Alleged Scandal Surfaces At Pitbull Poker

Although nothing has been proven that any cheating has occurred, there appears to be strong views online that Pitbull Poker has become the latest poker room embroiled in a cheating scandal where the poker room is alleged to be illegally taking money from their players. According to a poker scouting website, Pitbull Poker is part of the flash network and is hosted on servers based in Panama City. It is a very small site and a relatively new poker room.

One of a number of allegations involves “stack shaving”. This is where money in a players stack simply disappears after a hand. This would imply (if stealing is occurring) that money was being siphoned from player’s accounts between the amounts of $0.25 and $25 depending on the stakes involved for the purpose of making the poker room additional money.

A person claiming to represent Pitbull gaming called Dave Brenes, who has been actively involved in the forums discussing the alleged scandal, made a reply to the thread admitting this had occurred and vowed to correct the problem and reimburse the players affected. It is not yet known what the dollar amount has been wrongly taken from player’s accounts and at the time of writing no refund has been issued.

There has also been an allegation of super user type activity where the hero flops well and always faces check folds and any attempts to steal are called down by unknown regulars with perfect accuracy. A similar type of super user activity was used to take at least $22 million from users of the Ultimate Bet web site and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission said a program called Auditmonster1 was used to show the hole cards and normal accounts played the hands on a nearby computer aided by the knowledge this auditmonster program was giving them about their opponents hands.

Pitbull Gaming are also facing criticism over the fact that hand histories are delivered in a graphical format which players are suggesting hides evidence of a conspiracy to steal their money. It does this by making it very difficult to analyse volumes of hands to show potential improper play. Pitbull have said they will only release hand histories in their designated format which has angered the forum community. Whilst this alone does not suggest Pitbull are hiding anything improper, it certainly makes any foul play a lot harder to detect. If Pitbull are serious about showing everything is above board and correct they should assist the players to put their minds at rest during this investigation.

Online self policing has had excellent results in the past with the outing of the Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker scandal that rocked online poker. The power of search engine optimisation means that every potential scandal cannot be hidden from the glare of new users wanting to know about a poker room. Any new user caring to make even light research on Pitbull poker before registering and depositing money cannot fail but to find evidence of this scandal as because the content is new it features highly on Google. This is, of course, a good thing and should prompt the site to resolve the matter quickly if indeed they can.

General advice found on poker websites suggest that new users play at reputable large poker rooms rather than trust small unproven websites. However, the legitimacy of online poker is taking a hit with scandal after scandal. Pitbull may not be large, but it casts yet another shadow over the game already coping with negative media simply because the gambling online is technically illegal in some countries. Fortunately for poker the game is large enough that players will continue to play because it is so easy and fun, but each scandal costs online poker a number of players as some players will think twice before playing.

As tie passes by without a resolution hopes of a genuine error are becoming remote as Pitbull have a lot to lose by procrastinating. As a new site they should have rectified things immediately but the delay does not look good for them.

Fortunately we can still trust the larger sites that are yet to have a major scandal despite turning over hundreds of millions of dollars worth of hands each day. At least that is reassuring.

By Malcolm Clarke

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