It would be unfair to say scamming, or other forms of cheating are commonplace in online poker markets. But it would also be untrue to say they are rare. As we continue on this topic you might also want to take a look at my write-up about the safety of online poker as well. As poker looks for its rebound, collusion will always be the biggest problem but in some cases you can take action. See below for more on collusion.
Online poker and other forms of online gambling in the United States and across the world are still rather young, especially compared to older forms of gambling. The history of Internet poker started back in 1998 with Planet Poker. Planet Poker was the first real-money cardroom[A] and took their first clients on Jan 1st, 1998, dealing a game of $3–$6 limit Texas Hold’em to a few select customers. The site continued growing from there.
The industry truly took off during the period of 2003 to 2006, which is known as the “Poker Boom”[B]. In these years, the number of online poker players grew exponentially, repeatedly doubling, year after year. However, due to the passage of the UIGEA[C] later that year and the US government’s crackdown on Internet gambling, the industry’s growth has been stifled.
While the brick-and-mortar casino industry has been around for at least 50 years in the United States and even longer in other countries, online poker still remains in its discovery phase.
Lock Poker is an unfortunately a recent throwback to the dark days of online poker. The site went down in April 2015 after two years of complaints from players over lack of payment. According to reports, the site hadn’t processed payments to players for a year prior to their closure. The US Department of Justice succeeded in taking the 3 largest US-facing online poker operators offline, leaving them no leverage. Arguably the most significant day in online poker history April 15, 2011 is now popularly referred to as poker’s “Black Friday” due to the industry-shattering actions taken by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). Since 2001, PokerStars has been among the many most outstanding on-line poker manufacturers. The corporate was one of many driving components within the meteoric success of its younger business, and all the time supplied robust safety measures and buyer assist. PokerStars had a robust status ten years in the past, however that every one started. Helping players avoid online casino scams since 2003 with trusted and approved online casino reviews and accurate news reports. Responsible Gambling: Please note that by accessing Casino Players Report website and its contents, you are agreeing that you are 18 years or older.
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Even in the now-regulated online poker markets of New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada, there have been lots of hiccups for both regulators and players. The offshore world is ahead of them in many aspects, but not in terms of regulatory oversight.
What is Collusion and Does it Happen
This is the most common form of cheating by players. Since using sleight of hand, bottom dealing, stacking the deck or marking cards isn’t possible in online poker – wannabe cheaters must resort to colluding.
In online poker, collusion is when two or more players are working together with a clandestine but common strategy. This can be as simple as two players soft-playing each other, which if they’re playing heads-up, has little effect on others players. It is essentially two friends “checking down” a pot in a live game. This form of collusion is generally harmless.
However, more advanced forms of players can cost unsuspecting players a lot of money. Professional-level cheats, even in online poker markets, have taken unsuspecting players for tens of thousands of dollars.
Their tactics can go from trapping players with raises and re-raises, which forces them to fold or rethink their hand, to losing to each other so as to not arise suspicion. Heck, players can even talk to each other through an instant messaging service, like Facebook Chat or Skype. Bovada created an ‘anonymous’ pattern and while I believe they are the best site for safety concerns, it won’t stop collusion. A lot of the inside knowledge is shared at poker training sites that are legit (our top list).
They can also disguise themselves by using different IP address or creating multiple accounts and playing under different aliases, which is known as “multi-accounting”. This allows players to play multiple hands and go undetected.
Do You Suspect Collusion?
Collusion at online poker websites isn’t exactly commonplace, but the threat of being colluded against, especially in middle- to high-stakes games, is very real. How sites and networks handle collusion or how proactive they are at spotting it varies wildly, depending on the poker room.
Ideally, each room would have a security team that is heavily dedicated to stopping collusion on all fronts. Players who engage in collusion at the higher levels can be extremely sophisticated and organized. For this reason, it’s vital for operators to be vigilant against collusion and thoroughly investigate claims made by players.
If you’re playing and suspect collusion, immediately email or call support. Email any available hand histories where you suspect collusion is taking place as well. It should also go without saying that you should stop playing against those opponents. There’s no need to berate the suspects in the chat – just report the incident to support.
It may be worth posting on a public forum to warn others of the suspected collusion and to publicly post the correspondence with the poker room’s management and security. Additionally, posting hand histories so that others can review them is another common option.
However, you should remember that many players are quick to blame their losses on collusion when they’re getting beat by a particular opponent(s). In the vast majority of cases, collusion isn’t the reason why you’re losing. In most cases, you’re likely losing to said players because they’re simply better than you. Nonetheless, if you detect strange patterns in play against certain opponents, there may be a reason for concern, and you should report it.
