Online Poker Cheating? (2 Viewers)

chipsncoffee

Two Pair
Joined
Oct 8, 2019
Messages
420
Reaction score
529
Location
Dayton, OH
Today was a not-so-good day for my bankroll. Long story short, I noticed a variety of things that seemed a bit fishy at the time, but seem all too coincidental in hindsight such as certain players leaving or sitting out at the exact same time, and one player in particular who raised the same amount pre-flop every hand, bet the same percentage of the pot post-flop and could not lose one single hand, even if they were an insane underdog. My question is, is this possible? I’ve heard people say that online poker is rigged, but I’ve always chalked that up to a conspiracy. I’d love to hear anyone’s feedback about the topic. Thanks so much.
 
Putting on my tinfoil hat for this.

There are bots, seat scripting programs, and bumhunters galore that use HUDs. You're already way behind the eight ball if you're not using the last two yourself to squeeze out every ounce of potential EV there is.

For betting amounts, if you look at any poker streamer on Twitch, they have betting options tuned to a hundredth of one big blind. They may deviate from these every now and then, but for the most part, that's what they bet over and over.

As for losing or winning hands that are suspicious looking, you can send hand histories to the site support and have them look at it, but you'll need a lot of hands for data, not just a scant few.
 
Certainly possible that people could be cheating (most likely colluding). Trusting the software, the people administrating, and the people you’re playing with is key.

But sometimes people just run good for a night.

Also, 500 internet points subtracted from your account for misuse of the word “conspiracy”. ;)
 
If anyone is cheating on an online poker app, collusion is the most likely culprit. That could manifest itself in a few ways, but people getting it in bad and getting lucky is not one of them.

From what you've said here, I don't see any specific evidence of cheating, just chance. If you usually play poker live, it may be striking to you how much more often you see strong hands and big confrontations, and also big suckouts. It's mostly a function of sample size because you're seeing so many more hands per hour. My weekly home game has felt this after switching to an app during the lockdown. Doesn't mean anyone's cheating, though, unless you have specific evidence that the beneficiary had something to do with the development of the app.
 
I’m guessing most of us have played more hands of poker in the last 2 months online that you will in an entire year or. Ore of live poker. As such you are going to see a lot more crazy shit happen!

I have seen a lot of crazy stuff live too, recently I posted a hand of flopped quad Aces losing to a riveted Royal. It was nuts but nobody thought there was some kind of cheating happening. But if that happened online everyone would have been screaming online is fixed lol. With more hands more 2% hands will happen. It’s the law of large numbers proving itself.

my advice would be to play lower stakes and a tighter range. The next hand will be starting a few seconds anyways so no need to play a weak hand to a raise just to play.
 
Last edited:
I’m guessing most of us have played more hands of poker in the last 2 months online that you will in an entire year or. Ore of live poker. As such you are going to see a lot more crazy shit happen!

I have seen a lot of crazy stuff live too, recently I posted a hand of flopped quad Aces losing to a riveted Royal. It was nuts but nobody thought there was some kind of cheating happening. But if that happened online everyone would have been screaming online is fixed lol. With more hands more 2% hands will happen. It’s the law of large numbers proving itself.

my advice would be to play lower stakes and a tighter range. The next hand will be starting a few seconds anyways so no need to play a weak hand to a raise just to play.
I have to remind myself of this. In the last 3 months I have played in over 10000 hands...which is way more than I would ever see. The law of averages catches up to everyone!
 
I’ve definitely seen some shady stuff like two and even three players leaving the table at the exact same time. A guy I used to play with actually asked me to collude with him via telephone just the other day. That was a hard “no”.
 
I suspect that collusion, or playing multiple seats at the same table, is rampant online. There’s no way to prevent it.
 
@chipsncoffee I apologize if this is not the proper place for this, if you don't want it in your thread I will gladly remove it. I was trying to find the right place to ask this and maybe a separate thread is the only answer, but I believe this is on topic here.

I was just reading another thread where a player was allowed to go $800 in debt with no money up front. Player apparently lost $700 in another session and this time said "I am not paying because I think you guys are cheating" got me thinking of the possibilities and curious if collusion in online poker has been discussed which brought me to this thread.

I don't play online poker at all, I don't trust it, that's a personal preference. But who is to say other than an honor system of hey we are all real people and there is no cheating here! That you walk into a table of "friends that have played together for years" you have 2 massively bad sessions... just got me thinking. Is it not possible that a group is all sitting in a zoom meeting, multi way phone call or even using the WhatsApp to basically play 7 vs 1? I mean what would stop this from happening?

