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Tracking Online Cheaters in Poker
prostoalex writes "MSNBC has a special report on discovering online cheats at AbsolutePoker.com. A Costa Rican company belonging to a Canadian tribe at first denied all the accusations of any cheating going on, but after Serge Ravitch made a scrupulous analysis of the games' events, the reputation of AbsolutePoker.com was at stake. A detailed log file provided investigators with necessary details: an employee and partial owner of the site was one of the players involved, and having direct access to other players' cards allowed him to improve his game substantially."
Is anyone surprised? Off-shore gambling sites have no real oversight whatsoever as far as I know (unless Vegas, et.al.). Of COURSE people are going to get ripped off. As much as gambling on the cards, people are gambling on the site itself - and in this case - the guilty parties were gambling that no one would notice. Gambling all the way around. This is just one of many reasons why the U.S. is just out and out foolish to continue banning on-line gaming, when instead, it could bring it to shore, charge gazillions for licenses, tax the proceeds (for both the house and the gamers), and as an added bonus, enact various certification and oversight requirements that would provide some measure of protection while allowing government to do what it does best - grow even larger.
The problem is that as you move higher and higher stakes there are increasingly few players so it is easier and easier to get you and your friend on the same table. Assuming you and your friend are at least no worse than the average player of that level, it has to be the case that you'd win if you collude, so the only thing that holds you back is your capital. I believe the statistics say that the knowledge of 2 extra cards is basically insurmountable over the long run in poker. And in online there's nothing stopping me from calling my friend and say I got these cards, what do you got? And there's no way anyone can catch that. If you try to cheat in a real casino, people would eventually notice. But that isn't possible for online.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
In both online and offline poker, the biggest clues to your opponents are *not* facial or body language tells. Those are too easy to fake. The real clues are betting patterns and logic. Those are not only obvious online, they're easier to spot. Bots are actually fairly easy to beat, they can't use second order logic (playing your opponents tendencies, not just your cards)
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
To gain an advantage, eventually you have to make a move that would otherwise not make sense. Make enough of these moves, and people begin to notice.
Online poker sites keep records of every hand that is played for money. They can go back and check hand histories to look for collusion. Most the time the people doing it are quite amateur, and their play reveals what they are doing. The hand histories of online poker sites theoretically make it much easier to catch collusion online than in B&M poker.
It's much easier to catch colluding cheats online than in a live game.
Online poker sites have vast quantities of forensic evidence - complete hand histories, including the actions and hole cards of all players involved, for every hand ever played. Easy to datamine for suspicious patterns, and sites like PokerStars have people doing that full time. Surveillance video of live games isn't as complete, isn't stored for as long, doesn't include hole card data, and is vastly more difficult to review.
I routinely play for thousands of dollars both live and online. I'm not too concerned about being cheated in either, but I'm more concerned about the live games than the online ones on trusted sites.
Here is my reservation with online poker - what if instead of a table of bots, you were playing a single bot holding 4 hands? The bot still doesn't have perfect information, but can now factor in all of the cards from all hands that it sees. For that matter, what keeps a human player from starting a 2nd account and playing two hands at the same table?
In a real casino, you don't play against the house in poker, you play against the other player. The casino takes a cut of the rake for providing the atmosphere, the table, and the dealer. As in onlone and "analog" play, it is in the casino's best interest to ensure fair play at a poker table. If players don't feel the play is fair, they'll go somewhere else, and if they go somewhere else, the other players will follow the action. As far as table games go, where you are playing against the house, why is it 'cheating" when the casino provides a game that statistically you are bound to lose, and yet you still play? Disclaimer, I work in the Casino indistry, but I also know better to play the games, because the odds aren't in my favor.
And from what I understand there are tons of college kids that do just that. Get 4 guys with different ips and just voice chat. You'll rape everyone else at the table.
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