online cheating?

Obscure

Came up during the sunday free-roll about online cash games cheating. With some ppl saying thats the reason they dont play cash online. They'll play touraments online cos its harder to cheat as you dont get ur choice of table and you get moved around a bit.

There are a few ways you can cheat i guess. Firstly by having friends on the same table who tell you what cards they hold, from which you can make a better guess at opponents hand. Anyone know of other ways? Also you can pump up pots to make it easier for an opponent to call.

It was said that downstairs in the Merrion in FareBet(?) is perfect for cheating as all the machines use different IPs so the poker sites cant tell that all the ppl are actually sitting in the same room.

Does anyone have fears of playing online becuase of cheating and does anyone cheat online by communicating with "opponents"?

careca

First of all, I don't think anyone will come on here and say, 'oh ya, I cheat all the time'. Might be proved wrong though.

I honestly don't think it would be worth the hassle and I know there are people out there who would. If its at the lower staked games, then how much will they win in a night/week. Regardless if they know each others hands they still have to find out whats in yours. In order to be successful they would probably need 3/4 players acting together. Also if they try it in a bigger game the better players would get suspicious if two or more players were in collusion.
Also a player would want to stay in a game for a long period of time for it to work out for any cheaters. For instance I could sit down with $100, get lucky in the first hand against one of them, double up and leave the table. The next player might just sit down with $10.

I play cash games on line a fair bit, for small enough stakes, and I have no worries about collusion. I'd be far more worried about the muppets calling raises with absolute sh*t and getting lucky.

Imposter

careca wrote:

I'd be far more worried about the muppets calling raises with absolute sh*t and getting lucky.

as if!

JuliusFranco

Obscure wrote:

... It was said that downstairs in the Merrion in FareBet(?) is perfect for cheating as all the machines use different IPs so the poker sites cant tell that all the ppl are actually sitting in the same room...

i'm pretty sure that this is not the case in the BetFair lounge, tho I could be wrong. i've often tried to play cash games but it wouldn't let me if there was someone else online there (same IP adress)

Hyzepher

I know that the poker sites themselves monitor the frequency that the same players sit down at the same tables - if they are suspicious, they will analyse the hands/winnings etc.

Hyzepher

Merrion

IP spoofing (making your machine report a different IP than it really is) is not difficult. If the security is based on that alone then it is not good enough.

Obscure

careca wrote:

First of all, I don't think anyone will come on here and say, 'oh ya, I cheat all the time'. Might be proved wrong though.

I wouldnt expect anyone to say straight out that they cheat because some ppl might hold it against them. But be interested if they could post a message anonymously and give their experience. whats sites etc.

Heard of software that reads the screen image, extracts the betting/hand data and from that plays the game on the users behalf playing mathimatically correct. Not as good as a good poker player but good enough to rake weak players.

That was the thing supposedly in the Merrion. They are using different IPs for each machine so dont need to IP spoof.

NickyOD

Merrion wrote:

IP spoofing (making your machine report a different IP than it really is) is not difficult. If the security is based on that alone then it is not good enough.

Exactly. Most sites now use a hell of a lot more. Infact Pokerstars have adopted a sytem where every player is given a status something like blue, green, yellow, orange, red etc, etc. Your status is determined by many things, your regular playing partners, MAC address, your IP and geographic location in comparison to your regular playing partners, and most importantly your betting patterns, particularly "squeezeplays". (For example if you make a large bet on the flop, blow 1 player out, then another (partner) makes a bet and you fold) then you are flagged. When you reach a certain status, or are reported by another player then you are monitored and your hand history examined for previous suspicious activity. During the monitoring period your account is completely frozen. I myself have been refunded a small amount of money by Pokerstars when I was squeezeplayed out of a hand in a cash game by colluders.

Some sites also use code built into their client to take screenshots of your PC, which is fed back to the site to tell them if you are using an instant messenger or a bot like Win-Holdem. Party poker in particualr have become extremely proficient in using this. I wouldn't expect sites like betfair to anywhere near as good as the likes of Party Poker, Pokerstars and Paradise in detecting collusion but I'm sure PPP-PitBoss will tell you how they do it.

Samba

I am not sure I like where this thread is going......


