Online Cheating (What Do You Think?)

Baby Mantis · #1 07-12-2007, 11:36 PM

I have been playing online poker and B&M recreationally for about 4 years now. My Question is that I have recently read the book "Dirty Poker", by Richard Marcus. If you are familiar with it then you know it is about cheating both online and B&M. I was wondering if any of you fellow 2+2ers have had any experience with being cheated (or I guess if you are willing to admit it doing the cheating). He discusses people cheating online with programs called "peeker", that allows people to see all of their opponents hole cards. I would say collusion goes on a lot, but I was mainly wondering if anyone out there had heard of peeker or any similar programs and how prevelent cheating was that they knew of. Also any cheating that I have not mentioned and how cautious or worried you are about being cheated.

C-ya

Baby Mantis · #2 07-12-2007, 11:39 PM

Also would like to know if any of you have read the book and if you think Marcus knows his s.hit or is just full of it.

ReverandRon · #3 07-13-2007, 01:43 AM

I'd really be surprised if there were no cheating. I mean let's be real. Computer "hackers" and other assorted "computer Geeks" can do just about anything they want with computer systems. And another thing. All of these sites are offshore so theres no oversite what so ever. I played on the internet on several different sites for several months and I lost several hundred dollars and got beat in ways I would have never thought possible. It just wasn't the same as live poker. And I've played in brick and mortor casinos for years and I know the difference.

Peleus · #4 07-13-2007, 01:56 AM

Firstly, programs such as this are full of crap, they cannot see hole cards, and pretty much all the sites are secure enough now to avoid computer cheating.

Online collusion is a completely different matter, however there are steps involved in this to prevent it as well.

Harv72b · #5 07-13-2007, 06:30 AM

I haven't read the book. I probably will eventually.

I'm very skeptical about any program which claims to reveal opponents' hole cards in real time online. I've read numerous posts in other 2+2 forums demonstrating why it would be nearly impossible to accomplish on the major sites, but I don't have anything close to the computer knowledge necessary to repeat any of it. It's just not something that I worry about, and not something that I have ever even remotely suspected any opponents of doing.

Collusion in online games is a bit more of a problem, though. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if I log on to XYZ Poker and sit at Table Q, you log on to XYZ Poker and sit at Table Q, and we then open up an IM box or get on the phone together, we can collude by sharing our hole cards. The advantage we'd gain against the field would be slight, but it would be an advantage.

However, one of the absolute last things that an online poker room wants is to gain the reputation of being a haven for cheaters & colluders. There's already enough general doubt about the reliability of online poker, and something like that could cost a major site billions of dollars in lost revenues when/if people stop playing there. And so all of the major sites have some form of security against things like this...some better than others I'm sure, but they all try to stop it when it happens & prevent it from happening all together. Just scan through the front page on the Internet Gambling forum 24/7/365 (just about) and I'm sure you'll see at least one thread posted by a person whose account was frozen because he was suspected of cheating, colluding, chip dumping, you name it.

As far as I know, I have only once been exposed to two players attempting to collude in an online game. This was probably a couple of years ago on Party Poker, and they were just plain stupid anyway--just two guys in a limit hold'em game who'd keep raising & reraising each other until everyone else folded, then generally one would fold to the other's next bet (they went to showdown against each other once in a while, I guess for appearance's sake). The problem was that they made no attempt whatsoever to adjust to the other players at the table; didn't matter for most of the people there because they didn't adjust to the colluders, either. Personally, I had one of my best table sessions ever by counterisolating on the two of them whenever I had a strong hand & folding preflop otherwise.

I honestly don't worry about cheating online. At the small stakes it doesn't seem like it'd be worth the time & effort, and at the high stakes pretty much all the regular players know each other anyway.

Baby Mantis · #6 07-13-2007, 09:02 AM

Marcus states in his book that a very good friend, and cheating partner has had this program called peeker that is only on the "white market". The program cost 30k to purchase and according to him is not able to be copied. Marcus didn't state if the cards were seen in real time exactly, but his play by play account of watching him cheat sounds like real time to me. He also stated that his friend had been using this program since 2004 and as of the copyright of the book 2006 was still using it in the highest limit cash games online. So I don't know if all of this is to sell a book and make it interesting or if some of it holds true.

magicratx · #7 07-13-2007, 10:39 AM

I read this book on the back of "the great casino heist (UK title, think it was American Roulette in USA)), and was very dissapointed. The book was badly written and contained no real interesting content.
As for the "peeker" software, im sure that it has existed but would be nearly impossible to pull off now

Baby Mantis · #8 07-13-2007, 10:56 AM

i might also add that in a couple of places in the book there are typos. For example the author was mid-sentence at the bottom of a page and then on the next page started the same sentence over again. This happened 3 times I think, and really annoyed me for some reason. I guess I feel like it is a major publication and I can't believe the author and editors would not catch this on 3 occasions. I don't know if it hurts his credibility, but in my case it made me think enough to post it.

No Fizzle · #9 07-13-2007, 11:01 AM

Reader reviews can be found here: Amazon

Pretty interesting collection of stories but it seems that they are just that- stories. I wouldn't read too much into anything he says.

gotmarc · #10 07-13-2007, 11:47 AM

I read this book last year and as everybody has already suggested collusion is something that probably happens. Some of the other allegations such as peopel hitting thier draws more on play money or people being able to se hole cards. . . I don't know.

I actually read the book because my uncle used to play lowball in the 70's and 80's. he was part of a collusion team and the played $3-$6 or $4-$8 tables. He even managed a cardroom and devised strategies with other cardroom managers to take down jackpots. THey didn't have dealers back then so they'd introduce cold decks preshuffled to deliver bad beats. He told me one time he flew to Southern California( I won't say where) and he was about to introduce a cold deck into a game where there was a $40,000 jackpot. By dumb luck someone one it legitimitly minutes before he was able to do it.

The thing about cheating is you can't be worried about it. Bob Ciafone says weather it's real or imagined it will affect your play(I'm paraphrasing)

My uncle advises against me playing poker. He's a born again christian. He says cheating online would be to easy. He also told me that I you are going to play "on the square," you do have to be adept at recognizing cheating.

IF you can tell by the way a person places his chips that he has pocket aces in a multi-handed pot and you have pocket jacks well. . . you might want to call a raise of 3x the big blind anyway. You'll catch a set about 1 in 8 times. If the cheaters don't offer you the odds then you should probably leave the game anyway.