Online poker sites cheat people BECAUSE THEY CAN!

Lets take pokerstars for example. They can't be taken to court because there's not enough proof. You can't check the names because of the privacy laws AND they are set up in a country where the online gaming laws don't apply to those in the U.S.

Is that not proof enough????

Call it what you want, it sounds like the perfect money making scheme to me... and if they can get away with it.... why not??? after all they are a business, and businesses only look out for one person....THEMSELVES!!!


The way they probably think about it is:

"it's not cheating, it's a smart business strategy, and so what if people have their doubts? They wont be able to do anything about it, and if a few people stop playing on our site, they'll be plenty more suckers to come, and once they start to have their doubts and stop playing, it doesn't matter, because we've already taken a lot of money from them."

Pay no attention to those pokerstars chat employees. They are nothing but a bunch or trained monkeys to only give you automated answers such as: 100% rng etc. I'm sure they have their opinions about the site. But you can be damn sure they wont say anything. They don't want to lose that $6 an hour job.

Like I said, if they see that millions more can be made as long as they can cheat in their favor, why not?

I don't know why people think: HUGE company= 100% honesty

That is a load of bull. Just look at what the gas stations prices were a year ago for christ's sake. You think those prices were 100% honest???

There are PLENTY of big companies that are corrupt. But what it all boils down to is MONEY!! Otherwise, why get in the business in the first place?

A great example is Paypal. It is the biggest online money transfer-er in the world, and they have been sued and taken to court PLENTY of times for fraud. And most of the time when they're facing a big lawsuit, they SETTLE and pay out millions instead of going to court BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY AREN'T HONEST.

If the programmers can make pokerstars as big as it is with it's wide selection of sit and goes, cash rings, mtt's, ect. There is a very high possibility they can created a sophisticated bot that can do it all.

Just think. If amateur programmers can make bots that can play, imagine what a dedicated, full time professional programmer can do. Plus they have all the funding they will ever need.

Wouldn't be hard at all... People saying there isn't a chance of pokerstars being rigged because they make enough off the rake alone need to wake up. Money = greed, and we all know what that can lead to.



[edit on 30-3-2009 by doorbell412]

reply to post by doorbell412


I thought there was one site that already got into trouble for this...I don't remember for sure which one, so I won't guess at one of the two names that come to mind...but the deal was certain players connected with the structure would be advised of the cards in their opponents' hands...

One would expect this, for sure...Like I remember in Vegas back around 1990 one of the big video-poker-machine companies (and again I remember two names it could be, I have to go look it up rather than post something wrong) had their chips programmed not to give a royal flush (the biggest payoff) if the player had MAX COINS BET...and like you say, they were already making good profits, they were just way excessively greedy...

I use one site where I only pay twenty bucks a month anyways...I'm just using it for practice (though there's no face-reading etc. skills) and not with the thought of winning big off of my small money put in...

There have been quite a few online gambling sites shut down for the things you have mentioned, Poker Stars isn't one of them, while I cannot provide guaranteed proof that they are not cheating...

I can say that it is the only one of the online sites that I am still a member going on 4 yrs plus.

I have had my share of success and my share of failure...

Overall, I am still ahead.

Bad beats are common, bad players even more so..

IMO

The money you can honestly make on this type of site far outrides the quick millions by implementing some kind of cheat or scam.

Is it beyond the site to fall prey to greediness? I don't know, but for now...

you will see me there at times...

All IN

Originally posted by doorbell412
Lets take pokerstars for example. They can't be taken to court because there's not enough proof. You can't check the names because of the privacy laws AND they are set up in a country where the online gaming laws don't apply to those in the U.S.

Is that not proof enough????

Call it what you want, it sounds like the perfect money making scheme to me... and if they can get away with it.... why not??? after all they are a business, and businesses only look out for one person....THEMSELVES!!!


The way they probably think about it is:

"it's not cheating, it's a smart business strategy, and so what if people have their doubts? They wont be able to do anything about it, and if a few people stop playing on our site, they'll be plenty more suckers to come, and once they start to have their doubts and stop playing, it doesn't matter, because we've already taken a lot of money from them."

