The television show 60 Minutes is featuring an episode on the cheating scandals at the online poker sites Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. The show, which will air on Sunday, November 30th, is the result of a four month long investigation carried out jointly by CBS and the Washington Post.
The CBS website published a piece about the show which has angered some online poker players by saying: “We should tell you that this $18 billion industry is illegal in the US, but the ban [UIGEA] is almost impossible to enforce [...] and unlike land-based casinos, there is almost no official regulation, enforcement, or supervision.”
Many online poker players have left comments on the CBS site, pointing out that playing online poker is not illegal in the USA.
The report focuses on how online poker players acted as amateur sleuths after they suspected that they were being cheated, but the managers of the sites failed to respond to their complaints. Todd Wittels, one of the players who played detective to bring the cheats to light said: “He was raising just really, really bad hands against very good hands. He seemed to play crazy. 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.”
It seems that even with the new legislation due in January, there is still a lot of work needed to change public perception of online poker.
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