Online Poker Cheating

If you are just getting started in online poker you might wonder if cheating is common in the online poker games.

Quite often especially the people who only know poker as a game that takes place in the dark alleys between gangsters think that there is lot of cheating and scamming in online poker.

In this article we will have a look at how common cheating is in online poker, how you can recognize when cheating is happening and we will have a look some of the most common forms of online poker cheating.

Is cheating common in online poker?

The short answer is: no. However it is important to note that cheating has happened in the past in online poker games and might happen in future. These days all the big online poker sites have programs that automatically notice when cheating might be going on. Also the big online poker sites have employees whose only job is to prevent, find and stop cheating.

Online Poker Cheating Forms

Online poker collusion

Most of the cheating in online poker happens in a form of collusion. Collusion is when two or more players share information about their hands with each other in order to try to win money from the player who doesn’t belong to their collusion ring.

For an example player A might reveal to player B over a phone that he is holding pocket aces and thus the player B should stay away from that pot. The easiest way to spot is collusion is to stay aware of weird betting patterns between players.

If you notice the same players always sitting in the same table, and especially if they are from the same location you should be especially cautious. If you suspect there is collusion going on in a game you should immediately contact the poker site’s support.

Online poker bots

Maybe the second most common way of online poker cheating is using bots. Bots are computer programs that can play poker on their own. The person who has coded the online poker bot has given the program instructions for every single situation that might arise.

So it will know what to do when you for an example raise on turn and it has pocket 99 on 8KT3 board. These days it appears that the bots are only available to beat the limit poker games, such as fixed limit holdem headsup.

There have been cases where the bot has been able to beat even the $100/$200 headsup games. In past bots have played at least at FullTiltPoker.com and UltimateBet.com. However, at least FullTiltPoker.com appears to have taken drastic steps to get rid of the bots. When they spot a bot in their games they immediately close the owners FullTiltPoker.com account and confiscate the funds that were on the account.

How can you spot an online poker bot? Some signs that you might be playing against a bot include, the opponent always taking the exact same time before decision, the opponent never using the chat and the opponent playing the games non stop for hours without any breaks. If you suspect that you are playing against a bot you should contact the customer service right away.

Other ways to cheat in online poker

These two forms are by far the most common forms of cheating in online poker. Besides them there have also been some cases where poker players have managed to get a virus on their computer that sent information about their cards to the opponent.

This has happened mostly when poker players have exchanged their instant messenger information and then the other players has sent the other player a file that contained a virus. And at least at UltimateBet.com poker site there was a software glitch that allowed so called superusers to see their opponent’s cards.

These superusers won millions at UltimateBet.com before they were detected. The superusers scandal got lot of attention in the main stream media and in the end UltimateBet.com paid refunded the poker players over $20million.

All in all playing online poker is fairly safe and you shouldn’t worry too much about the risk of being cheated. After all the poker sites are highly motivated to eliminate all the cheating and do everything not to have cheaters on their site.

If you doubt that they actually care about cheating, just remember that the poker sites get their income from rake and if players can’t trust the site they wont play there and the sites wont get any rake.