament in online poker history (the 2007 WCOOP Main Event), winning over a million dollars, however almost as quickly he has been consigned to history as the biggest cheat.

TheV0id, it is heavily speculated (and lets face it, very likely) was running several IDs in the tournament. This doesnt really give any edge hand to hand, but what it does mean is that he could play each ID very loose aggressive, knowing that if one or more busts out be is still alive in the tournament. What this breaks is PokerStars "One Person per tournament" rule, echoing what is obviously the case in live poker.

Whereas in MTTs two players can come from the same IP (eg you and your brother are playing the same tourney), those two IDs must always be different people. Pretty hard to check sometimes, but as a matter of policy checks are made on final tablists in all big tournaments.

The problem for TheVoid was that in a tournament of such size, PokerStars naturally got straight on the phone for a bit of an interview and to wrap the story, but when a person confirms their identity and then shows no idea whatsoever about the tournament, that can only lead to one thought, that being that players with the same IP are not the people listed, but in fact the same person.

TheV0id was stripped of his prize, and everyone was bumped up a spot. Whereas I do not condone what TheV0id did, he did however win the tournament based purely on ability, and on that aspect alone I feel sorry for the outcome. The one good thing to come of it is that it is a great warning to others players, and hopefully they can all learn from his lesson.