Collusion in poker - can it actually acomplish anything?

[gotmarc]

Here’s the thing. My uncle used to play poker “professionally,” as he would say. During the 70’s and 80’s he earned his living playing low-ball. According to him, California did not allow games with any cards turned face up. Therefore he didn't play games such as hold ‘em or seven card stud. Mostly, he played in Northern, CA casinos but occasionally flew to Vegas or the greater Los Angeles area to take down jackpots. They would go so far as to actually have inside team members working with them to introduce cold decks into a game.
Obviously with the new advances in security and the way the deck is shuffled some of these tactics are no longer possible, however my Uncle’s bread and butter was basically collusion. He said they only played the 3-6 games and above which compared to today’s betting structures seem like micro-limits, and he made a low six figure income. Granted he was doing more cheating then this, things were different back then, but asking if collusion has positive EV is like asking if the casino’s rake has a positive expected value. You can’t use the same calculations for drawing out with two cards when your team has six, eight, or ten cards. Play a low limit play money online games and wait for pocket aces. Raise and raise and raise against the un-thiniing field. When no one folds it's more likely that two pair will suck out those rockets. Lee Jones calls this implicit collusion. When people do it intinitonally via signals, they're going to win more often than not.
Now he’s a born again Christian, CPA and drug and alcohol counselor. He says gambling was one of his many addictions at the time. When I brought up the possibility of playing online straight up (on the square as he calls it) He said he thinks it would be to easy for others to cheat. I understand the poker sites have protections in place to avoid such scams. I would imagine they track betting patterns. Then again, such an aggressive game might be easily recognizable as too tough to beat anyway and I could just leave because another table is only a double click away. Is this something to worry about or am I just spooked by ghosts of poker’s past? My guess is some people still try it, and According to my uncle the most important thing to do if you want to play “on the square” is to keep an eye out for the cheaters.

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I believe if done correctly, collusion could be very profitable.

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Fair enough. Of course, the proof's in the pudding. How would YOU do it correctly so that it would be profitable?

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Please dont share information like this in a public forum.

[SplawnDarts]

Just to be clear, I'm not interested in cheating stories. Obviously flash, cold decks, invisible ink & contacts, mirrors etc have the potential to be devastating. I'm only interested in collusion in an otherwise clean game.

[SplawnDarts]

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The only point I don't agree with is the part about always facing the best hand from the colluders. While that's technically true, they're putting in N times the blinds. They're paying full price for the privledge of seeing N hands, so they damn well better get some edge for it. Otherwise they'd get butchered completely.

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They are paying the same 'price per hand' as you are.

How do you get a 'discount'?

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My point is simply that in all ring games, my opponents collectively have a good chance of having a stronger opening hand than me. That's not collusion. It's just the mathematics of the game. Opening strategy in any game is simply a mechanism for dealing with that in a profitable way.

[Red_Diamond]

I believe the online security thing is greatly over-rated. Of course online sites WANT you to believe this. They can't maximize their clients if players don't feel safe. Whether they have a good system in place or not doens't matter, they are simply going to make out as though they do in every case.

Very rarely do I remember people getting caught (by software methods) for collusion, and other unethical practices. Oh yes, there have been some prestigious events where say, JJ_Prodigy got caught with multiple aliases, etc. But lets be frank, he only got caught because he bragged to his friend right after, who bragged on a forum, then someone noticed there was a discreptancy amoungst the aliases. Then poof... the cat is out of the bag.