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Poker Collusion and Cheating

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 by Phil

These poker sites are well policed and any reports of collusion are taken seriously and acted upon quickly. Check out the details below.

• Full Tilt Poker – Full Tilt has one fo the largest poker security teams in the online poker world. Check out my review of Full Tilt for more information about the website
• Full Tilt Review

• Pokerstars – Pokerstars has several ongoing efforts to try and prevent colluison at the table. They are located on an independant network and it has some of the best poker site security that you wil find anywhere.
• Pokerstars Review

Collusion in Poker

There is a lot of people worried about getting cheating while they are playing online poker, so this page discusses some of the different methods that online players use to cheat, how to spot them, and what to do if you think someone is cheating.The most common form of cheating that poker players should be worried about is collusion. To be honest, players will attempt this in all sorts of different game types and game structures. The most dangerous place to face collusion is in a shorthanded limit Hold’em cash game. As you start to add more players to a table and move over to a no-limit structure, collusion becomes less profitable and even detrimental at some points. In a no limit game, collusion can be tough to sustain because 1 wrong move can cost you a lot of cash, and there is seldom a sure thing in no-limit poker.

In a limit game, 2 players who are colluding can increase the amount of money that an unaware player has to put into the pot when one of the colluders has a big hand. This is usually done by sandwiching or squeezing the unaware player.

If you think that players are colluding at your table, you should send an email to the security team at the poker site you are playing on with information such as hand numbers, player names, details of what action caused you to think there was collusion, any table chat involved etc.

Some sites like Pokerstars have a designated email address that you can send an email to if you suspect there is cheating at the table. Emails to this address are made a priority and this can get a support member to your table within minutes often.

If you are interested in how poker sites detect collusion, check out my article on Secure Poker Sites

The Absolute Poker Scandal

A players worst nightmare is that another player at their table is able to see their hole cards. This is virtually impossible on the sites that are listed on Big Edge Poker, but I can’t say that it’s never happened anywhere else. There is a well documented case on Absulute Poker/Ultimate Bet where a corrupt employee(s) were able to cheat several players out of millions of dollars by using inside access at the company. While using an old account created by the security team when the site first launched, it was possible to see the hole cards of other players at the table.

This is isn’t something that you need to worry about as a poker player, as I stated it’s not really possible for this to happen at any of the poker sites listed here on Big Edge. These poker sites never had these types of security accounts so you don’t need to worry about the wrong person gaining access to this information. In addition, information about your hole cards is never sent to any other player’s comnputer at any point in time.

Multi-Accounting in Online Tournaments

The next type of cheating that you might find online is multi-accounting. If this is done in a cash game or sit’n go, this is often just like collusion. However, this is something that has gotten very hard to do now because the poker sites are pretty good at detecting multi-accounters.

There have been several instances such as with poker player Justin bonomo, where he was entering several accounts into the same multi-table tournaments. This wasn’t done with the intention of getting the accounts to sit at the same table as one another, but this was done just to have more equity in overlay tournaments and a bigger chance of getting deep into each of the big tournaments.

It can be tough for a player to identify a multi-accounter unless they are using 2 accounts to collude against a table. However, this is something that is monitored pretty vigilantly by the poker sites. The sites check IP addresses, look at who is sending money to who etc. The poker site’s methods of detecting multi-accounters are not all disclosed to the public, but their efforts are pretty extensive because they seem to have caught a lot of people with multiple accounts over the last few years.

Collusion in Euchre on the Merge Network

If you are playing in the Euchre games on Aced.com or the Carbon poker site (both on the Merge Network), you should always be on the lookout for collusion. The sites set the game up in a way that makes it hard to match up with a partner if you are trying to collude, but it is not impossible. Here is a couple of the steps taken in designing the game to prevent collusion:

• There is no chat at the table.
• You cant see your partners screen name or anyone elses screen name.
• Partners are assigned at random.
• You cant see how many people are registered at the table when you are about to register, making it harder to coordinate your entry into the game with a potential collusion partner.

It can be hard to get onto the same team as your partner because of these efforts, but its still not unheard of. The krux of the situation is that if you don’t understand how to play Euchre really well, you might not be able to spot a cheater. But if you understand the game and you think you might be against a couple of players who are colluding, you will be able to figure it out for sure by the end of the match.

If this happens, just note all the game details as you always should when you suspect collusion, but good luck explaining it to the support staff, because none of them are going to understand what you are talking about when you tell them why you know that these players are cheating. It takes a good understanding of how to play the game. The suspicion usually arises when a player orders up a suit to be trump, but they have absolute garbage cards for that suit, meanwhile their opponent has the right and left bowers with the AKQ. This is usually the first sign that you are against colluders.