I figure the only response here will be know your friends, know your group! But what about the guy trying to find a new game or most of their online group are vaccinated and they went back to live poker and the online club broke up. Also possibly the comment of limit yourself to 1 or 2 buy ins until you feel comfortable with that new group. But at the end of the day this is absolutely an honor system and when money is involved. The line between what's right/turning a profit can easily become broken

Obviously if paying up front you have the right to walk away when you want to or suspect something fishy... just seems like this could easily happen regularly, I miss poker and right now maybe playing once a month, but I will wait for a live game where everyone is in the same room personally, not saying anyone in this hobby has questionable integrity... just seems like this would be way too easy to pull off, I'm sure there are probably more threads about it but after hearing a guy loosing $800 in online poker (I would never play that big even in real life) it really has my gears going this morning.

Fellow Chipper Ben
 
Today was a not-so-good day for my bankroll. Long story short, I noticed a variety of things that seemed a bit fishy at the time, but seem all too coincidental in hindsight such as certain players leaving or sitting out at the exact same time, and one player in particular who raised the same amount pre-flop every hand, bet the same percentage of the pot post-flop and could not lose one single hand, even if they were an insane underdog. My question is, is this possible? I’ve heard people say that online poker is rigged, but I’ve always chalked that up to a conspiracy. I’d love to hear anyone’s feedback about the topic. Thanks so much.
Where are you playing? If you are playing on an online "club" site, like Mayvens or Pokerrr, collusion is very possible.

If you are playing on ACR or Bovada, you are probably seeing variance.

Want some good variance? I hit a royal flush and a straight flush inside of 20 hands on Bovada the other day. I imagine to my opponents, that looked fishy as hell.

This statement is directed at traditional public online games, such as ACR and Bovada:
Online poker is sure as hell not "rigged" though, at least in the way people think. It is very tough compared to live, because you have a concentration of good players that are multi-tabling. And, the better the player, the more tables they can play. This just leads to the average player (even at micro stakes) going up against a largely better than average field. Average to below average players just don't last very long (in general) online. So, the fields are tougher. Yes, two players can collude on these sites. It probably does happen. However, the old "doomsday switch" b.s. story has never happened. It's just that there are so many more hands dealt online, you are going to see some crazy shit. Also, the pace is quicker, so your recovery from good tilt and bad tilt will be relatively slower, and your swings will be larger than live.

TLDR: online poker is not rigged. It's just harder.
 
Sure there’s no cheating online, just ask some of the people who played on Ultimate Bet.
 
@chipsncoffee I apologize if this is not the proper place for this, if you don't want it in your thread I will gladly remove it. I was trying to find the right place to ask this and maybe a separate thread is the only answer, but I believe this is on topic here.

I was just reading another thread where a player was allowed to go $800 in debt with no money up front. Player apparently lost $700 in another session and this time said "I am not paying because I think you guys are cheating" got me thinking of the possibilities and curious if collusion in online poker has been discussed which brought me to this thread.

I don't play online poker at all, I don't trust it, that's a personal preference. But who is to say other than an honor system of hey we are all real people and there is no cheating here! That you walk into a table of "friends that have played together for years" you have 2 massively bad sessions... just got me thinking. Is it not possible that a group is all sitting in a zoom meeting, multi way phone call or even using the WhatsApp to basically play 7 vs 1? I mean what would stop this from happening?

I figure the only response here will be know your friends, know your group! But what about the guy trying to find a new game or most of their online group are vaccinated and they went back to live poker and the online club broke up. Also possibly the comment of limit yourself to 1 or 2 buy ins until you feel comfortable with that new group. But at the end of the day this is absolutely an honor system and when money is involved. The line between what's right/turning a profit can easily become broken

Obviously if paying up front you have the right to walk away when you want to or suspect something fishy... just seems like this could easily happen regularly, I miss poker and right now maybe playing once a month, but I will wait for a live game where everyone is in the same room personally, not saying anyone in this hobby has questionable integrity... just seems like this would be way too easy to pull off, I'm sure there are probably more threads about it but after hearing a guy loosing $800 in online poker (I would never play that big even in real life) it really has my gears going this morning.

Fellow Chipper Ben

cheating is always a possibility. But unless they have been working on it for a long time to make it look like they aren’t cheating it will not go as smoothly as you think. On top of it, is it really that easy to go to your poker friends that you have been playing with and against and say let’s cheat? They are going to look at now and wonder if you have been cheating them all of this time!
 
If you suspect that he changed the outcome, i.e. changed the cards to come, or was able to see the cards coming he needs full access to the server(s) running the poker software as starters (like hosting the software), and he needs to circumvent the security measures in the server side software. So while it's technically possible, it's very very unlikely.

If this was HU on a respectable place, it was most likely a bot. HU bots are getting better but not all bots are winning.
 
Where are you playing? If you are playing on an online "club" site, like Mayvens or Pokerrr, collusion is very possible.

If you are playing on ACR or Bovada, you are probably seeing variance.

Want some good variance? I hit a royal flush and a straight flush inside of 20 hands on Bovada the other day. I imagine to my opponents, that looked fishy as hell.

