'60 Minutes' on Sunday: How online gamblers unmasked cheaters

The results of a four-month investigation by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, producer Ira Rosen, and The Washington Post's two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Gilbert Gaul will appear this Sunday, November 30, at 7 p.m. EST/PST on 60 Minutes.

The collaboration by the two news organizations reveals how online poker players suspecting cheating were forced to successfully ferret out the cheaters themselves. That's because managers of the mostly unregulated $18 billion Internet gambling industry failed to respond to their complaints.

"He was raising, just really, really bad hands against very good hands. He seemed to play crazy," says Todd Witteles, a computer scientist turned poker player who believed he was losing too much to the same person. "It seemed like he was giving his money away. Except the only thing was, he wasn't losing. He was playing in a style that was sure to lose, but he was killing the game day after day," Witteles, who played a key detective role, remembers.

Michael Josem, a player and a computer security expert, plotted the odds of such consistent success. "We did the mathematical analysis to find that they were winning at about 15 standard deviations above the mean...approximately equivalent to winning a one-in-a-million jackpot six consecutive times."

The cheating, which netted the cheaters more than $20 million, occurred on two of the Internet's most popular sites, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. The two sites operate out of a shopping mall in Costa Rica and run their games on computer servers housed on an Indian reservation outside of Montreal. They are licensed by a Mohawk tribe that has no background in casino gambling, a tribe that previously made the majority of its money selling tax-free tobacco.

Though such gambling is illegal in both Canada and the U.S., the betting laws in those countries have no jurisdiction on the sovereign reservation.

[SixVodkas]

"How online gamblers unmasked cheaters".

Okay, I'll bite- How?

The article says nothing as to how it was done, and (at the time I loaded this page, at least) the video doesn't play.

[Galbrezu]

It's just an advertisement for an upcoming show.

[mrgoodall]

uh because the story wont air until Sunday on 60 minutes, its called a teaser. It teases you to garner hits and then you'll view the show. Like your local 11pm news, "tonight , man hits bus, bus hits back, story at 11". Its really not the science of rockets.

[Lobout]

What an incomplete article. Nowhere does it say how they caught the cheaters nor how they were cheating. Complete waste of my time reading this. Come on CNET let's do a better job of reporting news

[Jahntassa]

Actually i'll defend CNET on this one. If you look at the byline, it was posted up by someone at CBS Interactive. Lets see how long it takes CBS to run CNET into the ground if they keep posting stuff like this..

[tremorfireheart]

Well I think it pretty clearly states that they recorded his wins and losses. That his wins were so many deviations out of the norm that it became obvious that he was cheating. if you have a guy flipping a coin hes got a 50% chance for heads and a 50% for tails. now if that guy flips heads about 480 times out of 500 yhou know that hes pulling some kind of trick since it should be alot closer to 250. they did the same kind of thing but with the cards. now granted the article does not say how it was that the group was doing its cheating but thats why its telling us to watch the report sunday.

[carefulmistake]

This is not a news report. It's an ad so you will watch the full story on 60 minutes. In no way does this explain what the people clicking on this link are wanting to read. Now I guess you have to waste your time reading articles to only find out it was an ad for a parent company/sponsor. Blah.

[Hamster3098]

I agree with Jahntassa on this one. The tag line for the article should have said "Tune in to 60 Minutes to see how online...". To me, this is less of a news item and more of an advertisement for an upcoming television broadcast. Shame on CBS for posting this. Shame on CNET for not see it for what it was an not pulling it off the site.

[Hammerhand]

Has cnet fallen so far that its posting ads disguised as real articles?

I like that some cnet bloggers end their articles with disclosure information. Where is the disclosure information here? Where is the "Cnet is owned by CBS.... blah blah blah"???

Leave ads where they should be... In little boxes surrounding real articles... Little boxes that can be blocked by ad blocking software.

[DatabaseDoctor]

Total agreement here... CNET, stop your new bosses from ruining a highly respected source of news. Cross promotion is one thing but running an ad as a news article is so below you guys. If this keeps up, I'll have to get my tech news elsewhere.

[Andronicus]

"The results of the four-month investigation by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, producer Ira Rosen and The Washington Post's two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Gilbert Gaul will appear this Sunday, November 30, at 7 p.m. EST/PST on 60 Minutes."

This paragraph is a great example of how the MSM think that they are the most important people in the world. The gamblers themselves who discovered the cheeting, then 60 min. comes along and just documents the story, thinking that they are heros or something. This kind of fake jurnalism continues to pi$$ me off.

