Absolute Security

The mechanics of a poker game were defined over a century ago. In our home game the same mentality prevails. We manually shuffle and deal the cards. Then, hopefully, we know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. In the Absolute Poker situation, we also need to know when to walk away and when to run.

In home games, disputes can be sticky situations because there is little or no security. In the casino, there is a far more structured and secure situation with the ‘eye in the sky’ and poker room management oversight. Online rooms can and must go far beyond casino security because of the electronic media. Not only is this a requirement but it is relatively easy to make happen. Computers are very smart and very dumb. It is the responsibility of the program developers to include this security in a way that is flexible and complete. The problem is computers do rote jobs very well while humans are flexible in their thinking and can overcome the rote aspect.

As players, we tend to think about poker without the extraneous security. Our ideal is a fair shuffle and display of the cards. Most of the time we can and do ignore the nitty-gritty unless it beats us over the head.

Security is paramount here. And more work goes into the security aspect than in the game itself. I could write a poker program to display random hands in an hour or two. In a similar time I could write a program that establishes a rules based system to determine a winner. There has even been a release of an actual, workable, online poker program that does all this to the public domain. This was done by ‘Dutch’ Boyd and friends.

When you start handling money, it can get involved. You expect your bank to maintain your deposits in a prudent manner. You would be more than disturbed if a fire at their site eliminated all your funds. So banks and others with a fiduciary responsibility must go beyond our home game mentality that is our default way of thinking. It is only at times like the Absolute fiasco that we are faced with the reality of what can happen that we have ignored because we have no control of it and only have to think about it when it intrudes into our lives.

Programming and programmers try to conform to a set of guidelines called “Best Practices” and these are relatively defined. But that definition is a series of layers and comes with the need for compromise. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the ’secure system’ which will always be something of a misnomer. Sites are hacked with regularity. The Internet itself is devoid of security. As security is added it is done at the transactional level. And that is attackable.

So, what is a legitimate expectation from our poker sites? Well, first we should always recognize that the very best practice coupled to the human condition creates accidents waiting to happen. Every site will, sooner or later, close a barn door after the horse escaped. When that happens, we will have imperfect information to determine how culpable the site was in allowing it to happen. The only way we can know for certain is an outside audit of what occurred. That assurance is not part of the happenings on any poker site out there that a U.S. citizen can play on.

Lets compare this to the stock market. It is a regulated environment. Federal laws and agencies constantly monitor the operation of registered corporations. And, we are always seeing prosecutors showing up to show us that people try to work the system. Except for the registered corporations that were on the London exchange, those protections do not exist.

Any system devised by man can be compromised by man. We’ve seen that occur across almost every site in some form or another. We saw it in WWII as Bletchley Park broke the German’s security. And you can go back in history to Caesar’s cipher being compromised.

The problem with Absolute is that it reflects on their most basic security. What happened should have been recognized as a possible contaminant to their security and prevented. The issue is very preventable with basic security. To make it simple, they had no locks on the inner doors. Security is layered in a ‘need to know’ and it is apparent that wasn’t enforced there. That was very wrong. And, we only learn such things after the fact.

There will never be a need to forgive Absolute Poker’s absolute stupidity. Yet, we’ll often end up continuing our relationships where similar actions occur. My stock broker compromised my personal information. I didn’t have my identity stolen but it could of happened. After the fact, they operated in a manner I found satisfactory and transparent. I continued my relationship with them. That is a possibility here. But, it is too soon to say. We just have to wait and see what happens. What should happen is that our government licenses and requires more transparent operation of these sites. But that isn’t likely in the short term. So we’ll let the lesser audit play out and then make our decisions. It is our only rational choice.

ADDENDUM:
Who’s Joe Norton? You can find out by reading a great article about the man on our site here. He isn’t your regular “Grand Chief” or poker room owner.

—————————————–

A good place to get some perspective in all this is Mark Seif’s blog. Mark seems to be the baby being thrown out with the bathwater as this plays out. He is a pro there and a minority owner. He has posted the two press releases from Absolute in his blog. Hopefully, he’ll keep providing any releases and be a source of factual data. He’s obviously disturbed and has a clear statement of his thoughts on the subject.

—————————————–

—————————————–

Managed a nice stud session on PokerStars this morning. Fairly short session with a nature call in the middle. Came away with 16 big blinds.  Unfortunately, I need about 3 or 4 session like it to get back to the profit side.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 5:05 am and is filed under Journal, Pols and other Crooks. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.