[[Phill]]

I always feel safer playing online than live - even at random small sites.

To date, ive never spotted a marked card online.

Ive also never heard of people being caught colluding live, then have their bank accounts frozen and the money redistrubuted to the people they colluded against.

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Funny story from when i first started playing live - i was playing in my local casino and got talking to the regs, and the topic of someone winning a tourney at another casino in the city came up. Somehow someone mentioned how the regulars who play the tourneys in that game openly collude at final tables to ensure that people new the games dont win.

I was highly shocked, and asked why the casino did nothing to stop them softplaying each other and working to beat the "strangers" in the game instead of playing it straight up - they said there wasnt anything the floor could do and its a pretty common practice live. With the idea being to keep the funds within their circle.

Safe to say ive never played there and if i did so before finding out about this id sure as hell make sure the floor did something about it.

I also saw in a live cash game where two friends raised out a third player preflop, then chopped the pot instead of running the board (they showed they had AA and KK, so it wasnt raising out a third player with air just to chop). When i questioned one about it (the guy with AA infact) he said either they chop the pot here or they do it outside later anyway and the dealer basically accepted that there was nothing could be done about them deciding to chop - it was their decision. I told them it was bad for business and if they want to keep strangers in the game dont do it. I never saw it again but it still leaves me uncomfortable and if the third player in the hand wasnt a regular also id expect them to be extremely pissed about it.

Anyway you want to cut it, live games are WAY shadier than online. They just happen to be super juicy at the same time.