What Are Regulated vs. Unregulated Poker Sites
Once you report suspected collusion to poker room management, it’s up to them to decide how far to go with their investigation. As described above, it would be great if each room vigorously investigated incidents of collusion, but that is just not the case.
In regulated and legal markets, like those in most of Western Europe and now in the states of New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada, these claims are almost always taken seriously. There are stringent gaming commission requirements in these jurisdictions, and the poker sites have to answer to regulators.
Nevada and New Jersey have stiff penalties for collusion[D], which is, of course, a form of cheating. Nevada has taken all of their brick-and-mortar gaming laws and applied them online, which means players caught cheating could face a category B felony in the state for their first offense. This could amount to 1–6 years in prison (and/or $10,000 in fines) and additional restitution to the casino.
In regulated markets, instances of collusion will almost always be dealt with appropriately. Once management has completed their investigation, those who are guilty of collusion will usually be barred from the site permanently, and their funds will be confiscated and distributed to player(s) who were victims of their scam.
In theory, this is how it should also work in unregulated markets. However, while some sites will do their due diligence when it comes to investing claims of collusion, many unregulated rooms don’t take the matter too seriously. Or they pretend that they do, only paying lip service to players but in reality doing little to stop collusion or investigate claims of cheating.
Though most of these sites are licensed in their home countries, many of these seals or regulatory bodies are mere formalities. While they occasionally revoke the licenses of serial offenders, for the most part, they have little or no knowledge of a site’s finances or day-to-day operations.
Collusion is much more likely to occur in offshore markets, for this reason. The oversight just isn’t there, and many sites don’t investigate claims adequately.
For instance, still one of the largest US-facing sites, Merge Gaming (Carbon Poker) had a cheating scam back in 2012. The evidence was undeniable. There was chip dumping and collusion going on, but Merge investigated the matter in only 12 hours and determined there was no wrongdoing.
After revisiting the matter and the 2+2 Forum providing more proof, Merge reopened their investigation. The room never made an official announcement, but the cheating stopped, and the accounts in question were never seen again. It’s unclear whether Merge banned the accounts and confiscated the funds or whether the cheaters simply stopped when discovered. The victims of the cheaters never did receive compensation for being cheated, which would be the only fair outcome if Merge indeed banned the players and seized their funds. Judging by their investigation into the matter, it’s tough to have much confidence in their security team when it comes to stopping collusion and investigating issues that players bring to their attention.
Other US-facing unregulated and offshore sites have faced similar allegations of collusion. This isn’t to say there’s collusion going on unchecked at all unregulated sites. Some are better than others. Overall though, sites in regulated poker markets do a much better job catching collision and other forms of cheating.
Checks Bouncing or Nothing Coming from Poker Websites
Not being paid when you request a withdrawal from an online gambling site is a situation many players have experienced. Like our example of collusion, there is a stark difference between regulated and unregulated markets.
For instance, during the “Black Friday” debacle in 2011, Full Tilt Poker went insolvent after the US Department of Justice’s seizures and indictments. PokerStars came to an agreement with the DOJ[E] to bail out Full Tilt Poker’s players and payout balances over a year later, but US customers still had to wait over 2.5 years to have their funds returned to them.
And they were lucky. Absolute Poker and UltimateBet (Cereus Poker Network) players are currently out hundreds of millions after Black Friday, and there’s almost no hope of being repaid.
Of course, the vast majority of players who play at unregulated or offshore online poker rooms don’t end up in this situation. But the cold reality is that there is little players can do in a dispute with an unregulated poker operator. Other than shaming them on poker forums and emailing and calling their support staff relentlessly to get paid – players are mostly helpless. There have been forum posts for years about suing sites that wronged players and run off with bankrolls or went insolvent, but I’ve yet to hear of one of these lawsuits proceeding, let alone succeeding.
Even in regulated climates, it can take a long time to get restitution from a site that goes bust or runs off with player funds, but at least players have legal protections and a court system to work within.
If you’re playing in a state that has online gambling regulated on the intrastate level, (Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey), you can be absolutely sure that you will be paid. From a legal perspective, state-regulated online poker in the United States is no different than playing at a traditional brick-and-mortar casino.
If a site fails to pay players or doesn’t meet the specific regulatory standards mandated by government – they will lose their license.
