Can the world of online poker chase out the cheats?

[FictionNet]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11250835

Article on the BBC about collusion at Poker Stars.

[Anthony]

I really hope PokerStars take a proactive approach to stop this.

I saw our very own Aaron Todd was quoted:

"There are varying degrees to which collusion happens but it is pretty easy to figure out when it's going on, and it's not extremely common," says Aaron Todd, senior editor of the Casino City Times website

[TanyaEverest]

I wish this guy luck on his trip to China to try to get these players held accounted for their actions, but unfortunately, as we say with the AP/UB scandal, its most likely not going to happen.

The internet by itself is incredibly difficult to regulate. I think that unless everyone takes France's example for poker regulation OR world leaders come together to figure out how to respond to internet crimes/fraud, this will keep on happening. There's only so much an operator like PokerStars can do here-without the cooperation of the Chinese government there's nothing more that can be done to stop these guys.

[rudy7red]

it is very difficult to stop human emulation in online games, on one hand they want users to play using their browsers on the other, bots can replace and emulate any mouse movement and any keyboard stroke after calculating the best action to take

[best.hands]

The internet by itself is incredibly difficult to regulate.

This is true. I really hate cheaters and was thinking if it is possible to set them to jail when caught.

[bb1web]

If there is a live person watching as an "eye in the sky", so to speak, combined with some sort of software to cover areas that live eyes don't see, (that's probably said backwards) but anyway, between the two, it is fairly easy to spot collusion going on.

For players to spot it ... it takes a little longer and thus a smart cheat might keep moving around at a pace to stay one step ahead of being caught by common sense ... at least for a fair stretch of time. long enough to do some serious damage.

But the real problem is (MHO) not with the wittiness of the cheaters but rather with the apathy of the card rooms and worse yet, is that it is sickeningly apparent that they go out of their way to hide any sort of thing that puts their bottom line at risk of injury while at same time have proven to callously fling their customers into the line of fire as a measure to accomplish the goal of protecting themselves.

They deserve no forgiveness in my eyes. I didn't visit to see what happened at stars but that place proved to be lacking in ethics with me way back when they opened their aff program "early" and then couldn't find my sign up, despite my having double-confirmed everything with their AM before starting to promote them.

shorter story: poker stars suck and are not worthy as sponsors, the other two, are not worthy of their players and as such, shouldn't even be a consideration as sponsors.

Yet the real rub is that the players get or rather have gotten what they deserved/apparently wanted, because they now have had ample opportunity to know of the shortcomings of these mega-card rooms, and yet they choose to continue to patron them.

so who's really to be called at fault? The kids stealing candy from the store, the parents who look the other way, or the store owners allowing it because they're too incapable of showing some sack and either finding some place else to play, or abstaining until such time that some other place which IS worthy, appears on the horizon?

Poker has been such a disappointment when I consider how it could have been.

[FictionNet]

Steve, is your poor opinion of the main online poker rooms because you think they're allowing widespread collusion or are there other/additional concerns you have?

I've been playing onlind poker on and off for years and I don't seem to get much better. Offline, I do rather better. I've just put it down to me not playing particularly well online, never learning enough about pot odds and lots of players making silly calls with the sheer number of opposition leading to my many losses.

If you're giving me a reason to think that it might not all be my fault then I'm all up for that

[davenewgates]

Poker is a very good game to play, testing your skills and a little bit of luck, and cheating on this game is yet another "skill" used (or so it seems). Cheaters -- I don't like them at all. They always make a fool out of anyone who they gets to be with. But well, I believe that they will have something they just deserve. If high-end technology is used in cheating, the same can also be used to uncover them and put an end to their deeds.