- CBS News' 60 Minutes (actually 42 minus commercials) did an extensive piece on the Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker insider cheating scandal last night. More video, transcript and a bunch of other related goodies are here.
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Hear is the 60 Minutes piece about the online poker scandal: Watch CBS Videos Online It seems to me that 60 minutes did a great job of putting this piece together. It definitely takes me back to. This answer is wrong, when the website is inactive, it doesn't count as consuming CPU, so you can run the website under a free plan for 24 hours as long as the cumulative CPU doesn't exceed 60 minutes per day. See my forthcoming answer. – Anonymous Mar 19 at 20:32.
Nat Arem, who was instrumental in exposing and investigating the Absolute Poker cheating scandal, reports that he was contacted by a 60 Minutes producer and a Washington Post reporter interested in doing a story on the incident:
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by 60 Minutes in conjunction with a reporter from the Washington Post regarding a story about the Absolute Poker scandal from last fall. I was told that they wanted Adanthar and myself for on-camera interviews with Steve Kroft. I later found out they were also interested in interviewing Michael Josem and Marco Johnson.
Nat goes on to speculate that the story will likely paint online poker in a negative light:
In terms of agenda, I’ve been told that the goal is to “tell the story from soup to nuts.” I don’t really know if that means a negative agenda for online poker, but I get the feeling that it might. That means that this story is unlikely to be a good thing for online poker on the whole. I wish that programs like 60 Minutes would always tell the whole story (ie, get PokerStars involved, explain why some sites are secure and clean, etc), but I can’t really be sure that will happen. If I do end up on-camera, I will be sure to explain that this scandal was online poker’s “Enron” — ie, the biggest and worst scandal in the history of the industry. It is not a commonplace occurrence and people should not take it as such.
Nolan Dalla expresses similar concerns:
Trouble is, the casual uninformed viewer of such a segment is not going to differentiate between creeps like him and the millions of honest and decent online poker players worldwide who enjoy playing poker in their own homes.Indeed, I fear the target is not going to be the creep, or Absolute Poker (which deserves scrutiny) – but rather the entire online poker industry.
If this is indeed the spin 60 Minutes uses, such a story could not come at a worse time. While there is admittedly no chance the federal government will revoke the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act of 2006, nor pass any of the pro-online legislation offered by our good friends in Congress within the current legislative session, public perceptions will be shaped for a long time by what is shown and seen by 20 million viewers on 60 Minutes.
I fear the portrait will be ugly – a slimy, unregulated, corrupt band of outlaws operating way outside the boundaries of the law or justice. Never mind that many online sites are publicly traded companies with top-flight managers and personnel, and are strictly regulated within their host countries. Perception and reality are two completely different things.
I think it’s important to separate out two different issues here. There’s certainly a concern that 60 Minutes would paint with a broad brush and portray all internet poker sites, and by extension players, in a negative light. It goes without saying that such a story would be bad.
However, there is a separate issue of whether any coverage of the issue at all, no matter how balanced or nuanced, would be bad. Many members of the online poker community have responded to this scandal with such an attitude, generally believing that any exposure whatsoever of cheating will be misinterpreted by the masses to confirm what they all supposedly believe anyway: that online poker is rigged.
I don’t think this concern is unfounded, but if we want online poker to gain recognition as a legitimate, legal activity, then I think we have to take our medicine. The perception of a shadowy world where scandal is covered up and cheating is handled internally by the community is exactly what poker needs to shake. We need to have the courage to air our dirty laundry and allow problems to be solved as they should be in an open society: through media exposure, government regulation, and the reactions of an educated marketplace.
Internet poker is too large and profitable an industry to exist forever in an unregulated legal netherworld. Either it will be prohibited altogether or it will be taxed and regulated like any other legitimate industry. Those of us who would prefer the latter scenario should embrace the publicity and make the argument that this proves the need for regulation.
60 Minutes Poker Story
This kind of publicity is also the best deterrent against future shadiness by other sites. Sadly, the revelation of cheating on 2+2 and other poker forums and blogs has had shockingly little impact on AP’s traffic. Plenty of people either don’t know or don’t care and continue to play there. Surely a site’s owners and operators would be much concerned if there were a very really threat of major media outlets like 60 Minutes picking up on any scandal associated with them.
Certainly a one-sided, largely negative story would be undesirable. But 60 Minutes is one of the more responsible TV news journals, and they tend to do relatively in-depth and multi-faceted stories. I don’t think there’s any reason to leap to the conclusion that they will air an unfair piece.
Assuming 60 Minutes actually goes ahead with the story, which is far from certain, we should take advantage of the opportunity to put our best foot forward and make our case. There is no shortage of well-respected, well-spoken, and likable representatives of the poker world. We need to encourage 60 Minutes to speak with them and get their stories to put the AP scandal in its proper perspective.
Preparations for a 60 Minutes expose on cheating scandals at two online poker sites–Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet–continue full steam ahead, but according to one previously contacted source, directly involved in the production prior plans to air the segment November 9th have turned very uncertain.
A second source close to the production, who had also expressed confidence in the November 9th date, echoes the same sentiments, saying, “There are new developments to pursue.” Calls to 60 Minutes were not returned.
Meanwhile, Mark Seif, a longtime sponsored Absolute player has reportedly resigned and engaged counsel to obtain, “a fair divorce from the Company.” Sources close to the situation say Seif and Absolute differed on the best strategy to deal with the 60 Minutes program. Seif stated publicly last spring that he favored full cooperation with 60 Minutes investigators and would welcome an opportunity to participate in the program.
Since then, 60 Minutes crews have journeyed to Canada for visits with executives of Absolute and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission,” says one former Absolute associate. He describes the Company executives as having been “wary of getting involved with 60 Minutes.”
60 Minutes Poker
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