What started as a collection of threads making arguments against the legitimacy of play at the small online poker room Pitbull Poker has grown into a firestorm of allegations over illegal activities. On most of the major online poker forums, there are threads spanning dozens of pages accusing Pitbull Poker of a plethora of security issues. Some of the posts are wild speculation, but there also appear to be serious accusations made about the site’s security, superuser accounts, and more.
Pitbull Poker is part of the Flash Poker Network, which is based in Costa Rica with servers hosted in Panama City, according to PokerScout.com. The site is ranked 21st in the world in terms of real money ring game traffic and usually has a 24-hour peak of around 65 players at cash tables. There is no software to download, as the poker room has been built using Adobe Flash web technology.
One of the major allegations goes back to December of 2008 for “stack shaving,” where money in a player’s stack would simply disappear between hands. According to several posts, players reported that the range of money that would vanish was between $0.02 and $25. A posted reply from Network Manager Dave Brenes of Pitbull Gaming appears to admit that this error took place and that players would be reimbursed.
The harshest of the posted allegations came from players claiming they have faced superusers. A superuser is an account that has the ability to see everyone’s cards at the table. The allegations outline instances of opponents making call-downs with perfect accuracy and check-folding whenever the hero in the hand flops well. Dozens of examples have been posted.
Brenes has agreed to an interview with Poker News Daily that will run later this week. He responded in detail on the TwoPlusTwo forums to the main controversial threads. The players’ dissatisfaction comes from their desire to receive hand histories in a useable text format. This would allow the players to convert them into a format that can be imported into Hold’em Manager or PokerTracker 3 so the community at large can analyze the hands. This was the same method used to expose the superuser account controversies at Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker a few years ago.
Unfortunately for the poker community, Pitbull Poker stated that it would not release any hand histories beyond the format currently provided. The hand history system is based on a tab from within the Flash-based poker room software. Once a user clicks on a link to a hand, it loads in a graphical format. Many users have stated that this reporting system for looking over hand histories is slow and even unstable, as many searches time out and are reset.
More allegations came in the form of holes in the software that apparently expose cards during a hand. Although the poster in the forums making the majority of allegations edited his e-mail, he stated that one of his associates was able to see someone else’s cards during a hand.
Many on TwoPlusTwo called for the group that felt cheated to organize and make more rational arguments rather than provide vague examples of their misfortunes. The debate rages on whether those making the allegations have any tangible proof or if the site should produce hand histories in a readable format for the community to analyze.
In the last few days, the staff at Pitbull Poker has continued to field complaints and tried to work towards a mutually beneficial conclusion. During the course of the investigation conducted by the general public in recent days, allegations that hole card data was unencrypted were made.
Brenes has stated that readable hand histories are coming. These hand histories are expected to shed light on potential irregularities and finally settle the rumors. Poker News Daily is following this story closely and will be bringing an exclusive interview with Brenes later this week to discuss the allegations.