Pay no attention to those pokerstars chat employees. They are nothing but a bunch or trained monkeys to only give you automated answers such as: 100% rng etc. I'm sure they have their opinions about the site. But you can be damn sure they wont say anything. They don't want to lose that $6 an hour job.

Like I said, if they see that millions more can be made as long as they can cheat in their favor, why not?

I don't know why people think: HUGE company= 100% honesty

That is a load of bull. Just look at what the gas stations prices were a year ago for christ's sake. You think those prices were 100% honest???

There are PLENTY of big companies that are corrupt. But what it all boils down to is MONEY!! Otherwise, why get in the business in the first place?

A great example is Paypal. It is the biggest online money transfer-er in the world, and they have been sued and taken to court PLENTY of times for fraud. And most of the time when they're facing a big lawsuit, they SETTLE and pay out millions instead of going to court BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY AREN'T HONEST.

If the programmers can make pokerstars as big as it is with it's wide selection of sit and goes, cash rings, mtt's, ect. There is a very high possibility they can created a sophisticated bot that can do it all.

Just think. If amateur programmers can make bots that can play, imagine what a dedicated, full time professional programmer can do. Plus they have all the funding they will ever need.

Wouldn't be hard at all... People saying there isn't a chance of pokerstars being rigged because they make enough off the rake alone need to wake up. Money = greed, and we all know what that can lead to.



[edit on 30-3-2009 by doorbell412]

Its a great thought. Owning a pokersite is an extremely good racket, as who knows what the retention laws are in their home country.

Lets say for example they have a million users and a total of 100,000,000 in funds that have been uploaded to their site.

They may only hold 10% of that, as the chance of a mass withdrawl is highly unlikely and pretty much not possible. So the rest of that at the very least could be in high interest bank accounts, and when you have that much its very high interest. Or they could be playing the stock market or whatever they want.

But, on top of this, they are continually taking rake from these million users. So if those million deposited 100,000,000 the site is never losing money, they do not ever pay out. But, since they are taking rake constantly, by the end of the first day, now instead of owing 100m they may only owe 99 or 98m, so they can again reduce their retention amount.

So, if all that wasn't good enough, you propose that they risk all that by creating fake accounts that "cant lose" to take large amounts of money directly from users, so speed up the rate at which the amount owing to users is decreasing? No doubt, they have a very good racket.


But, its the exact same thing with MMO's such as WoW or Eve, why wouldn't blizzard be selling gold? I have heard stories where a buyer purchases some gold, and within an hour the GM is questioning them about the money. How is it possible that they could not catch the farmers, mules and the sales accounts? The truth is they obviously could, so then the next question is, well why aren't they?

I have also heard that there is a ship in Eve that its equivelent value in real life would be 10,000. Thats how solid the economy of the game is.

So, to end, I guess its possible both examples could be doing this, but since noone can audit their systems in which they operate it is an absolute impossibility to ever find out.

On a interesting note, an Ex Absolute employee was busted using a special account was milking players because he could see the hole cards of other players. Absolute eported that he was caught in time that none of the money was ever withdrawn, and all players affected had their money returned to them.

Originally posted by king9072 They may only hold 10% of that, as the chance of a mass withdrawl is highly unlikely and pretty much not possible. So the rest of that at the very least could be in high interest bank accounts, and when you have that much its very high interest. Or they could be playing the stock market or whatever they want.

That's exactly what paypal has been accused of doing to millions of people. They would wrongfully freeze their account without having to provide any explanation. (still do) After 180 days, they allow you to withdraw it. They'll release it if you threaten to take them to small claims court, but I'm guessing lots of their members wouldn't know where to start. Those frozen accounts build up interest. The thing is though is that paypal isn't a bank, so the laws don't apply to them. Just like poker sites establishing their companies away from land where the laws are harsh.

Dont play if you think its a scam. Online gambling was banned in the US under the Bush admin if I remember correctly. I for one, enjoy full tilt poker. I dont understand how you can say they cheat, unless you lose a lot....I've had my fair share of wins and losses.....it all depends on the player.

I've played on a good bit of the sites, and I've never had anything that seemed as if I was being scammed. I only play for .5/.10 tables for cash games, and $1-$4 tourneys/sit and go's as I only play for entertainment, not for a living or anything.