[biffhenerson]

Yeah, just like the local television stations collecting all the toys from us for Christmas, and then giving them to needy people. Then the TV station takes credit for the giving the toys when, in fact, they gave nothing. They were simply the facilitator. Another example: Oprah gives her audiance new cars. She did not give them anything. She was the facilitator. The car manufacture gave the cars to the audiance of the Oprah show as advertisement. Yet, Oprah lets all of us assume that she bought them. Not true. Misleading. Media.

[Zandora777]

Probably the easiest and most rampant form of online cheating is secret communication between players using IM, cellphones, texts, or whatever.

[biffhenerson]

How to cheat: (1) write corrupt software. (2) use hidden back-doors into the software to manipulate the cards. (3). Have multiple sessions at the table, pretend to be 5 different people. Against one person. You then can see all 5 hands except the one persons. This increases the odds of beating the one person. Just guessing....

[Mr Frogs]

CNet , now you've done it....this is the last time I'm visiting this site. Wasting my time reading CBS teasers.

Now adding '127.0.0.1 http://news.cnet.com' to my Hosts file to blacklist you forever..

Goodbye.

[DannoK]

I don't mind a little cross-over action - like if CNN links to a Time article-- but when others do that you get a little more meat and not just a teaser ad. I would have liked a the actual story here (perhaps something on the Washington Post site?) and then by all means "for more on this tune in to 60 Minutes on Sunday..."

[aka_tripleB]

So you can determine that someone is cheating based on how reckless they play? Well then, I cheat all the time. I have to have fun whenever I play a game, and it's not fun to play "safe." And if money is ever involved, I only play with what I feel comfortable losing. So, I have no problem playing reckless and am difficult to get out of the game because no one can read me. And the problem with accusing a reckless person with cheating is you have to factor in the human opponents. Another problem is something all gamblers deal with: there is no sure thing. Just because they say the guy was playing in a way that was sure to lose, doesn't make it so. I'm not saying the guy wasn't cheating, but they've did not make any case to make me, or seemingly any of you, he was cheating.

[Pete Bardo]

Looks like CBS is taking a page out of the Disney playbook! No story here, but the comments are fun!

aka_tripleB: When you play recklessly, do you win "at about 15 standard deviations above the mean"? You don't do the same when money is involved--these "cheaters" got "more than $20 million" in real money. With all of the details of the operation described here, there's no way of knowing how they cheated and no reason to believe the reckless play was their method of cheating--only that it led them to get caught.

Here's a tip for you cheaters: You have to lose sometimes!

[aka_tripleB]

Do you think I'm doing much math when I play? I admitted to playing reclessly. But the last time I played, I had roughly the same amount as the other person who was still "in the game." There was a third person with virtually nothing left, so obviously wasn't much of a threat. I had a good cushion nearly the entire game. I then got up and left, leaving my chips in the pool because I got bored. Obviously, it wasn't a high-stakes game, but hopefully that answers your question. And like I said, I don't play with more than I fell comfortable losing.

[keosky]

Some great comments above about this blatant shilling for 60 minutes. Wow - I even called CNet (who I have followed since inception, new Halsey at the beginning, spent mucho $$$$$ as an advertiser, blah blah) to give direct feedback about this very poor "articletisement" and Editor Greg hung up on me because he said "I don't buy ads, send me an email". All because I introduced myself (I run a strategic marketing firm) and self important Greg seems tooooooo busy to even listen to the complete sentence of why I'm calling ... let alone the seriousness of this non-journalism copy on their site.

Next call went to another editor vmail as he's on vacation.

The receptionist did try hard and was very empathetic I want to add. But CNet has lost my 13 years of support. Clearly they're being sucked own the drain with CBS. Pathetic.

Request of posters: who is your most trusted online tech news source now? I'm looking for new NEWS sources ...
Cheers

[lazarbel]

So.... CNET is now a shill for CBS? What is the payoff for CNET? Did CBS pay for this space? I don't get it. The article is posted under Home - News - Digital Media. Is it news or is it an paid ad? If it is presented as news, its writer most definitely sucks. As a teaser it is even worse. I wouldn't watch 60 Minutes now as a paid assignment. Ad or news? It makes a difference to me. If it is a paid advertisement, it should be categorized as such.

I am stuck away from home - and alone - tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, with nothing on my calendar for a week or so. I will get a response from CNET or the next few days of my life will be spent repeatedly attempting to do so. I don't really enjoy blowing off my spare time on such, but I will get an answer or locating a new tech news source will become my next project.

[HighwayHome]

This story makes you not want to watch another 60 Minutes episode ever again. Wait a second...I haven't watched that rag of a TV show for three decades and never planned to do so anyway. Just be very suspicious of an article when you see another Mainstream Media show named in the title, or anywhere else in the story for that matter.

[docsharp01]

I saw the article on 60 minutes. I thought it was very timely and informative.
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