Sixty Minutes Expose, Not So Harsh: 3

In the highly publicized ‘Sixty Minutes’ online casino expose that aired in late November, the host Steve Kroft uncovered a whole lot about the scandals that have plagued the industry over the past several years. As we previously discussed there are several people that have been the victims of ‘fleecing’, which is essentially due to the cheating scandals from the Absolute Poker and UltimateBet online casinos. Kroft interviewed several victims of the fleecing and one in particular was a lawyer that turned professional poker player, Serge Ravitch. Ravitch used a popular computer program called “Poker Tracker” so he could keep track of the hands that he played at his favorite online casinos. He told Kroft that upon reviewing his old hands, he definitely noticed that certain things were not adding up as they should.

He reviewed almost all of the games that he played at the online casino and he said that it seemed like one player in particular was playing as if he knew what everyone’s cards were. Soon there after the online casino blogs and chat rooms were filled with discussions about the player that was suspect of some type of cheating. The two online casinos that were non responsive to the complaints by many of its users were the two that later made news for their involvement in the cheating scandal. The online casino and internet gambling community took immediate action when the websites disregarded legitimate complaints from dozens of loyal players. Ravitch told Kroft in the interview, "What I saw did not make any sense. This account was simply winning too much money for the type of game that he was playing. And he was doing it by never having the worst hand. When the other person was bluffing, he would always go all in. When the other person had some kind of made hand, he would always fold."