Online Poker

[Nickatilynx]

There must be a way to cheat it.

Gotta be.


Has anyone noticed as well that if you have been playing well it sorta give you the benefit of a doubt on a show down , and other strange stuff.

Such as how many show downs you win or lose on the last card and the program puses before turning over the river?

One guy was telling me he counts the hands...

[MissEve]

I think its much easier for players to collude than to individually cheat the system. Maybe Colin can explain this to us? lol

http://www.partypoker.com/about_us/rng.html

[Biggy]

yeah - my buddies cheat it.

they all go in the same poker room, and over IM let each other know what cards they have.

I know there are IP restrictions around it, but from what I know its not all that hard to circumvent it.

[XXXPhoto]

Nick,

Yes cheating is possible online. A person could set up 6 pcs and 6 independent connections running through proxies then use those to fleece the other 4 players at a 10 person table or buy 4 spots in a single table tourney.

The problem with effective ongoing collusion is the work it takes to make multiple scores. Games and hand history are archived then filtered through security bots looking for patterns outside standard diviations. What might work one time could set off bells next time you try it. Other security measures are in place as well.

My dad and I share same roll at PP for example and it seems there is a security measure in place that won't let us sit at same table due to either having transferred money back and forth or because both accounts were accessed from same ips; not sure which it is.

The bigger cheats are those that abuse the disconnect-protection IMO. Fortunately, those that do it are usually driven off of table by others who recognize from their hand (lowcard flush draw vs obvious high prs, set or str for example) how serendipitous the 'dropped connection' timing was in relation to the flop, turn or river.

I will say that if you suspect cheating to occur at PP you can call their 800 number and they will investigate. The call center is in India so be prepared to speak slowly...lol... They will do a support ticket and someone will go over the histories of players in question looking for things outta wack. If cheating is found can get refund or in case of single table tourney they also divide the cheaters winnings amongst the other top 2 finishers (or at least that was way they did it 8 months ago from personal experience with reporting a tourney cheat)

FWIW, any weird play (as opposed to just poor plays) I've ever seen at PP always seems to come from Middle Eastern players. Hence I avoid those player locations when I'm shopping for a table.

[Almighty Colin]

XXXPhoto,

Everything in moderation. Seems if you're going to cheat the trick is to gain a small advantage and accumulate winnings spread out over multiple players. I personally would start by asking the question "how would I catch people?" and "what patterns denote cheating" and then work backwards.

Anyone see the documentary on the MIT Blackjack Team?

[XXXPhoto]

Colin,

Yup, exactly... Yes can cheat but to do it they wouldn't be hitting my level of play because just not worth the trouble. Would be better to hit larger limit and isolate weak high dollar fish to milk from multiple accounts over course of a month.

The 'Buddy List' at PP is a very good tool for things other than keeping track of your 'Buddies'. When they integrate the 'notes' and the BL then that will be even better.

Have read some on the MIT BJ team last year but haven't seen anything on tube... Would love to see/read more about it if you'll post the info.

[MissEve]

Party Poker no longer has the "allin" disconnect protection, do other sites still have it?

Colin, I did see the MIT blackjack documentary. I just dont see a great way to cheat with online poker. As XXXPhoto said, there are so many ways that they track your play and cashouts. PP also has a screen scraping technique to detect collusion software. I did notice two very obvious colluders on UltimateBet about a year ago and they were quickly removed.

There are so many people on PartyPoker now, 55k at peak, that when you get a bad beat its usually from someone who is retarded and made a terrible play but lucked out. I wonder if colluding would even help THAT much when you are playing against irrational players.

[Peaches]

Originally posted by Colin@Jan 2 2005, 06:17 PM
Anyone see the documentary on the MIT Blackjack Team?
I read the book - sent it to CT to see if he could learn somethings and make some $$$ before he left Biloxi, but he never read it. <_<

[XXXPhoto]

Originally posted by MissEve@Jan 2 2005, 02:38 PM
There are so many people on PartyPoker now, 55k at peak, that when you get a bad beat its usually from someone who is retarded and made a terrible play but lucked out. I wonder if colluding would even help THAT much when you are playing against irrational players.
:pearl: :wnw: :pearl:

[Nickatilynx]

I love coming accross those guys , cause you just wait , and wait and wait , til you have the nuts...and you know they will do it again...


then Bam!!! :-)

don't chastise them ,"nh" them and say how well they played..... :)

I call those loses "Investment for the future"


;-)))

[slavdogg]

here is one of the ways to cheat.. or increase your odds
http://www.calculatem.com

[MissEve]

Hi Slav :) Those programs are cool but PP doesnt care about them, kind of like those blackjack cards you can buy and bring to the table . They are so many other factors and subtleties to poker that I think learning technically perfect poker is only a small part.

[Almighty Colin]

MissEve, yeah I don't think the MIT Blackjack team method would be any good for online poker. They don't actually play with decks, do they?

Is "Screen scraping" the issue? You could always set up a conference call system with your "friends".

[MissEve]

Colin.....biggest issues are that they have great ways of tracking your play and if you play with same people and win. I assume that when you attempt to cash out they have your account run through a database or something to see if your account is fishy.

Theoretically you could get a group of people who live in different states and all get on the phone and collude but you only have a limited time to make a bet or call so you would have to have a great system. Even then I think their system would catch the irregular number of wins with the same people at the table. Plus, you would want to play higher stakes to make it worth it and by the time you get to the $100/200 tables there are fewer regular players and they would definitely notice the same people playing suspiciously. Many players use pokertracker.com which allows you to track your play and the people you have played against which would be another red flag.

