Incorrect Player Wins Pot On Cake Poker

[Yesterday]

• dannyscun: cheers
  Yesterday at 09:19:23 PM
• dannyscun: thanks serring. bit hungover today!
  Yesterday at 09:19:20 PM
• Serring: Happy birthday Dannyscun
  Yesterday at 03:16:15 AM
• RiverAsUsual: Stu, we need the password for this weeks PokerStars games
  Yesterday at 12:29:59 AM
• steclarke: hope to see you all in 888 hillys game tonight !! good luck all who play!
  September 08, 2010, 11:39:06 PM
• Crumble: Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrr. Welcome ye be.
  September 08, 2010, 01:45:53 AM
• ThePirate: Just want to say a big hello to all - joined yesterday, regards from ThePirate
  September 08, 2010, 01:00:34 AM
• Serring: well done guys
  September 06, 2010, 11:46:39 PM
• shane837: (£300 ticket/token)
  September 06, 2010, 10:08:48 PM
• shane837: god i run well last night 2nd place in the 32red deposits freeroll for €195   3 in the  unibet game (£300 to come ) and another win in a another forums league game for £40
  September 06, 2010, 10:08:09 PM
• Coo1fish: Sounds like a good game, well played to you all and best of luck in the game next week. Not sure it helped having other sharks there at the end. that could have affected your game.
  September 06, 2010, 08:17:30 PM
• shane837: total sick outcome to that game but well happy with most of my play in the game
  September 06, 2010, 05:35:08 PM
• steclarke: damn me 2nd shane 3rd and crumble 4th  in the unibet game  trip to valencia too £4000 package grrr  got a 1/10 chance next week in £300 buy in got ticket me n shane what a game ...well played shane n crumble ...go sharks
  September 06, 2010, 05:10:54 AM
• DeN_eYeD: lol - I didn't last long in the final. My Q (spades) J (spades) lost out to A (spades) 8 (spades) on a spade, spade, spade flop......ho....hum
  September 06, 2010, 01:12:10 AM
• Stu: Good luck Sharks, take it down!
  September 05, 2010, 11:28:35 PM
• steclarke: den  dont forget the red final is at 5 30 pm  for whichever forum you playin  for( turncoat)....does this mean if den takes me , shane or johnjohn out he gets banned from sharks lol
  September 05, 2010, 09:07:35 PM
• dannyscun: sorry guys cant play tonight, been on nights all weekend. on nights tonight then got week of
  September 05, 2010, 07:14:41 PM
• steclarke: gday fish !
  September 04, 2010, 10:37:13 PM
• Serring: Whats up Chewy... something upset you
  September 04, 2010, 05:50:33 AM
• Chewy/Dwarn/Rampton: or am i going over the top
  September 04, 2010, 05:17:33 AM

[Stu]

There was a lot of hand wringing at Cake Poker Network headquarters last week as one of an online poker room's worst nightmares came true: a pot was shipped to the wrong player. Fortunately, thanks to the professionalism of Cake's Card Room Manager, Lee Jones, and the programming staff, the issue was resolved in just over a day.

The hand that sent poker message boards into a frenzy was played at 2:30pm ET on February 3rd at "Rome 15025", a six-handed $0.02/$0.04 No-Limit Hold'em table. Two players, 'dimondidenko' and 'd0nkeyk0ng9' ended up all-in pre-flop, the former with Kd Kh, the latter with Ah Qh. After the river card was dealt, there were four hearts on the board, giving d0nkeyk0ng9 the best hand with an Ace-high flush versus his opponent's King-high flush. To everyone’s shock, however, this suckout did not result in d0nkeyk0ng9 winning the hand. Instead, dimondidenko was shipped the $5.36 pot.

Within fifteen minutes, one of the other players in the hand posted both a screenshot of the Cake Poker hand history and the end result from his Hold'em Manager replayer on the Two Plus Two Poker forum. The majority of reactions were very negative, with many players vowing to withdraw their funds from Cake Poker or other sites on the network. There were some voices of reason who urged patience, but, as is common on the internet, overreactions abounded.

Within a couple hours, Lee Jones confirmed that the error did happen and that an investigation as to what occurred was the software team's number one priority. That night, Cake paused its servers to install some additional logging code in an effort to catch any possible reoccurrences of the problem. The following afternoon, he also promised that Cake would pay anyone $500 if they had evidence that they were not awarded a pot that they should have been in the past.

