Online Cheating??

lordofthetilt

The only form of it I've ever heard of is people pulling the plug and using the 'all-in protection' rule to their advantage when they don't want to call anymore.

Lately I've been wondering if anyone ever worries about the possibility of online collusion. i.e. 2 players sitting at the same table with instant messanger open communicating info to one another.

Obviously it won't help if you're beaten but if I held the nuts I could easily get a friend to call adding value to the pot thereby forcing other non-nut draws to call.

I figured previously that online card rooms probably checked IP addresses but esat broadband(along with others I suppose) gives dynamic IP adresses which are changable.

Does anyone know if there's protection in place against this sort of cheating
(basically will it work for me and me mate madser )

NickyOD

lordofthetilt wrote:

The only form of it I've ever heard of is people pulling the plug and using the 'all-in protection' rule to their advantage when they don't want to call anymore.

Lately I've been wondering if anyone ever worries about the possibility of online collusion. i.e. 2 players sitting at the same table with instant messanger open communicating info to one another.

Obviously it won't help if you're beaten but if I held the nuts I could easily get a friend to call adding value to the pot thereby forcing other non-nut draws to call.

I figured previously that online card rooms probably checked IP addresses but esat broadband(along with others I suppose) gives dynamic IP adresses which are changable.

Does anyone know if there's protection in place against this sort of cheating
(basically will it work for me and me mate madser )

On Pokerstars if 2 players play together regularly they are flagged and monitored. Yes IP addresses may change but the subnet you beloing to will never change so they will always know your general location. They may also record your MAC address which is the hardware address of your network card. You can only spoof your mac address with a special software package which very few people will use. Basically how easy it is to get away with collusion depends on the site. Party Poker and Pokerstar are probably the two most successful sites in catching people.

Collusion really isn't the kind of cheating that worries me, because players who collude aren't good enough to be winning players on their own and will probably still make the wrong moves. I do worry however about how far poker bots can be taken.

lordofthetilt

Still they'd never be capable of the truly great moves like going over the top on 7-2o

okidoki987

The only form of it I've ever heard of is people pulling the plug and using the 'all-in protection' rule to their advantage when they don't want to call anymore.

That's the main reason I don't play Party Poker!

NickyOD

okidoki987 wrote:

That's the main reason I don't play Party Poker!

Party has tables with no all-in protection.

okidoki987

Okay Tx.
They must have changed in the last year?

On the cheating , have a look at this and you will find confirmation of on-line cheating!

http://www.billrini.com/archives/001169.html

Eoin

I know my friends brother has colluded with a friend of his on a regular basis - and apparantly the brother is an excellent player, which makes me wonder why he has to do it in the first place.

okidoki987 wrote:

http://www.billrini.com/archives/001169.html

That is excellent

okidoki987 wrote:

Yes IP addresses may change but the subnet you beloing to will never change so they will always know your general location.

Could they narrow it down to more than the city you are dialing in from?

okidoki987 wrote:

They may also record your MAC address which is the hardware address of your network card.

What about if you are using a modem as opposed to a network connection - does that also give a MAC address?

edit: What does a "pokerbot" do - haven't heard of one them thingies before?

NickyOD

eoin_s wrote:

Could they narrow it down to more than the city you are dialing in from?

They can narrow it down to the subnet you are on which is normally a much smaller area. Most people are on a Class C network which only has 255 possible addresses so its quite a small geographic location.

eoin_s wrote:

What about if you are using a modem as opposed to a network connection - does that also give a MAC address?

A modem is a network connection. You get an IP address same as if you were connected with a LAN card in fact any kind of device connected to a network has an IP address.

eoin_s wrote:

edit: What does a "pokerbot" do - haven't heard of one them thingies before?

http://www.winholdem.net/

Pokerbots are software packages that play poker for you by reading the cards and the action on the screen. It's unclear how advanced they are. It's thought they are used mostly at low limit holdem, but I can tell you I'm fairly sure one was detected on Full Tilt in a $20 NL SnG. Aparrantly the software can't read the cards on Pokerstars. Party Poker seem to be the best at detecting it, but there are ways around it by renaming files. Their forum is pretty frightening. I don't think any of these guys score very often with the ladies. You would have to be an incredibly talented poker player to write software that could win consistently at NL Holdem.

growler

NickyOD wrote:

They can narrow it down to the subnet you are on which is normally a much smaller area. Most people are on a Class C network which only has 255 possible addresses so its quite a small geographic location.
.

thats assuming that players in collusion are geographically close to each other , there is no reason why they should be.

I'm sure there is lots of amateur collusion over IM on most of the sites , but its not going to get anyone rich quick !

Samba

From what I have read there has been no bot developed that is sophisticated to compete in a full 9/10 seater ring game, too many variables.

One very successful bot has however been created for 1v1 Limit.....


Google is your friend there.

I think even if a bot was developed successfully for a ring game, the person who did so would keep it very hush hush, as it's a gold mine if it works.

voakesy

i used to always play on betfair with a mate, when he got low id put him all in bar 1 chip and get him back in then fold and visa versa. nothin ever happened.

we used to wipe out the 20 sterling games, some people would go mental but never reported it

lordofthetilt

As far as I know Mike Caro created some quite successful poker playing software(it could have just been blatent self promotion). After that
I suppose it would just be a relatively simple matter of defining inputs.

NickyOD

Samba wrote:

From what I have read there has been no bot developed that is sophisticated to compete in a full 9/10 seater ring game, too many variables.

If you take a look at the discussion on the forum linked below you'll see that these guys are indeed using their bots on full tables mostly at the microlimits, but it is only a matter of time before some of these fockers are clever enough to make a successful bot for higher limits. I actually thought they couldn't use their software on pokerstars but now they can.

http://www.winholdem.net/forum/

Also anyone who cheats via IM will be caught by any site that uses IGP (Party uses it). It frequesnt'y takes screenshots of your entire screen display. You can however get around this by using a package called WinPP or a second machine. These fockers will always have the upper hand.

Drakar

Poker sites already currently allow software like Poker Pal which calculates the pot and hand odds and offers some remedial advice on what action to take. The only thing this software does differently is it has the capability to make the moves automatically (which one could do with PokerPal and Autoit). Posts on the forum point out that at 0.5/1 limits on PS it was quite happilly able to automatically lose $50 in 30 mins with default settings.

The reason I wouldn't be overly concerned about software such as this is that all it does (in the best possible scenario) is implement the rules that the person who's running it has defined, which is what we as humans already do. It doesn't (can't) cheat, it can't read minds, it can only compare it's cards with how powerful it thinks that is and make decisions on pot odds. In the best scenario (where it does what the rules programmer wants it to do for every hand) it's only advantage is that it's using exact numbers for pot odds and hand power. If you have the 80th best hand and someone raises you, what do you do? How do you teach a computer to make that decision? It would be interesting later to see how it would operate if it could interact with other tools like poker-tracker to interpret human's raises in different scenarios, but again that's something many players are already using all the time.

Dub13

NickyOD wrote:

On Pokerstars if 2 players play together regularly they are flagged and monitored. .

This is what I dont understand....on some sites you can have a buddy list and find out were your mates are playing.Does this mean if you do this to often the site will think you are cheating...?I injoy playing online with mates.

Hectorjelly

Dub13 wrote:

This is what I dont understand....on some sites you can have a buddy list and find out were your mates are playing.Does this mean if you do this to often the site will think you are cheating...?I injoy playing online with mates.

Only if you engage in odd betting practices

Dub13

Hectorjelly wrote:

Only if you engage in odd betting practices

A lot of people I know engage in VERY odd betting practices every week in the Fitz