Travis Makar talks about Super User scandal Part 2

In Part 1 of this series I outlined the basics of Travis Makar’s impromptu interview on the DonkDown Radio Show this past Wednesday night, and as I said in Part 1, there was a lot of information revealed during the hour plus that Makar spoke to Bryan Micon and Todd Witteles. In this part of the series I want to take a closer look at the “bombshells” I thought Makar disclosed in the interview, namely:

• He hinted that Annie Duke may have benefitted by staying quiet

While Makar had nothing but praise for Phil Hellmuth, he did somehow manage to roll his eyes during a radio interview when Annie Duke’s name was mentioned. While he didn’t say she had any knowledge of the cheating taking place at Ultimate Bet, he did say that one of the two -Hellmuth and Duke-may have benefitted from the scandal more than the other.

Makar then went on to corroborate Micon’s story of Annie Duke borrowing money from Russ Hamilton to purchase a house and not paying back the loan after the scandal was uncovered; he also said that she, or UB, spread around a lot of money to keep her on Celebrity Apprentice.

• He outlined another cheating scandal taking place on the site!

While his details on this seemed all over the place -in actuality the way he described just didn’t make any sense-I think Makar was just too far outside the loop to know the specifics of this other scandal (if it indeed happened). The way he describes the backdoor to use a player’s account when they are not logged in seems like the perfect cover for the “God-Mode” Super-User, and would send up far fewer red flags if some of the site’s regulars, or older accounts, occasionally had a session where they literally “Ran Like God”. In this case, playing on someone’s account and then cashing out the winnings so as to leave no trace that you were on the account seems like a perfect way to cover up the Super-User’s tracks.

• He hinted at a larger conspiracy between other online poker rooms where cash was funneled back and forth between sites

To me this is the most intriguing piece of information he revealed. I wish Witteles and Micon had followed up on this line of questioning, but it’s hard to place blame when an interview of this magnitude falls into your lap and you have no prep time.

Either one of two things was going on if this true:

First, and most likely the case, Makar might have been insinuating that a lot of the Super-User money found its way to other poker sites -such as Russ transferring someone $100k on UB from his account or another account in exchange for $100k on Party Poker or some other site.

The sexier story would be if the other poker sites were aware of the Super-User mode -and possibly had their own version-and all of the major online poker rooms were complicit together. The way Makar lays out the company hierarchy it could very well be that the same group of people own multiple online poker rooms -which gives them the leeway to not care if a room cheats its customers and goes belly-up; with no connection to the other sites their reputations are still intact. Perhaps the Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker Super-Users were just the cases where the employees got out of hand with their greed.

Obviously there is a lot of straw grasping on my part in this article, but until I hear what Micon has to say when he sees Makar’s evidence I am not discounting any possibility!