This statement is directed at traditional public online games, such as ACR and Bovada:
Online poker is sure as hell not "rigged" though, at least in the way people think

Collusion is possible on public sites, and probably more likely than in a group on a private server where you know most if not all players in real life.

Public sites also have a self-interest in players getting good hands so they will play and bet more and pay more rake (really, calculate the odds of getting a SF and a RF within 20 hands). Developers of apps like Poker Mavens don’t have any skin in any of the games being played.

Just because an individual player doesn’t know the cards to come doesn’t mean that the game can’t be rigged. The beneficiary of the higher than random frequencies isn’t the players, but the house.
 
Sure there’s no cheating online, just ask some of the people who played on Ultimate Bet.
Yeah, I thought about that exact thing when I was typing. I do believe that is an outlier case though. I played on UB back in the day, too...but not for the stakes that it affected.

Do I believe there is cheating online? Yes. Do I think there are robots? Yes (I know there are). Do I think this is why winning online is tough? Not even a little bit. I absolutely do not believe that there is a program that makes some players win and some lose. There is just no incentive to create such a thing in today's poker. Sites can just keep on blissfully raking those pots and not worry about who wins and who loses.
 
Collusion is possible on public sites, and probably more likely than in a group on a private server where you know most if not all players in real life.

Public sites also have a self-interest in players getting good hands so they will play and bet more and pay more rake (really, calculate the odds of getting a SF and a RF within 20 hands). Developers of apps like Poker Mavens don’t have any skin in any of the games being played.

Just because an individual player doesn’t know the cards to come doesn’t mean that the game can’t be rigged. The beneficiary of the higher than random frequencies isn’t the players, but the house.
There are plenty of hands that go without a flop, too. You just don't remember them.

Sorry, but it just does not add up to make a "random" program that is designed to create action, it would just be too complex. These sites can make TONS of money just letting the cards roll random. To take a gamble on rigging it for "action" would jeopardize the guaranteed money. The internet poker community has proven themselves perfectly capable of fishing out the real crooks of their world. The ultimate bet scandal was uncovered by players. Mike Postle was exposed the same way. There is no way a site having cards not be random would ever last very long. Too many extremely smart people looking for shit like this....and they play online poker. Which makes online poker hard.
 
Also, I would like to proudly add that lifetime online I am probably slightly up, but over the last 5 years I am a losing player.

Small stakes live, I feel like I can handle myself pretty well. It's a different field.
 
(really, calculate the odds of getting a SF and a RF within 20 hands)
I wouldnt know how to do this, but it would be a very small number that is above 0. Which means it's possible, therefore over 20 years of playing online could happen. It's just a numbers game. I also got paid off in both hands. the straight flush had a 4 card straight flush on the board....I had the idiot end (9d). The guy that paid me off just had a straight. If they wanted that pot to be "juicy", the Ad should have been out for the royal. The guy didnt even have a flush though. He should have folded.
 
Over the past year I have played on 3 different Mavens sites, Pokerrr app, Pokernow.com site with different groups and have been winning on all of them. If the sites were rigged to create coolers over and over the losing players would win more. That is not the case. The good players keep winning and the bad players keep losing, only faster than live.
 
Yeah, I thought about that exact thing when I was typing. I do believe that is an outlier case though. I played on UB back in the day, too...but not for the stakes that it affected.

Do I believe there is cheating online? Yes. Do I think there are robots? Yes (I know there are). Do I think this is why winning online is tough? Not even a little bit. I absolutely do not believe that there is a program that makes some players win and some lose. There is just no incentive to create such a thing in today's poker. Sites can just keep on blissfully raking those pots and not worry about who wins and who loses.
No incentive for a site to cheat? :unsure: Because I know you personally and I know your character, I can honestly say that I believe that you honestly believe that. I personally would like to believe that, based on your example of sites “blissfully raking in pots,” I can understand the thought of why would they need to cheat.
One word my friend, “ GREED!” What is plenty for some is never enough for others.
 
No incentive for a site to cheat? :unsure: Because I know you personally and I know your character, I can honestly say that I believe that you honestly believe that. I personally would like to believe that, based on your example of sites “blissfully raking in pots,” I can understand the thought of why would they need to cheat.
One word my friend, “ GREED!” What is plenty for some is never enough for others.
Online poker's best bet to make "clog up the Suez Canal" type cash is to be legitimate enough for the US laws on gambling to change so that they could be legal....which seems to be slowly heading that way. Im looking at you, online sports betting and Virginia lawmakers! The flood of US players flocking to legit poker sites would create a new wave of online poker that may rival the Moneymaker era. But not if online poker is considered "rigged".
 

Create an account or login to comment

You must be a member in order to leave a comment

Create account

Create an account and join our community. It's easy!

Log in

Already have an account? Log in here.

Back
Top Bottom