Just a few hours after that promise, and only about 26 hours after the hand in question, Jones announced that the software team had figured out what happened. Rather than trying to explain it ourselves, we will let him do the talking:

"During the hand in question, there was a player who had missed the blinds and been asked to post a dead blind in the cutoff. He didn't, but somehow there was a perfectly timed lag between the client and the server that caused him to have a "Fold" button presented (though he may or may not have seen it). Probably unknowingly, he clicked a non-existent "Fold" button, which went through to the server. The server has code built in to protect it from extraneous messages such as this (including malicious intent from hacked clients). But it turned out that it didn't have that protection from a dead blind-posting player if the message was something that shouldn't have been coming in anyway (e.g. a "Fold" from somebody who shouldn't be allowed to fold in the first place)."

"The result of all this was for the system to believe that it had a side-pot between the sitting-out player and the small blind (the guy with the kings). It evaluated that pot, awarded that pot to the small blind, and then had no more pots to award, so it ended the hand."

Put simply, a one-in-a-billion (or more) glitch occurred that made the poker system think that dimondidenko was going up against the sitting-out player, which resulted in dimondidenko winning with what was actually the second best hand.

Lee Jones assured everyone that the code had been fixed and was being tested and that they did not expect anything like that to happen again, nor do they think that anything like that had ever happened before. In addition to the earlier $500 offer, Jones said that Cake Poker will be giving d0nkeyk0ng9 $500, the player who reported the error $250, and the rest of the players at the table an equal share of $250.

Interestingly, while extremely rare, an incorrectly awarded pot is not unprecedented in online poker. In December 2008, Phil Hellmuth, of all people, was shipped a $5,599 pot on UltimateBet.com (now UB.com), when he only had a pair of 2's versus his opponent's trip kings. This created even more of an uproar, considering the size of the pot and the fact that Hellmuth, along with Annie Duke, is the primary spokesperson for UB. That error was determined to have been caused by Hellmuth's opponent momentarily disconnecting at the exact point when the pot was being awarded, combined with "the 'player's state' data being cleared from memory cache." Unfortunately, as a result of fixing the error, UB caused another error which caused 36 more pots to be shipped to the wrong player. That problem was fixed quickly and there have been no known similar problems since.

Source: TightPoker.com

[dannyscun]

typical of my luck that, ive just started on cake. i quite like the client, and the tournaments seem much better than other sites.
as it says though, one in a billion chance of it happening again. or it happening in the first place

[senator xxx]

 ..are you cereus? This also happened before on a different network (guess which one), during a cash ring game. In a hand involving the Poker Brat himself. If I'm not mistaken, Phil lost the hand, but the pot was shipped to him anyway.

EDIT:


I found a screenshot and the HH from a thread on 2+2:




Stage #XXXXXXX: Holdem (1 on 1) Normal $200/$400 - 2008-12-20 04:15:23 (ET)
Table: FIR AVE (Real Money) Seat #4 is the dealer
Seat 4 - PHILHELLMUTH ($4495 in chips)
Seat 6 - DOUBLEBALLER ($7494 in chips)
PHILHELLMUTH - Posts small blind $100
DOUBLEBALLER - Posts big blind $200
*** POCKET CARDS ***
PHILHELLMUTH - Raises $300 to $400
DOUBLEBALLER - Raises $400 to $600
PHILHELLMUTH - Raises $400 to $800
DOUBLEBALLER - Calls $200
*** FLOP *** [Js Kc Kh]
DOUBLEBALLER - Checks
PHILHELLMUTH - Bets $200
DOUBLEBALLER - Raises $400 to $400
PHILHELLMUTH - Calls $200
*** TURN *** [Js Kc Kh] [2h]
DOUBLEBALLER - Bets $400
PHILHELLMUTH - Raises $800 to $800
DOUBLEBALLER - Raises $800 to $1200
PHILHELLMUTH - Calls $400
*** RIVER *** [Js Kc Kh 2h] [9c]
DOUBLEBALLER - Bets $400
PHILHELLMUTH - Calls $400
*** SHOW DOWN ***
DOUBLEBALLER - Shows [Kd Qh] (Three of a kind, kings)
PHILHELLMUTH - Mucks
PHILHELLMUTH Collects $5599 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total Pot($5600) | Rake ($1)
Board [Js Kc Kh 2h 9c]
Seat 4: PHILHELLMUTH (dealer) (small blind) won Total ($5599) HI: ($5599) [Mucked] [2s 10s]
Seat 6: DOUBLEBALLER (big blind) HI:lost with Three of a kind, kings [Kd Qh - B:Kh,P:Kd,B:Kc,P:Qh,B:Js]

Link to 2+2 Thread: (BE WARNED, THE ENTIRE THREAD IS 103 PAGES.) lol

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/ultimate-bet-wtf-hellmuth-has-worse-hand-but-pot-gets-shipped-him-anyway-369065/
(See post # 1507 on p.101 of thread, for plausible explanation, in this case, I think.)


