The Invisible Holiday Freeroll

They've got the Holiday freeroll tourney coming up with daily satellites to qualify. But after searching the net it seems a lot of people just can't play cause the damn qualifying tourneys aren't showing up in the tournament list. I'm one of them (I already emailed and I've gotten the expected standard reply already, basically says "look there" lol.) I found one guy who said after his email the tourneys magically began appearing in his GUI. No luck yet for me.

Then I started trying to check my account and could not withdraw or deposit cash until I register a real money account. The funny thing is I have already made multiple deposits years ago. I've won and lost money, received prizes through the mail, etc but now I need to register again??
If anyone has experienced anything similar please post. Much more of this and I'm gonna submit an official request to change this forums name to Absolute Poker Problems

peace all

Just had a look in AP and there was a holiday freeroll qualifier just registering. Top 100 qualify for the Dec 29th Game.

__________________
May/June '07
....Team: 7 Black Balls - Ballandchain, Blackinks & 7letters
.... Sunday League Team Champions

Nov/Dec '07
....Team: 7 Balls - Ballandchain & 7letters
....Sunday League Team Champions
....Sunday League Individual Runner Up - 7letters

Jan/Feb '08
....Sunday League Individual Runner Up - 7letters

March/April '08
....F'in rubbish - 7letters

Exactly! I can't see the damn things grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....
and they took all day but finally replied with a typically ignorant response so here's all emails so far...

I emailed...
" Please help. I cannot see the holiday freeroll tournaments? I have read other people saying the same thing at forums. One person said he emailed you and his started showing up. Please help me before time runs out. Thanks a lot!

ps.. I've been a member for a long time now but I'm sure you know that."

they responded...
"Dear Mr. Ray,
Thank you for your email.
In order to find the tournament, please go to "Tourneys", and then click on the "Freeroll" sub-tab. Click on "Game" and scroll down until you find the Absolute Holiday FR Qualifier.
Please note that we have three daily Absolute Holiday FreeRoll Qualifiers.
The start time is below::
1. 16:15 ET
2. 18:30 ET
3. 20:15 ET
Remember that all players are entitled to one free entry into an Absolute Dream Qualifier or an AP Holidays FreeRoll. Once you have used this chance, in order to participate in additional tournaments, you must accumulate 50 points.
You will receive 1 point for each raked hand (minimum rake of $0.50) you play in our real money games. In order to collect a $0.50 rake on a hand the pot should be of at least $10.00, considering that the rake is a 5% of the pot.
Thanks for playing at Absolute Poker! If there is anything else we can help you with, please let us know. We are here for you!"

In other words "hey dumbass, look here at these times."
That's ok, maybe my first message wasn't specific enough

round 2:

I sent....
" Not only are the tourneys not showing up but I cannot view my Absolute Points. When I log in and click My Account/Cashier (as per the instructions here: Absolute Poker- Reward Store

I do not see the "AR store button." I tried going to Deposit and Withdrawal but I now get a message to set up my account.

I have already deposited money via credit card on multiple occasions in the past. I have also won multiple prizes (shirts/hats/etc) that have been shipped to me but I have never made a cash withdrawal. Do I have to repeat the sign up process? Is this something that must be usually be done regularly or more than once?
thanks"

and the reply...
"Dear Ray,
Thank you for contacting us.
Let us inform you that today we are registering in the following Absolute Holiday Freerolls:
1932557 at 18:30ET
1932582 at 20:15ET
You can find this tournaments under the Subtab "Tourneys" and then clicking on "Freeroll".
In regards to the other issue, let us inform you that Absolute Rewards Program is a loyalty program whereby depositing players are awarded points for hands played and for tournament buy-ins.
Although you are playing in real money games, you will not get AR points unless you make a deposit.
In the same why, you will not able to cashout your winnings if you have made a deposit.
For more information about our Absolute Rewards Program, please visit the link below:

Absolute Poker- Rewards Program
"

and my response...
"Please read my message. As I stated earlier I have already made 2 deposits to AP in the past. Hence my question about why I must register again.
And the holiday freeroll qualifiers are simply are not showing up. Nada, nothing there except the final Holiday Freeroll tourney. Which does me no good if I can't try to get in it. I also posted that I have found multiple references to other people having the same problem around the internet so I know it's not just me.
Thanks for your help, will be awaiting your reply."

I'm goin backwards with this lol. Maybe if I sent an email "please remove mr from the Holiday freeroll and revoke my AR points" I would finally be getting somewhere. But I doubt it

Hmm dunno...Reinstall? I loaded AP, needed an update and then the tourneys showed up on the freeroll tab. Is it only one free chance at the Holiday Freeroll then. Damn I just wasted mine on the first hand of the game

__________________
May/June '07
....Team: 7 Black Balls - Ballandchain, Blackinks & 7letters
.... Sunday League Team Champions

Nov/Dec '07
....Team: 7 Balls - Ballandchain & 7letters
....Sunday League Team Champions
....Sunday League Individual Runner Up - 7letters

Jan/Feb '08
....Sunday League Individual Runner Up - 7letters

March/April '08
....F'in rubbish - 7letters

and just to be sure I revamped it for clarity..


Sorry, maybe I'm not making myslef clear. I have 2 issues.

