Poker News

Although the Cereus Network has announced on the 14th of May that they have taken care of the security gap that made it possible for hackers to view their opponents' hole cards and access others' poker accounts, employees of PokerTableRatings (PTR) were once again easily able to get around the system.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, PTR found a security gap in the software of the well-known Cereus Network. The main concern was that the network wasn't using the industry standard SSL encryption, but their own XOR coding system, which proved to be inefficient against outside threats. Programmers of the Cereus Network started to fix the problem immediately, and according to announcements made by Cereus, they managed to rewrite their software with the SSL encryption technique.

As Cereus had requested PTR to test their system after the repair process, they tried once again to hack the software. To everyone's surprise, they have succeeded once again. Although they weren't able to view hole cards this time, the did manage to access poker accounts.

Cereus has once again kindly thanked them for their help, and the programmers are once again sterted to work on the issue.

On the 16th of May Cereus patched again and have informed PTR that they believe the issue is solved. After some testing PTR confirmed that SSL is now being used everywhere for Cereus. The login vulnerability no longer exists. They are not ensuring a proper implementation, but it seems like the biggest problems have been addressed.

PokerStars will introduce Perlego, its latest innovation in poker broadcasting on the 16th May, at one of the side events of the United Kingdom & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT).

Perlego is an automated card reading and graphics generation system, which is changing the way poker and other card games are produced and broadcast. It utilises a brand new camera technology to ensure recognition of all cards dealt to the players. All cards are supplied with a barcode, which is only visible when infrared light is shed on it. The algorithm of the program decodes this and recognizes the value and color of the given card. Of course, the system is also capable of recognizing community cards.

Daniel Negreanu’s blog post concerning wearing sunglasses at the poker tables is raising more and more controversy. The Canadian player would be happy to have shades banned from the tables, while other players find this ridiculous.

The topic that shades have a bad effect on poker was first raised in the GSN show High Stakes Poker. Later on, Daniel Negreanu has paraphrased several times why he thinks sunglasses should be banned.

The blog post ended up generating a huge debate, with Negreanu’s opinion being discussed on several online forums. It seems that the idea of banning shades divides the poker society. The latest to comment on the issue was the winner of the 2007 WPT Borgata Winter Open and Full Tilt Pro Roy Winston, who finds Negreanu’s idea completely outrageous.

PokerStars has set out yet another goal for the near future: they are about to create the mobile phone version of their software and have purchased Cecure Gaming, a company whose profile is the developement of casino and poker software for mobile phones.

Cecure Gaming, established in 2000, has been developing poker and casino software for cell phones and can be brought in connection with brands like Orange, T-Mobile, 3 Mobile and Vodafone. Apart from operating the games World Poker Tour mobile and Ladbrokes Poker Million mobile, they also had their own gambling brand called Aces Royal.

Aces Royal

The six-time WSOP winner Layne Flack will let us have a sneak peek in his not-so-everyday life in the new reality show titled ‘Life in the fast Layne’.

Layne Flack used to be mentioned among the most promising poker players of all time. He has won five WSOP bracelets between 1999 and 2003. After winning two consecutive WSOP events in 2002, Layne earned himself the ‘Back to Back Flack’ nickname. His drug-related problems nearly broke his career in two, and although he continued to participate in poker tournaments (and even finished second in the $6,000 NLHE Final Day behind Eric Brenes at the 2004 WPT), he was unable to deliver the performance that was expected from him by his fans and the poker society.

Shooting of the long awaited PokerStars high stakes poker show, The Big Game, has ended last week and the first episode will be aired on the 14th June by the American Fox Sports TV channel.

Although the PokerStars Big Game has no official player listing yet, we already know for sure that Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Rousso, Barry Greenstein, Phil Hellmuth, Freddy Deeb, Tony G, Phil Laak, Doyle Brunson and Todd Brunson will be featured at the six-player table.

Besides them, one seat will be reserved for the so-called ’Loose Cannon’, whose $100,000 buy-in will be paid for by the poker room. If the Loose Cannon wins, he can keep the amount won above the $100K, if he loses, he won’t have to pay. In order to become the Loose Cannon, players need to win one of the four daily PokerStars satellites and then prepare a self-intorductional video. PokerStars will choose the lucky one based on these videos.

The two-time WSOP champion Michael ’The Grinder’ Mizrachi has gotten himself in serious financial trouble. Despite his $7,000,000 career winnings, even his house is getting sold by auction.

