POCKET ACES

Oct. 27, 2001

Cheating at Poker -- Follow-up One

The main one being: Do you think there's cheating going on?

First, I believe there is always cheating going on in poker. I believe there are people acting in partnership who signal each other at appropriate times to lure a fish into their net. There might even be people who mark and hold out cards! I can't prove it; I don't know anyone who does it. But when there's money involved and no secure policing of activities, people are not beyond subterfuge. In fact, I'm sure there are players who believe that cheating is a necessary component of the game. There are actually players who tell tales and brag about it, usually tempering it by stating it happened in the old days, in back room games, then qualifying it by asserting that it doesn't happen anymore.

These old-timers probably aren't the ones I would worry about. Many of them don't even know how to turn on a computer. But younger, hungrier, opportunists? Now these people bother me.

"Lynne, what if you and I were playing on the net at the same table," I began asking. "What's to stop me from picking up my cell phone, calling you, and having the two of us exchange information‹tell each other what we have in the hole?"

Her reply? "What's to stop the two of us from being in the same room at two different computers? Or we could use our instant messenger service to discuss our hands.

"But," she added, "They say they have safeguards for that, ways to track your movements."

"So they're going to play back hands, peek at what cards I played and check for unusual, unwarranted, suspicious moves? I hope they don't get in my game then because they'll know how I play. Besides," I countered, "we could play at one site for an hour then move to another for an hour, then to another. They can't track us over the entire superhighway. And then you have to ask, even if they could, would these site administrators trade information with their competitors?

They're not going to get much information from a player who bounces from casino to casino in an attempt to disguise his cheating. "

None of these scenarios is new. In fact, after dinner and discussion with Lynne, I logged on to rec.gambling.poker, the newsgroup I rarely read anymore because too many topics don't discuss poker. Not surprisingly, post after post concerned cheating, the Internet and the methods of cheating Lynne and I discussed. Apparently there have been a few columns written about the subject in at least one of the free poker magazines found in cardrooms.

While skimming through the titles on RGP, I also noticed something about hacking into casino sites. The post was a Reuters news service article by Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent

It stated, in part, "Last week, CryptoLogic Inc., a Canadian software company that develops online casino games, said a hacker had cracked one of the firm's gaming servers, corrupting the play of craps and video slots so that players could not lose."

So, what's to stop them from hacking into a poker site? More importantly, what's to stop some poker cheat from hiring a hacker to help him beat the Internet cardrooms?

The point is, if there's a way to cheat, somebody's going to cheat. If he's caught, well, what the punishment? Will he be barred from playing on the Net? Maybe, but what a silly notion. If your face is in the Nevada Black Book, you can't step inside a casino for any reason. If your name is in the Net Black Book, who's going to know when you sign on under a friend's name or an assumed name and return to your old ways?

Could you be prosecuted for cheating on the net? Possibly, but I doubt it since the legality of online wagering is such a hotly contested topic.

I'm not versed enough to count the ways someone could use nefarious tactics on the Net. I just know it's possible to do and is probably happening. In the discussions on RGP, players advise newbies to stick to the lower limits, where I'd probably go since I'm a recreational player, but years ago, I encountered what I suspected was partner play in Las Vegas at the lower limits, so maybe that's not even a solution.

The idea of tracking play seemed to meet with the approval of many posters on the newsgroup and while this sounds like a clever way to investigate, I wouldn't be too happy about having someone invade my cyber mind. However, if I could be assured that the hand readers would never play, I think this might be a solution.

Cyber poker is probably going to become very big. I suspect, since practically so much of the younger population sees the computer the way my generation saw television, the move to gambling won't be a stretch. But for now, there are just too many questions with no potential answers so I'll stay away.