Collusion on PokerStars story

I was playing at the local casino last week. As sometimes happens some people at the table got to discussing online poker.

The dealer said he wouldn't play online because he likes the interactive aspect of live play. That's fine, I can understand that playing against "avatars" instead of real people might seem unenjoyable for some.

Then some others felt that online was insecure because it was too easy to cheat. The example they gave was that you don't know if the people you are playing against are all just from the same college dorm room.

They discussed IP address checks and how these can be ineffective as it is not hard for people in close proximity to have distinct IPs from different ISP [with NAT the converse is also true where large numbers of people at different computers may appear to be connecting from the same NAT IP address]. Thus they felt it would be too difficult to detect collusion and it could be gotten away with.

I was just listening and probably wisely didn't say anything. Although they seemed to miss that there are more sophisticated ways to detect collusion. Big sites like Stars have proprietary advanced software to detect cheats. Stuff coming right out of graduate schools in math, statistics, economics.

Also of course there are the human detectives. The watchful eyes and ears at the tables. The players who will report suspicious activity to alert security to keep the games clean. On 2+2 its no secret that Stars security relies heavily on watchful players to report suspicious activity. Players will "rat out" cheaters since it is themselves who are being cheated.

So back to the casino. One fellow went on to tell a story about two people he knew who attempted to collude at small stakes on PokerStars. He said it worked for a little while but then they were caught by Stars security. The accounts were closed and their funds confiscated. The amount wasn't large, around $300 he said.

Now it gets interesting. To the table talkers, this seemed to confirm that it is possible to get away with collusion on PokerStars! Uh no, that's not really true. What it actually proves is that would be cheaters [even at the lowest stakes] will be caught and their funds will be taken away.

It seemed strange to me the fact that the cheaters were caught somehow then proves that you can get away with cheating. Oh well if they don't want to play online that's their choice of course. And yes this story confirms there are people attempting to cheat and collude at online poker at all stakes [and in live poker too]. But the big sites realize that security is in a sense their only product and if the players don't feel comfortable, that the game is clean, then they just won't play and the site will go under.