Michael 'The Grinder' Mizrachi

Full Tilt Poker has now signed a contract with one of the most talented players of the new poker generation, the 22 years old Andrew ’luckychewy’ Lichtenberger. Lichtenberger, born in New York, gained reputation as an online cash game player, and this year he was already a regular threat at the Full Tilt Poker high stakes tables. His current earnings exceed $602,094, which secure him the 19th place on the poker room’s yearly profit leaderboard.

What a year it has been for the Finnish high stakes poker professional Patrik Antonius. Not many of us could say we would have kept our cool and to continue playing after having a rough downswing period as Patrik went through. At the start of the year he was like a skinning ship and nothing was working out right for him.

With over $3 million dollars down Patrik was in trouble but with his strong perseverance he managed to turn this around and even post a small profit in just two months.

In this month’s issue of CardPlayer magazine there is an in-depth interview with Patrik Antonius where you can read about these pass couple of months and his future outlooks to getting back on track. Patrik also talks about ways to relieve your stress and the top competition out there he faces.

Just in recent times the popular online poker training site CardRunners has had it designers give it a makeover. Launched in 13th of July 2005 the site now is home for over 88,000 members and is considered one of the most known and popular poker coaching sites. Since 2005 the site has undergone numerous cosmetic and internal changes to help improve its usability and appeal. It has definitely come a long way for its first basic released design and with its recent changes, it shows us that CardRunners will like to keep growing forward by keeping up with the demands of its ever increasing customer base.

CardRunners look like this when is was launched (July 13, 2005)

After successfully launching BlueFirePoker, Phil ’OMGClayAiken’ Galfond is now looking to start another site, named Poker Static. This new site will be the main rival to compete against the popular PokerRoad.

Galfond and Bill Murphy started BlueFirePoker in 2009, which is a portal that offers tutoring services. Thanks to the wonderful crew members the site became a huge success in a short period of time.

This one success story wasn’t enough for OMGClayAiken, now he seeks to endeavour into the poker media by launching the new site Poker Static this Monday.

With the Moneybookers MasterCard, you can can access your Moneybookers account funds anywhere at any time, either it be from an ATM or a direct purchase. Anyone who is over 18 and resides within the EU and has a verified Moneybookers account can request this unique MasterCard. The card can be used at more than 1 million ATMs around the world and more than 28.5 million shops and restaurants. The daily limit is €250 for money withdrawals and €1000 for purchases.

Full Tilt Poker has officially become the sponsor for the new F1 team Virgin Racing with their new logo being displayed on Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi’s cars.

The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) announced on the 19th June 2009 that Nick Wirth and his team have been given the green light to join Formula 1 in 2010. Full Tilt Poker has had strong relationships with the British team from the start, but it has only been in recent times that they secured an official sponsorship deal.

Check out Victor Blom’s flat in Sweden. A TwoPlusTwo member published here the following pics he got of Viktor Blom came from Facebook. He claims that Victor Blom, who is said to be Isildur1 lives in this apartment with some other guys.

There is not too much furniture in it at the moment, but it is really big and bright. I think they have just moved in. Anyway, I dont think it would be a hassle to get some furniture quickly considering he is in Sweden, where IKEA was founded. A good thing about having not too much furniture at the moment is that at least it is easy to clean up after a party.

PokerTableRatings has just recently made the public aware of a security gap in the Cereus Poker Network software. They have also advised players not to use the software until a solution to the problem is found. PokerTableRatings has found a critical error in the Cereus software which compromises your security. This error occurs in popular and heavily trafficked Cereus poker rooms such as Absolute Poker and UB. This security gap makes it possible for the average hacker  to access our user accounts and view the opponents’ hole cards in real time. With over tens of thousands of users per day, the Cereus truly needs to adress this problem as soon as possible.

...or not

The main core of the problem stands from Cereus neglecting the use of the foolproof SSL encryption technique and instead deciding to stick with their individually developed software. Cereus has developed their own security software by using XOR instead of SSL, which provides a much weaker shield of protection. In truth, this is not even encryption, only encoding, which can be easily decoded with the help of a Windows or Linux computer and a simple calculator. The easiest point of attack to break into the Cereus Poker Network's rooms is to identify the victim’s internet connection. If you are using a public wirless connection, a hacked wireless system or even connect via direct cable,  you will be easy prey for hackers.

PTR has also provided a demonstration video in which they use cheap hardware and their own wireless network to break into the Cereus Poker Network database to show you how easily it can be done. They were able to log into other players’ poker accounts and see their hole cards in real time.