Anywhere that there is money being moved there will be cheating. That is simply a fact. It’s human nature.
There is a lot of money being moved across poker tables, therefore someone somewhere is trying to find a way to get some of it by cheating.
The online poker rooms are acutely aware of this and they have powerful anti cheating measures in place to combat it and make sure that their online poker site is a safe and secure environment for their players.
All major poker sites have security departments that are way ahead of you and me when it comes to detecting cheating. Having said that, the biggest of all online poker sites, Poker Stars, who presumably have the biggest of all online poker site security departments, took most of a year to deal with the Chines collusion ring that operated on their site and netted a guesstimated half a million dollars. You can read the full 200 page thread on the two plus two poker forum.
So cheating at online poker sites can and does happen. But it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You, and other legitimate players, are there too, and by now you should be watching everything that happens at the tables automatically anyway.
So if anything doesn’t feel right, anything at all, then you have the choice to leave the table. That’s right, you can stand up and walk away. If you feel strongly enough that something untoward is happening then you can always contact support and tell them of your concerns.
The beauty of online poker is that everything can be, and is, logged so the hand histories can be examined at any time.
If there is cheating then once a trained security professional examines the records it should be easy enough for them to spot it. One thing I will say in Stars’ favor is that they do regularly redistribute money that has been taken from cheaters accounts.
And what about the poker rooms cheating the players? Well, unfortunately, that does happen too. There have been some high profile cases in the last few years (Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker), and some not so high profile ones (Pitbull Poker – unproven but the site has closed down).
The same rule applies – if it doesn’t feel right, you can walk away. If yo suspect cheating is taking place either by the poker room itself or some of the players, then continuing to play there is not a smart move.
Finally, if you think that cheating the poker rooms would be easy and profitable, remember that most of what you can think of will have been tried by someone else before and the poker rooms probably know all about it by now. And secondly, bear in mind that the poker room can confiscate your entire bankroll if they suspect you of cheating. They don’t have to prove anything in any court of law or anything like that. The only recourse you have if you have your bankroll taken and you are innocent is to take it to a poker forum and make a case there. If you can make a big enough stink, and are telling the truth, then you will get some support that way.
I have never seen a genuine case where an innocent player was accused of cheating though, but I have seen a lot of players claim that they were innocent until the proof was provided by the poker sites.
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