In Conclusion
Getting scammed or cheated in online poker isn’t commonplace. Even in unregulated offshore markets, the vast majority of players are not being taken advantage of and are paid within the appropriate time-frame when they request a withdrawal. Spin palace mobile casino.
In regulated markets, the security in terms of collusion and the allotment of player funds is much better. Currently, that can only be done in the three states listed above. Legislation has been introduced in dozens of other states, and these numbers are expected to grow as the years go by.
For now, playing at unlicensed sites is the only option for most Americans, and it’s still a viable one. The best way to not get scammed or ripped off is to keep up with recent news and be aware of your opponents’ and their play patterns.
Author:Joseph Falchetti (twitter)
(C) Copyright PokerWebsites.com, 2018
(C) Copyright PokerWebsites.com, 2018
References and Citations
During the coming months I will be playing online poker at all the big poker sites to once and for all determine if indeed online poker is a scam or it is exactly the same as poker being played with real cards and real people. There are many people who have played online poker and lost money and therefore there are obviously a lot of sore losers out there who immediately shout ‘scam’, so have these people really been scammed or are they just gamblers who are annoyed at losing their money ?
Well first of all poker is gambling – despite what all the experts and the pros tell you and all those glossy advertisements on TV – if you put money down at a poker table then you are gambling – it’s as simple as that – if you cannot afford to lose the money then you should not play.
I am not a professional poker player by any means – however I can tell you that I have played at real tables and with real cards and I have also played online with computer algorithms deciding on the cards and with what the poker room makes out as real people. Whether or not these are all real people or that there are other people seeing the cards we will never truly know, because a gaming websites purpose is to make money and therefore it is quite possible for any website to get up to all kinds of hidden or illegal activity in order to do so, in fact already no less than 3 of the biggest online poker sites have been found guilty of illegal activities, these include Poker Stars who had to pay back $731 million and $547 million and Full Tilt Poker who the prosecution described as a “global Ponzi scheme,”, both were both charged with civil bank fraud and money-laundering. Now would you trust such a company to behave with absolute integrity when it comes down to dealing virtual cards ? especially when the entire online system can be so easily manipulated as opposed to real cards which even though cheating may occur is much more difficult to do and much more easy to spot.
Next we have the case of Absolute Poker – this website had to close down because staff were found out to have been cheating – some staff had accounts and were actively playing but were able to see all the cards of all the other players at the table – thereby giving them an enormous advantage and impossible to beat. The scam had been operating for 3 years until it got uncovered by suspicious players. Wild vegas mobile casino.
So bearing all this in mind would it actually be any surprise that all online poker was in fact nothing but a scam ?
Is Party Poker a Scam ?
Over the last 8 weeks I have been playing poker online at Party Poker and my experience has undoubtedly led me to believe that YES – online poker is nothing but one huge scam – so what has led me to this conclusion ?
Well first of all, I have not deposited any money with Party Poker – simply because if I cannot win in the freeroll tournaments then what chance would I have in a real tournament with real money where more scamming undoubtedly occurs.
So I played the freeroll tournaments and I played them hard – in fact I have played around 4 or 5 everyday for the last 8 weeks and I have to say that there is absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that this website is undoubtedly impossible to win on.
I have played poker at real tables and yes, from time to time someone gets lucky, they bet more than they should but they hit their card and it pays off, but the thing about real poker is that over many hands the odds do justify themselves – for example if you had two aces you are a huge favourite to win the hand and therefore you can raise preflop knowing that over the long run you will get a good return – however with online poker it seems that these long term odds do not exist at all and every hand seems to be a complete gamble. You simply would not believe the sheer amount of hands where I bet when I was well in front and people called but needed one of only 3 or 4 outs that could save them – they put money into the pot at well below the odds that they were getting in real time and yet somehow managed to hit that card. I could provide hundreds of examples of this – which funnily enough always seems to happen when you get into the latter stages of these freeroll tournaments and will earn more than a few dollars. Yes we are not talking about a lot of money here – but considering Party Poker site says they are giving away around $10,000 dollars per day then over a couple of months that is a heck of a lot of money for any company to give away – hense it becomes pretty apparent, (especially with the track record of other poker sites in the past) that perhaps they are not really giving this money away at all – after all the bulk of this free money goes to the top 4 or 5 players in each tournament leaving the rest with a couple of bucks or even just a few cents.
Now I have by now played around 200+ of these freeroll tournaments, which range from from having anything from $50 to $5000 in prize money and every single time the exact same thing has happened and in many cases some players seem to do everything exactly right and some hands that occur just seem so out of place that alarm bells ring – let me give you just one example and tell you which the hand was so suspicious.
