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