Hacker News Reader

Makes logical sense, unfortunately we've seen examples in the past of this logic not being adhered to. Take the poker site "Ultimate Bet", when cheating was suspected the line of reasoning against it (and the strongest line of reasoning at that)was "Why would they cheat when they are running a million dollar profitable business and jeopardise the entire operation for a bit more %?" Turns out they were willing to jeopardise it all.

View on HN

In the case of Ultimate Bet it turned out that it was an inside job, but the individuals involved didn't necessarily share in the long term profits of the company, so they were able to benefit personally to the tune of millions, while most of the negative effects landed on the company rather than themselves.

Thankfully in at least two other poker companies (hint: the largest one and its sister company) it was made impossible to see someone's hole cards before the hand is over, which is what allowed the cheaters at Ultimate Bet to perpetrate their con.

It's my pretty firm belief that when it seems like an entity is throwing away a pretty obvious economic self-interest, there's probably just a misunderstanding of where the economic self interest lies in the parties involved.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com