Think you can get away with online poker fraud? Think Again.

Worried about online poker fraud, it’s obviously something that everyone that plays online poker. In the beginning the big fear was that the poker software may be open to fraud, but the bigger issue nowadays is the threat of online collusion between players.

This could happen if people shared their information on what cards they have, or if there could possibly be applications that distribute this information. The truth is that this is very unlikely in the smaller blinds but the big blind tables are always more likely to be open to this kind of collusion. Like in all things big money brings the different fraudsters into the action.

This kind of collusion is hunted down by most poker rooms as the last thing they want is to have their names tarnished or have charge backs from people who could lose money to this kind of collusion.

Online Poker fraud in tournaments is almost unheard of as the buy-ins and random allocation of players prohibits these types of activities. This is really because it is very difficult to collude on with the cards.

Fraud departments often also look at where people are playing geographically as well as the patterns that people play in. If players play together often this starts to be noted and if players play cards in ways that would usually be seen as unpredictable for card situations or bet in ways that could be seen as poker collusion they flag these tactics and will then investigate further.

The facts are really that the online poker fraud departments of the various poker rooms have your safety in mind and this is a big issue for them.
Best practices around avoiding fraud would be to go with larger poker rooms that can afford to have proper fraud departments. The other issue that should also be examined is what software the poker room is using.

There are a couple of software programs that dominate the poker rooms.

• PrimaPoker (Royal Vegas Poker)
• Crytologic (Ladbrokes)
• IGlobalMedia (Party Poker)

These software companies have dedicated fraud departments that constantly monitor the playing activities in the poker rooms. You will also find that the branded poker rooms will have fraud departments monitoring the funding activities as well as the playing activities of suspicious players.

This gives a fairly nice level of protection that really should eliminate most player collusion and as a result the online poker fraud.

joke rite?

:monsters-

As with most security - they catch the people that are not good at cheating.

I used to think that poker sites were trying to trap people that were cheating by waiting until they have stolen a LOT of money and then seize it. It's what I'd do if I were them.

But now I know that they're just incompetent. Like TwoCard said, you'll get caught only if you're bad at it.

LivingOffGamblingMoney said:

The truth is that this is very unlikely in the smaller blinds but the big blind tables are always more likely to be open to this kind of collusion.

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Anyone else get the impression that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?

Or can someone explain what this means (other than the writer being uneducated)?

I always wondered if players are on there Instant Messaging each other. That would be my fear. Although cheaters can be any age, I think it's the younger guys that think they are so smart that they can get away with cheating. With so many electronic gizmos available today, like text messaging, it's only a matter of seconds to let a partner know what teach other has.

You'd only need a telephone.

DougJ said:

You'd only need a telephone.

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Yep, and internet phone service is exploding

stuckinvegas said:

I always wondered if players are on there Instant Messaging each other. That would be my fear. Although cheaters can be any age, I think it's the younger guys that think they are so smart that they can get away with cheating. With so many electronic gizmos available today, like text messaging, it's only a matter of seconds to let a partner know what teach other has.

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The protection systems are really pathetic to prevent against this. At party poker some friends once tested how many consecutive games that two people could play together before they had their accounts suspended (were colluding by phone, but nothing terribly obvious) Stopped at 20 because it wasn't worth the BR at that point, cash out went fine. Their main protection is people throwing up red flags on other people, though I'm sure they watch the higher dollar games more carefully.

Most players are so weak that if you're competent and playing low enough limit games that making small money regularly shouldn't be a problem, though.

Check out this story. A player posted on this forum he was being slowpaid by a poker site for about $40K. At the same time the site was conducting an investigation due to irregular play on his part. The conclusion they came to was that he and another party accessed the account of an unsuspecting high-limit player and emptied his account of $40K in a few hours at a heads up $300/$600 table. They returned the ill-gotten winnings to the high-limit player, returned the scammers original deposit and banned him.


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