Did you check out that link I posted earlier with the Random Number Generator? That is way over my head but I would think if there is a way to cheat it would have to be breaking that!

[Almighty Colin]

Originally posted by MissEve@Jan 3 2005, 05:24 AM
Theoretically you could get a group of people who live in different states and all get on the phone and collude but you only have a limited time to make a bet or call so you would have to have a great system. Even then I think their system would catch the irregular number of wins with the same people at the table. Plus, you would want to play higher stakes to make it worth it and by the time you get to the $100/200 tables there are fewer regular players and they would definitely notice the same people playing suspiciously. Many players use pokertracker.com which allows you to track your play and the people you have played against which would be another red flag.
So have a great system. Cheating is hard work. Two people per room, two computers, two internet connections, one person plays, one quickly keys the cards into the system. How many places are there where you can play? How difficult is it to open multiple accounts? Do you know how much of an advantage you gain from knowing your player's cards? More importantly, how do the odds change for a team of x players when they know each other's cards? Seems this info would be easier to get by looking up than calculating.

As far as the RNG, I don't really know much about encryption or random number generators but I think the odds of profiting from collusion are much higher than reverse-engineering a random number generator that is the product of a number of random factors and including, one would guess, even more factors than they mention. For all we know, they might be using currency ratios or the japanese stock market as wildcards. How about that? Wig shorted Mizuho and you drew a pair of queens. Michelle hit the hand dryer in the women's room and your cards are as unconnected as Kevin Bacon and Gauge.

Back to MIT Blackjack. Obviously their methodology doesn't translate to poker but I think the effort they spent on not looking like cheaters is instructive. Of course, they got caught in the end. Some people DO win at poker and they win big. How do you win and not look like a cheater?

[XXXPhoto]

Originally posted by Colin@Jan 3 2005, 05:23 AM
Some people DO win at poker and they win big. How do you win and not look like a cheater?
I'll take stab at it Colin... For me I guess would it be by winning consistantly over an ever increasing period of time... Over an increasing timespan, luck (re: randomness) evens out and skill of playing becomes more determining factor of win vs loss.

Winning play has a pattern, sure there are bluffs and risky bets, but over time; if you win you will follow a general method of play. Any method of cheating, again over time, will show diviations from that normal winning pattern.

Example, a winning player might get a lucky reraise from someone else in pot when they have the nuts (best hand)... This person won't be there betting into him every hand though, driving up the pot. Collusion though, could involve one person 'running rabbit' for another player and bumping the pot, check raising, or doing whatever to increase size of win or push other moderate (but winning hands) out of the pot. Problem is they would have to do this with each other over and over for it to be ongoing con. And when they went to get money, whoopsie, lookit what we found when we analyzed your hand history... ;)

Your idea that 4 guys at table telling each other what their hands are would indeed be helpful... But if that is their con, then they would be at 7Stud or Omaha tables where knowing 4 hands of hole cards would be HUGE advantage. Preflop, 4 guys = 8 cards in holdem, 8 in Stud with 1 more at end and 16 in Omaha... True in stud you would know same number of hole cards preflop, but because nature of that game doesn't rely on community cards, knowing what is 'dead' would be bigger advantage than in Holdem where 5 of 7 are shared cards.

Dunno, to me it's like the idea that any networked pc is hackable to some degree... but is the reward of cracking it open worth the effort it requires? That depends on the person doing the hacking and what's on the machine. Well, online poker is kinda like that... Yes, there are ways to cheat; but are you going to reap any rewards from those efforts AND are the efforts worth the rewards? ;)

[Almighty Colin]

XXXPhoto,

You made me click on your link today. :-)

[XXXPhoto]

Slumming or just bored?

[Almighty Colin]

Originally posted by XXXPhoto@Jan 3 2005, 11:14 AM
Slumming or just bored?
As soon as I recognize an evil genius, I click .. and not a moment sooner.

[Nickatilynx]

What I have noticed...and it maybe as Miss Eve says they just suck.

At 7 card stud...

1,2,3 in cohorts.

They drive the bets up between them , then the others drop out.
Leaving one against one.
There even seems to be delays as the chat on messneger.

Then say player 1 won a few hands and is in good shape but 2 and 3 are struggling , when position is right 1 will go heads up against 3 and lose , he will then at the right moment do the same with 3.

Lets say they do this an this gives them an edge , a great edge. I would say so freat they would always have two players in the money 3 places.

However..@ 50/5 entry fees 8 = 400. 1st=200 2nd =120 3rd =80

So there costs would be $165 and the worse case scenario they would earn 200.

Hell they would have to work it to make a living...

I suspect therefore it happens very very rarely.

On multitable games ie 1000 entries the edge would be minimal

[Nickatilynx]

What though if you could get into the overall program and that hads the ability to dimply reveal all hole cards...now that would be awesome!
:)

[XXXPhoto]

Originally posted by Colin+Jan 3 2005, 08:40 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Colin @ Jan 3 2005, 08:40 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-XXXPhoto@Jan 3 2005, 11:14 AM
Slumming or just bored?
As soon as I recognize an evil genius, I click .. and not a moment sooner. [/b][/quote]
Colin,

Will barrow old tagline from Evil Chris... I'm as evil as a power girls bike basket... lol

My genus is far from genius, but thanks for the thought... :awinky: