Home / Poker News December 2008 / Cereus glitches cleared
Cereus glitches cleared
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2008-12-25 12:41
After the cheating scandals that rocked
Absolute Poker and
Ultimate Bet during the year, the Cereus network, made up of the above named two poker rooms, had one more cold shower left for 2008: a software glitch which awarded a pot to the wrong player. Hailed as the cutting edge of online poker engineering, the Cereus software misfired in a high stakes game ($200/$400 one) in which in-house pro Phil Hellmuth played against a player with the nickname DOUBLEBALLER.
In a hand in which DOUBLEBALLER flopped a pair of Qs, he busted Hellmuth’s bluff when the UB pro fired at him holding a 10,2. Surprisingly, after showdown, the software awarded the pot to Hellmuth. The investigation that resulted yielded the conclusion that DOUBLEBALLER experienced a momentary disconnection the very second that the pot was being awarded. The disconnection deleted his hand information and thus the pot ended up in his opponent’s possession.
The general upheaval among the witnesses: Hellmuth, his opponent and the scores of railbirds in attendance, led to quick action, and the pot was soon returned to its rightful owner.
The programming effort which followed in order to avert such erroneous pot awarding in the future caused several other such glitches at other tables, causing a total of 36 other pots to be awarded to the wrong players.
This secondary flaw was corrected too though and all the pots that went to the wrong players were eventually re-awarded to their rightful winners.
Following the incident, Cereus made sure the software went through thorough testing to be certain that the flaws would never surface again. Specialists attempted to force it into making the mistake again but were unsuccessful.
Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG issued a statement regarding the incident in which it made clear the flaws which led to the incorrect awarding of the pots were no longer reproducible. Tokwiro Ent. have also assured players that its teams were running extensive tests to determine whether or not such glitches will be possible in the future. They were also digging through hand history files in order to determine whether anyone else had ever been short-changed by the software this way. Regardless of the actual gravity of the problem, one thing is certain: drawing attention this way is the last thing Cereus needed following the 2 cheating scandals it had been involved in.