1)...
I have already deposited to AP twice in the past (at least $50 each time) so why am I no longer registered for real money? Can you please fix this?

2)...
I have played at AP for many years now, both freeroll and cash games. I know where to find the Holiday Freeroll qualifiers but they are not where you keep telling me to look. Not in red, blue or any other color. I've sorted by game, by time, etc but they are not showing up in the list. My regular freerolls show up as does the final Holiday Freeroll tournament but the qualifiers simply are not there. I am not over looking them. If it would help, please tell me what time and I will take a screen capture of my GUI and send it to you with columns arranged at your preference.

Thanks for all your help so far! I'm sorry to trouble you at all but I quit playing at all other sites cause AP is my favorite. Like I said, other people are saying online that they can't see the H.Freeroll qualifiers either. That one guy said he emailed you guys and then his started showing up. I can probably get his name if that would help. Thanks again.


sigh

Good idea 7letters. Sucks on my modem but is worth trying. And I found a lot of people who were pissed cause AP never mentioned that you get one free shot and played looser than normal. Obviously AP wants you to play raked games to get the points needed to enter again.

Yeah looks that way, and that explains the low number of entries- 350 players in an AP freeroll did seem low. Good luck.

I always liked AP software too, haven't played there much recently though.

__________________
May/June '07
....Team: 7 Black Balls - Ballandchain, Blackinks & 7letters
.... Sunday League Team Champions

Nov/Dec '07
....Team: 7 Balls - Ballandchain & 7letters
....Sunday League Team Champions
....Sunday League Individual Runner Up - 7letters

Jan/Feb '08
....Sunday League Individual Runner Up - 7letters

March/April '08
....F'in rubbish - 7letters

i just looked into it aswell
and the same thing has happened to me as it doesnt sgow the sattelites to enter just the final game.
i am going to try and reinstall and see if that works if so then i will post it in here.
typical are the people from the (so called support) that think everyone is stupid when they need help.!!

this has been a few months back by the way.just didnt know if anyone has known of this




The Absolute Poker Cheating Scandal Blown Wide Open
By Steven D. Levitt

A few weeks back I blogged about allegations of cheating at an online poker site called Absolute Poker. While things looked awfully suspicious, there wasn’t quite a smoking gun, and it was unclear exactly how the cheater might have cheated.
A combination of some incredible detective work by some poker players and an accidental (?) data leak by Absolute Poker have blown the scandal wide open.
You can read the first-hand account in the following thread at 2+2 Poker Forum, but here’s the short version:
Some opponents became suspicious of how a certain player was playing. He seemed to know what the opponents’ hole cards were. The suspicious players provided examples of these hands, which were so outrageous that virtually all serious poker players were convinced that cheating had occurred. One of the players who’d been cheated requested that Absolute Poker provide hand histories from the tournament (which is standard practice for online sites). In this case, Absolute Poker “accidentally” did not send the usual hand histories, but instead sent a file that contained all sorts of private information that the poker site would never release. The file contained every player’s hole cards, observations of the tables, and even the IP addresses of every person playing. (I put “accidentally” in quotes because the mistake seems like too great a coincidence when you learn what followed.) I suspect that someone at Absolute knew about the cheating and how it happened, and was acting as a whistleblower by sending these data. If that is the case, I hope whomever “accidentally” sent the file gets their proper hero’s welcome in the end.
Then the poker players went to work analyzing the data — not the hand histories themselves, but other, more subtle information contained in the file. What these players-turned-detectives noticed was that, starting with the third hand of the tournament, there was an observer who watched every subsequent hand played by the cheater. (For those of you who don’t know much about online poker, anyone who wants can observe a particular table, although, of course, the observers can’t see any of the players’ hole cards.) Interestingly, the cheater folded the first two hands before this observer showed up, then did not fold a single hand before the flop for the next 20 minutes, and then folded his hand pre-flop when another player had a pair of kings as hole cards! This sort of cheating went on throughout the tournament.
So the poker detectives turned their attention to this observer. They traced the observer’s IP address and account name to the same set of servers that host Absolute Poker, and also, apparently, to a particular individual named Scott Tom, who seems to be a part-owner of Absolute Poker! If all of this is correct, it shows exactly how the cheating would have transpired: an insider at the Web site had real-time access to all of the hole cards (it is not hard to believe that this capability would exist) and was relaying this information to an outside accomplice.
If this is all true, I presume that the two cheaters are looking at potential prison time. I would also guess that if Absolute Poker continues to argue that nothing out of the ordinary happened, they will take an enormous hit to their profits. Online poker is a game of trust — players send their money to a site believing that they will be playing a fair game, and trusting that the site will send them their winnings. If there is even a little bit of uncertainty about either one of those factors, there is no good reason for a player to choose that site over the many close substitutes that exist. If I ran Absolute Poker, I would take a lesson from past corporate attempts at cover ups, sacrifice the cheaters, and institute safeguards to prevent this ever happening again.
The real lesson of this all, however, is probably the following: guys who aren’t that smart will figure out ways to cheat. And, with a little luck and the right data, folks who are a lot smarter will catch them doing it.
(Hat tip: Dan Hirschberg and Dean Strachan, who have kept me up to date on this story.)