First of all we are in the latter stages of a tournament that over 14,000 people have played, there are just under 200 people left and I have been playing for coming up to 4 hours. My stack is getting low considering other stacks and I am dealt a pair of kings (KK). I am first to act, the blinds are at 10,000/5000 and I have got about 155,000 chips. I decided to go for it and I go all in, afterall the blinds and antes are eating away at my stack and I may never get a better chance, I am snap called by the person next to me who has 13,000 chips (lets call him John), others fold and then another person at the table who has 167,000 chips surprisingly calls after a delay of about 40 seconds.(call him Fred)
The cards show this
My hand KK, John QQ and Fred 42, YES you read right – we are in the latter stages of a tournament and Fred has gone all in with 42 after two previously players showed obviously strength by putting their entire stacks at risk with what can any poker player must read as a very very strong hand.
The flop comes out 242 the turn 6 and the river 8, giving Fred a full house !
Now we can sit here all day long saying that Fred was lucky, he went for it and he won – afterall he still does have a 17% chance of winning – so what is suspicious then ?
Well first of all despite how good or bad Fred is at poker there is no poker player in the world who has any experience of playing poker who would even consider calling such a bet, so to me that totally rules out the possibility that Fred is a good poker player, no good poker player would ever have called that bet, if they went around calling bets like this then they would lose every penny that had within minutes and would be relying purely on sheer luck to win any hand. So…. maybe Fred was just a bad player who got lucky – well like I said we are at the latter stages of a tournament, if Fred was calling bets like this then it is without question that he must have been calling similar bets over the last 4 hours – there is absolutely no way that he could be this lucky – it’s simply beyond the realm of logic. Let’s not forget he was willing to risk his entire stack that took him over 4 hours to build up on one single hand of 42 – after 2 other players showing huge strength so surely he must have been involved in many other hands and called many similar all ins and big bets when being well behind, so to amass 167,000 chips from a starting stack of 3000 he must have had more luck than someone who won the lottery 2 weeks on the trot then dug up a hoard of roman coins in his back garden while hitting an oil well at the same time.
And then there’s the time delays, I have noticed than on many many many occasions when you go all in many players seem to take ages just to decide on their next move and more often that not when you are called they are always well behind but hit silly cards like running suits to make a flush or two cards to make a straight.
Now let’s not forget, I am talking about one single hand alone here – but just looking at this hand and the way it played out, looking into the chances of the player either being good or bad or just plain lucky, we can easily see that beyond doubt something suspicious is happening, simply because this hand will never ever happen in a real game.
Wsop Online Poker Scam
Cast for cash. Now I am not judging Party Poker as scammers simply because of this one hand – but when this same thing has happened to me at hundreds of times – nearly always in a hand that will take all my chips, often at the latter stages of a tournament and always in a hand when the other person is far behind calling with a hand that no decent poker player would consider betting/calling with and often after a long delay before calling – then it really does become blatantly obvious that Party Poker is nothing but a complete scam – there is simply no way on earth that this can happen once on a real poker table – let alone over and over and over and over again.
This is my experience of Party Poker, if you are considering joining this site – or in fact any poker site whatsoever then I urge you to think again. I have provided you with evidence that three big poker sites were involved in illegal activities and I have tried to explain my experience with Party Poker, choose to ignore my advice at your peril because in my opinion these sites are set up simply to fleece you of your money and it has already been proven on more than one occasion that some people playing online poker are employees of the company who can see the cards.
If you really want to play poker and you want to be sure that you are playing in a safe, trustworthy and fair environment then simply look for some low stakes local poker clubs, and if you manage to enjoy it and not lose too much or perhaps even consider yourself good enough to raise the stakes then at least you can do so fairly safe in the knowledge that you will be getting the correct mathematic returns for the decisions you make based on the cards you have been dealt and that the chance of anybody seeing your cards or fixing the hand are kept to an absolute minimal.
Thank you for reading my blog and please, please if you like this article and want to spread the word and the truth about online poker scams then please do bookmark my site, twitter and facebook it etc, thanks, I need readers to do this so that the site will appear higher in search results – because more results for online poker scam, party poker scam etc are from sites that actually just want to tell you there is no scam and cohease you to join up through their affiliate links, meaning they actually make money by you getting fleeced, so don’t trust these sites at all they have a conflict of interests and will always only ever tell you things they want you believe in order to get you to sign up
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Thank You.
Online Blackjack Scams
Paul