I've won a good amount of cash tourneys and have only ever put money on my accounts when I signed up. My best tourney win being a 180 S&G @ $4 entry. I might lose a bunch of tourneys, but all it takes is 1 win and then I'm good on cash for the next couple of months.

While I've never seen anything that made me think I was being cheated, I have surely seen people who accuse the site when they do bad, blame the site when they get a bad beat and use every other excuse they can think of rather than facing the fact they got beat.

And alot of times they just made bad moves and got called on it. Or played the hand badly and got sucked out on. They get AA, then think they are going to slow play it out, and someone hits a 2 pair, or something else on the river, they go all in and then start crying about the site and how bad of a call that is, and how that "never happens" in real life. Yeah, it doesn't happen that often in real life because most people who play in real life aren't dumb enough to make those kinds of moves.

So if they cheat or not, I don't know. But as far as betting and such goes, my money is on you got beat or caught a bad beat and are looking for people to blame.



[edit on 30-3-2009 by badmedia]

reply to post by badmedia


And btw, as far as cheating players go, the only real cheats I'm aware of is where players talk over IM's or some other chat while at the table together. I'm sure that goes on a good bit.

And there are "communities" of players who keep track of the tables and what the players do and keep a database of player tendencies. And then the people in these communities are able to target "easy/weak" players for easy cash. The poker sites try to keep them out, but the communities seem to be 1 step ahead of them.

The counter to this is to play tourney's. With 100+ players the chances 2 people working together get together isn't very high, and it's too many players for those communities to target players. Both of those things happen more in cash games.

But that isn't stuff the actual site is doing, just part of "online" gaming.

They make to much money off the rake to risk being shut down by cheating.

Lets say they do cheat and make 100 million cheating in a few years. Thats a pretty good chunk. Now when they get caught they will lose all that money and risk imprisonment. So they are left with nothing.

Now if they don't cheat lets say they make 1 billion in a 15 year time off of rakes alone. Sure they may take longer to get there, but it is a sure thing that they will get there and will keep all the money as it is legal.

Now you can count in the tournament fees. When you enter a tourny you pay for the entrance and a small fee, for example a 100+25 NL holdem. 100 for each player goes towards the payout and the 25 goes to the house. So if a tourny has 500 entrants they make 12,500. You figure they have about 50 of these going at any give time they make 625,000. Now while these are going they are getting more of them going and more players signing up. So lets say they get 200 of these things being played every day. If they get 500 entrants in each of the 200 then they get 250,000 in fees alone everyday for just these tournies.

Count the fees for the thousands of smaller tournies along with the rakes of the thousands of cash games each hand and you can see how it would be beyond stupid for them to risk this very lucative buisness.

It wouldn't be hard to catch them either. All it would take is one player to become suspicous of another and check out the tournament info of said player. If that paticular player has an unusual win record then that person can contact an online poker group, I forget the name, that can look into this player and the sites functioning and they can determine if any cheating has taken place.

edit for math.

[edit on 31-3-2009 by jd140]

Here's a little more information on the case I was thinking of above, the Absolute Poker one:

The Absolute Poker Cheating Scandal Blown Wide Open

and also (slightly off topic) a little bit about the video-poker-fixing case I was remembering above - about halfway down the page is the relevant bit:

American Coin

Also slightly off-topic (I abase myself) I've been a dealer (briefly) and in dealer's school the one cool instructor told me (after hours) that a major house as a rule will have one clever cheating dealer - a "mechanic"- on staff each shift and that in certain circumstances (example given was an annoying rich Iranian up a half million playing blackjack) the mechanic would be brought in - you would need marked cards or some other indication for this as well - and then the Iranian would suddenly get a lot of bust cards and then that big money would not walk out the door...for whatever that's worth...just hearsay...I myself have seen a dealer, someone I knew from school, dealing handheld doubledeck blackjack at a table I was playing, intermittently dealing from the bottom of the deck...it was small money at the table, he wasn't doing it to affect any of us playing I don't think...He was just practicing technique, seeing if he could get away with it, which he did...