Absolutely the Worst Part 2

Two bits of news. First, Absolute Poker is now saying that an inside programmer "hacked the system" and was, in fact, able to see the hole cards in the tournament in question. The story is being carried on MSNBC here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21381022/. They have promised to "return all appropriate funds" to players and to possibly pursue a lawsuit or criminal charges against the employee in question.

To me this brings up a couple things. First, how can you return appropriate funds to players? The existence of this card-seeing cheater in the tournament totally invalidates the entire tournament. It's not good enough to simply bump everyone up one pay place and redistribute the money. Everyone who played in the tournament deserves at the very minimum a refund.

Next, what is this about pursuing criminal charges? Last time I checked it wasn't for companies to make that call. Criminal charges should be filed by the authorities with appropriate jurisdiction in this case and a complete investigation should be done into Absolute Poker to see what complicity existed in both this employee's access (if in fact the "geek" employee they mention was to blame) and in their total inability or unwillingness to come clean to an obvious case of cheating which only takes a very quick perusal of the hand history to see. Their initial statements in light of the statement today does not exactly make them look squeeky clean.