If you are here thinking I am going to teach how to cheat, get lost. I do not cheat – unless I am playing computer games against the AI. Moreover, if I knew how to cheat at poker and win consistently, do you think I would actually tell you? When it comes to cheating at poker, the types of cheating action are different:
l Minor cheating: Most common online is where friends at an online table tell each other their hole cards over the phone or by IM. They do not share a bankroll or actively strategize together.
l Idiot cheating: Done by lone operators who are also idiots, and are caught in the act regularly. Nowadays, cardrooms fold hands when a player times out so these people are a dying breed.
l Inept colluders: A partnership or team of cheaters who work together is so obvious a fashion that they get busted fast and easy
l Expert Colluders: These are the bane of honest poker players everywhere. These people are the ones behind “playing the same online game with two accounts.”
Like any real cardroom or casino, the online cardrooms absolutely hate cheaters. With good reason: Everyone loses money. Not just the cardroom as players have a “once burned, twice shy mentality.” You fall for some swindle: Would you go back there?
Fortunately, online cardrooms have it easier to prove collusion and cheating because they have all the hand histories of players available to them, in addition to the usual and not so usual anti cheat and collusion detection systems from the “in-your-face” to the very subtle.
Fortunately, minor cheating is just that, and it will rarely have adverse effects on game play. Idiot cheaters and inept colluders are an apt demonstration of natural selection: They are dumb, the get caught and flushed quickly. Because there are records of every hand drawn, dealt, and folded, online card rooms such as pokerstars cheat can also better track of some of the most common scams such as playing two players at the same table, or “whipsawing” an opponent (raising rapidly forcing other players to call to stay in when one has the nut hand). Most of these kinds of cheaters get caught because they are too greedy and therefore too stupid to avoid detection.
This works against even the experts who cheat, lie and steal to make a living. However, to stamp out the cheaters, the best weapon is the eternal vigilance of the honest player. Because online cardrooms track, record and monitor everything, suspicion will lead to investigations. If there is proof, it is in the digital record. Cheating is a part of any game, and the best weapon to keep your money out of the hands of the scum is to speak up to the authorities when something really gnaws a hole in you.
The more scum you flush down the toilet where they belong, the more money is there for the honest players, regardless of skill. Bottom line: squashing cheaters is a poker skill.