..and a news article about it..


Phil Hellmuth Awarded Pot in Losing Hand on Ultimate Bet

By Dan Cypra for POKER NEWS DAILY | Posted on December 21, 2008

"Early Saturday morning, hand number 1162170993 was dealt on online poker room Ultimate Bet. It featured Phil Hellmuth squaring off against DOUBLEBALLER. However, at the end of the betting, Hellmuth was awarded the pot despite holding the worst hand. Ultimate Bet officials acknowledged the incident and are investigating.

Whether the switchover to the new software platform of CEREUS had anything to do with the apparent glitch is unknown. On its official blog, Tokwiro Chief Operating Officer Paul Leggett noted, “Earlier today we learned about a poker hand where our system paid out the losing player instead of the correct winning hand. We are investigating this software malfunction as our absolute top priority. This is the first incident of this kind we have encountered.”

Specifically, Leggett noted that Ultimate Bet staff was “examining the poker system and the application logs in order to pinpoint the cause of this malfunction.” Hellmuth, along with poker pro Annie Duke, serves as the face behind Ultimate Bet. The online poker room hosted an Ante Up for Africa charity tournament on Saturday night in which Duke was participating. Hellmuth owns a record 11 World Series of Poker bracelets.

Members of the TwoPlusTwo forums almost immediately posted the hand in question, which began at 4:15am ET early Saturday morning. The $200/$400 table witnessed the following hand play out: Hellmuth was in the small blind holding 10-2 of spades. DOUBLEBALLER held K-Q and the flop came J-K-K with two hearts after capped action pre-flop. On the flop, DOUBLEBALLER checked, Hellmuth led out for $200, and DOUBLEBALLER raised to $400. Hellmuth called the raise and the CEREUS software dealt the two of hearts on the turn. DOUBLEBALLER bet $400, Hellmuth raised to $800, DOUBLEBALLER made it $1,200, and Hellmuth called.

At this point in the hand, Hellmuth held a pair of twos and his opponent had him dominated with trip kings. The river came the nine of clubs. DOUBLEBALLER bet $400 and Hellmuth called. The hand history reveals that DOUBLEBALLER showed K-Q for three kings and Hellmuth mucked. However, the UB front man raked $5,599 from the pot despite mucking his hand.

In a later chat between the two foes, DOUBLEBALLER revealed that Ultimate Bet planned to credit him $2,300 for the error in the hand. However, the fact that Hellmuth played the pot aggressively and his presence as a marquee figure on the site had many on major online poker forums crying foul. The post by Leggett on Ultimate Bet’s blog, which appears to have been posted about 17 hours after the hand took place, had 20 responses. One reveals that more information is expected to be released on Sunday. However, as of 2:00pm ET on Sunday, no such information was released.

Ultimate Bet has come under fire as a result of a cheating scandal masterminded by former World Series of Poker Main Event winner Russ Hamilton, who was associated with its affiliate business. Hamilton and others exploited an auditing tool to see the hole cards of their opponents in high-level games. The scandal became the subject of a piece by CBS News program “60 Minutes” as well as an exposé in the Washington Post newspaper. In the days leading up to the 60 Minutes air date, Ultimate Bet’s player base merged with that of Absolute Poker, forming the CEREUS network. Both sites are owned by Tokwiro and are regulated by the Canadian-based Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

Chat posted between DOUBLEBALLER and Hellmuth had the latter saying “I play U limit, right now” and “miracle U beat me.” We’ll keep you posted on this breaking story right here on Poker News Daily."




 Looks as if Phil has some sort of 'Boom-switch'.


The moral here is:
 We've already been shown, that gaming software can be manipulated by 2 different sites on the same network, what makes any other network (ie: Cake, Merge,etc), or independent site (ie: Full tilt, bodog, etc) 'immune' from the same kind of manipulation? Codes is codes, so to speak..and all gaming software is written in codes.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not screaming 'RIGGED' here, I'm just saying it can be done, not it is being done.