How many pokerooms cheat? [modnote: read the OP]

[T Kiriakopoulos]

I disagree that it is independent hackers (not working for the casinos) who see the hole cards of others. Because most of my losses happened because they were getting very lucky when I had a strong hand. And not so much because they were folding when I had a strong hand.

Besides, if it was the case of independent hackers, the casinos would make the best of their efforts to watch all games and freeze quickly the accounts of all suspects i.e. strange winners. It would be of their interest to do so. Therefore it would rarely happen to be cheated by hackers. All players are hackers? Very rare bad luck keeps happening all the time, against all opponents. Strong hands keep costing you money, whereas the opposite should happen in the long run (as when played by an average player, they have an expected value much higher that the max 5% of the rake). This could only happen if the casino FORCES a BALANCE of the amounts that players win and lose between them, so that in the long run all the money goes to the rake. Because it is the conservative players who play only strong hands, that have an edge over the rest of the players. Because if this was not the case, and instead all players were betting and folding with the same preflop and flop hands, then this BALANCE would happen anyway (no matter how great poker player you are, if the other players are folding the same preflop and flop cards you fold too, you cannot have an edge over them greater than the 5% rake), therefore in the long run all the money of all players would anyway go to the rake, therefore the casinos would have no reason to cheat, and we would not observe the phenomenon that strong hands get very rare bad luck all the time.

Perhaps sometimes they use the more quick method of a “player” who’s money is the casino’s, who keeps winning. This “player” could be either an employee or a computer bot. But the method of the enforced BALANCE is more difficult to be statistically identified as cheating.