Cheats

[blf2much]

Are there cheaters online? How do you detect if you are being cheated and is it possible?

[Mika Ollila]

There must be cheaters online, but nobody knows for sure how many. At least the larger poker sites have software and teams to detect collusion and cheating patterns.

If you think you are being cheated, you can save the hand histories and report the suspected players to the poker room support. They should then review the case.

[sassybritches72]

I am sure that there are cheaters online. in the event that you feel you are playing with a cheater I would report them to the site you are playing on. I would think that they would look into it, and do something about it if they are cheating.

[pokerwhiz]

Are there cheaters online? How do you detect if you are being cheated and is it possible?

Look for the same two people always in a pot. If there's a lot of action and almost always one of them suddenly drops out in the middle of the raising. He/she is probably pumping the pot for the other one.

Use player notes is how I eliminate some of that. If I am suspect of partners, I make a note in each of their notes, "partners with .......?" and fill it in on both of them. If it keeps happening, report it and/or just leave the game.

It's more on the higher limit games. Although, I've seen some obvious partners, and they play so bad, with NO hands to speak of, they often lose more...

[MasterMind]

There must be cheaters online, but nobody knows for sure how many. At least the larger poker sites have software and teams to detect collusion and cheating patterns.

Agree with you.

Nobody knows exactly how many, but in fact there are software to detect them, including that available for users to download, check this out: Stop Poker Cheaters

[kelkat]

There are always cheats everywhere - unfortunately. How do you know for sure they are cheating? I would think that if they win beyond all odds, then you might get suspicious. Other than instinct, though, I don't know how you - yourself - could prove cheating. Do report anything suspect, though. Make it as difficult as you can for those who can't follow the rules.

[wondering]

I've definately played where there are people cheating and I've found it very effective to just type it in to them when things get suspicious. I won't say You are cheating - I'll say things like So, you two know each other? Usually it will stop after that because nobody wants to get bumped from the site. But always report suspected cheating - nobody will get bumped after one report, but if a site has repeated reports, you're probably not imagining things!

[ItsComeToThis]

There are always cheaters, every where you go. Some less scrupulous gambling places have built-in cheats. They plant people to play against you and win, to avoid pay-out. Research a place well before you go gambling there.

[rjcon]

Look for the same two people always in a pot. If there's a lot of action and almost always one of them suddenly drops out in the middle of the raising. He/she is probably pumping the pot for the other one.

Use player notes is how I eliminate some of that. If I am suspect of partners, I make a note in each of their notes, "partners with .......?" and fill it in on both of them. If it keeps happening, report it and/or just leave the game.

Good tip--similar to what I do. I always keep my email open, so I started an email to myself with usernames that I suspect of partnering. Like I have (for example, not real names) something like: no_name1630 ------- bertieblott . Then, since I have all of those usernames in one place, if I see a username that looks familiar that I have suspected (but not yet reported), all I have to do is scan down my list to see if it is there. Don't like that I have to do that because it is kind of a pain, but I don't want to be cheated, either...

[heavery]

I agree with Poker Whiz. Partners would definitely get an unfair edge if they both know what each other's hand is. They also have better chances in bluffing due to this. It's quite different when playing in person because you are able to see them. In the net, people may play side by side, and the others woudn't know. Also they could run software to assist their play.

[tshugo]

Have you people experienced any cheating laltely online?

[CRUDEFINDER]

There must be cheaters online, but nobody knows for sure how many. At least the larger poker sites have software and teams to detect collusion and cheating patterns.

If you think you are being cheated, you can save the hand histories and report the suspected players to the poker room support. They should then review the case.

Recently a person reported in another forum that he and two other people had entered a tournament and were playing together, discussing hands and talked about their money split.

I sent this info to P*'s and they said they would check into it , I didn't hear for over a week and e-mailed them again. They said they were looking at the issue and thats the last I heard; 2 months ago. I gave them the tourn. #, the players names and the screenshot from the Moneypage.

They can't and wont do anything, even though it was submitted in a forum.

NEW STUFF
Internet discussion forums are rife with unproven allegations of non-random card dealing, possibly to favour house-employed players or "bots" (poker playing software disguised as a human opponent), or to give multiple players good hands thus increasing the bets and the rake, or simply to prevent new players from losing so quickly that they become discouraged. However, there is little more than anecdotal evidence to support such claims, and others argue that the rake is sufficiently large that such abuses would be unnecessary and foolish. Many claim to see lots of "bad beats" with large hands pitted against others all too often at a rate that seems to be a lot more common than in live games. This might actually be caused by the fact that online cardrooms deal more hands per hour: online players get to see more hands, so their likelihood of seeing more improbable bad beats or randomly large pots is also increased.
However, to date there has been at least one site, ProPoker.com, that has been found to use serverside bots that play with the knowledge of players' cards and the cards yet to be dealt. It has since been shut down, with many players losing the funds they had on the site.

Online Poker - A Quick Overview
What can you do.....?

[IFixlexus]

I played a $50 4 player headsup sit n go at Pokerstars and looked at the other table. They were talking about how they were going to split up my $50. All 3 entrants had the same city by their names too.
I didn't report it, but I should have. I won anyways. lol.

[Fictive]

I'm 100% sure there are cheaters, but it's not a big problem, at least not yet. The main problem I guess is collusion. I was about a year back blamed about colluding simply because there were 3 players in the same table from the same city as I am, and one of them happened to be a friend of mine. Three players in a table from the same city, it's very likely that at least two of us were in a pot together quite often. Naturally, I was cleared of such accusations, but collusion is something that does happen.

Then there are those bots that basically play on their own for you. There is a big thread about it in the twoplustwo forums. That can be annoying as well, but the good part about these bots is that if your at least half-decent poker player, you can beat the bots, or so I'm told.