I caught a guy on bet365 who was the same person taking up two seats in a 6 seater omaha game, pots would easily get up 1.5k, needless to say having two seats gave him a massive advantage.

What gave him away? every remark which he said was a childish nonsensical one and both players always came out with the same crap, betting was obscure between them and somthing did not sit right with me that they both always left the table with a nice stack and were always seated at the table.

I reported him and since I have yet to find him logged in when I search for either player names.

Regardless if people are in collusion at the table they will still have a very hard time taking down my stack...

They only have so much of an advantage and as said before to make any realy impact you would have to occupy 3-4 seats.

Samba

http://www.paddypowerpoker.com/si_houserules.php


Scroll down to the collusion section

pokertroll

Obscure wrote:

That was the thing supposedly in the Merrion. They are using different IPs for each machine so dont need to IP spoof.

Let me get this clear...
You are saying that betfair who run the betfair lounge in the Merrion have set up the computers in such away as to facilitate their own players cheating.
Hardly.

Are you willing to lay a bet on that?

Marq

I have witnessed players in the betfair lounge sitting beside each other and playing in the same game. Very recently I was in there and two young guys were playing the same sit and go on adjacent computers. that shít's not right.

Obscure

pokertroll wrote:

Let me get this clear...
You are saying that betfair who run the betfair lounge in the Merrion have set up the computers in such away as to facilitate their own players cheating.
Hardly.

Are you willing to lay a bet on that?

No, all i heard was that the machines are possibily setup (not on purpose) so that players in the same room COULD be on the same table. Different IPs on machines possibly. Do you know if this is correct?

pokertroll

Obscure wrote:

No, all i heard was that the machines are possibily setup (not on purpose) so that players in the same room COULD be on the same table. Different IPs on machines possibly. Do you know if this is correct?

I've never played in the Betfair Lounge before but would be worried if this was the case.

Obscure

Samba wrote:

I caught a guy on bet365 who was the same person taking up two seats in a 6 seater omaha game, pots would easily get up 1.5k, needless to say having two seats gave him a massive advantage.

What gave him away? every remark which he said was a childish nonsensical one and both players always came out with the same crap, betting was obscure between them and somthing did not sit right with me that they both always left the table with a nice stack and were always seated at the table.

And with pots of 1.5k your not worried that someone with a bit more cop on than the fella you noticed could be sitting at 3 of the other seats at your table?

As for the software doing screen capture to see if your using messenger etc, you could just use a seperate pc for each seat at a table. With enough know-how you could make a good bit of money colluding!!! Dont think that ppl wouldnt do it because of its not ethical.

Drakar

Some of the afore mentioned poker bots come with card sharing capabilities, so users can share their card info with friends. This means that if the flop comes AA2 and you can see one of your friends has folded A2, you can feel happy calling someone's big raise with Ax (though that would be an unusual situation :P).

Regardless, at the limits I play I wouldn't be concerned about collusion. I could see how people could have concerns at the 100/200 level though for example.

Samba

I have not returned to that cash table since the incident.

and play nothing over 1/2.

He never did any damage to me 3/4 people taking up the seats you would have your work cut out.

I play an ultra-tight cash game online, you won't see me risking my entire stack at a 2/4 table for no reason.


so most of the time even If i would sit down with 4 players colluding, I would not win at all but I would not lose alot either.

So in short, it is a concern but not an overwhelming one.

NickyOD

Obscure wrote:

And with pots of 1.5k your not worried that someone with a bit more cop on than the fella you noticed could be sitting at 3 of the other seats at your table?

As for the software doing screen capture to see if your using messenger etc, you could just use a seperate pc for each seat at a table. With enough know-how you could make a good bit of money colluding!!! Dont think that ppl wouldnt do it because of its not ethical.

That's where the flag for same geographical location comes in. Even with different IPs the subnet of the network you are on can be identified and without doubt on Pokerstars if you're on the same subnet you are flagged as a priority inspection, since most people are only part of a class C network with a max of 255 IP addresses.

In other words if you use 2 machines from the same subnet on the same table your betting patterns will be monitored closely. If you use 3 you are basically gona get caught right away.

