Online Poker and Cheating

Firstly if your looking here to find ways to cheat while playing online poker. Turn away now this article is not for you nor does Chipslider approve of such acts.

As with other forms of online gambling, many critics question whether the operators of such games - especially those located in jurisdictions separate from most of their players - might be engaging in fraud themselves.

Internet discussion forums are rife with unproven allegations of non-random card dealing, possibly to favour house-employed players or "bots" (poker playing software disguised as a human opponent), or to give multiple players good hands thus increasing the bets and the rake, or simply to prevent new players from losing so quickly that they become discouraged. However, there is little more than anecdotal evidence to support such claims, and others argue that the rake is sufficiently large that such abuses would be unnecessary and foolish. Many claim to see lots of "bad beats" with large hands pitted against others all too often at a rate that seems to be a lot more common than in live games. This might actually be caused by the fact that online cardrooms deal more hands per hour: online players get to see more hands, so their likelihood of seeing more improbable bad beats or randomly large pots is also increased.

However, to date there has been at least one site, ProPoker.com, that has been found to use serverside bots that play with the knowledge of players' cards and the cards yet to be dealt. It has since been shut down, with many players losing the funds they had on the site.

Many online poker sites are certified by bodies such as the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, and major auditing firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers review the fairness of the random number generator, shuffle, and payouts for some sites.

In general, it should be noted that with the rakes and tournament fees that are nearly universal in the online poker universe, there is plenty of profit available in operating completely fair games. One assumes that the most reputable and largest online poker rooms have much more to gain by offering the fairest game possible than through any sort of deception.