Online Poker Players Are Dupes, Err, Were Duped.

I know I know --- all of you hotshots are great drivers, great lovers, and great poker players. Plus nobody knows sports better than you.

Well, now you can at least explain your online poker losses away. Listen bubbe, it was not a deficit in skill -- you are still the best ever! -- it just turns out you were a schmuck to play online in the first place:

Allegations that a long-running cheating scheme bilked players on a leading Internet poker site have triggered an $85 million claim against a Canadian company whose employees allegedly manipulated the cyberspace card room’s software so that they could see their opponents’ hole cards, msnbc.com has learned.

The alleged subterfuge on UltimateBet.com — one of the 10 top poker sites — is the biggest known case of fraud targeting an Internet gambling site and its customers, according to the company that owns the site. It is similar to a case of cheating that occurred last year on UltimateBet’s sister site, AbsolutePoker.com, but this time the thieves ran the scheme for far longer — at least from January 2005 to January 2008, it said.

h/t to the alert reader who sent this one in -- I KNEW [insert your name] was a better player than this!