I think in the case of the Betfair users are most likely are not able to play at the same table (correct me if you know this is wrong). Friends of mine who are a couple play together in the same house on 2 seperate machines and they cannot play together at the same table, except in private tournaments.

Dub13

NickyOD wrote:

Some sites also use code built into their client to take screenshots of your PC,

I did not know this....so I if I was to be looking at porn (not that I would be ) the good folk at pokerstars would be on to me :eek:

On a serious note,its a relief that they monitor this and probably spend a fortune on software,but no amount of fancy software can tell if people are on the phone to each other.

bohsman

Nobodys going to spend a fortune on the phone especially not in a small game.

The Betfair lounge is seperated into two sides each with different IP adresses, Theres a bit of collusion but theyre not making much money of it, more often people will have side bets on or do a deal and play their own games. Even some of the highrollers in there will be on the phone to each other AFTER the hand playing the big omaha games

MrPudding

Obscure wrote:

No, all i heard was that the machines are possibily setup (not on purpose) so that players in the same room COULD be on the same table. Different IPs on machines possibly. Do you know if this is correct?

They are setup on purpose with differnet IP addresses. They have to be. You cannot have more than 1 machine with a given IP address on the same network. I presume the machines are networked, they would need to be in order to share an internet connection. Therefore they will all have different IP address.

Next time you are in check the IP address, it will probably be in the range of 192.168.*.*, these address are none routable and will *not* be the addresses detected by the pokerroom. the pokerroom will see the IP address of the ISP gateway. So, in short, all the PCs will have different internal IP addresses but unless each machine goes through a different ISP or gateway they will all have the same originating IP.

You can check this quite easily yourself. Open a command prompt on your system and type:

ipconfig

Make a note of you IP address. Then go here:

http://www.whatismyip.com/ or find one of those posters that has the thing in his sig that gives you IP and browser version. You will see that they are different.

It is possible that each machine could have a separate IP address being shown externally, but it takes a bit more work and I am not sure how they would justify doing it.

MrP

bohsman

If you go onto a table on the same side of the room as you in betfair it will say someone with same IP address is logged in

OhPinchy

bohsman wrote:

Nobodys going to spend a fortune on the phone especially not in a small game.

The Betfair lounge is seperated into two sides each with different IP adresses, Theres a bit of collusion but theyre not making much money of it, more often people will have side bets on or do a deal and play their own games. Even some of the highrollers in there will be on the phone to each other AFTER the hand playing the big omaha games

what if the colluders are based in the US where local calls are free, or people using Skype or any VoIP? You could easily have a group of people at different locations playing the same game and colluding via the phone.

I'd say the chances of coming up against it are slim but itd be naieve not to recognise where theres a will theres a way.

MrPudding

If you are at home and are at the same table as someone who has the same ISP as you and you are connected to the same exchange, I believe you will probably have the same IP address. You have to presume they use more than IP addresses to detect collusion.

MrP

Drakar

In that scenario you would have different IP addresses. But yes, they should use more than IP addresses to detect collusion.

Poloman

I have lost about 3 grand online but i dont think cheating is strife.

Davey Devil

Are you just crap at poker then

Obscure

Poloman wrote:

I have lost about 3 grand online but i dont think cheating is strife.

You should think about quitting online poker if ur losing that much IMO!

Canaboid

Poloman wrote:

I have lost about 3 grand online but i dont think cheating is strife.

What site do you play on ? What's your user name ?

NickyOD

MrPudding wrote:

They are setup on purpose with differnet IP addresses. They have to be. You cannot have more than 1 machine with a given IP address on the same network. I presume the machines are networked, they would need to be in order to share an internet connection. Therefore they will all have different IP address.

Next time you are in check the IP address, it will probably be in the range of 192.168.*.*, these address are none routable and will *not* be the addresses detected by the pokerroom. the pokerroom will see the IP address of the ISP gateway. So, in short, all the PCs will have different internal IP addresses but unless each machine goes through a different ISP or gateway they will all have the same originating IP.

You can check this quite easily yourself. Open a command prompt on your system and type:

ipconfig

Make a note of you IP address. Then go here:

http://www.whatismyip.com/ or find one of those posters that has the thing in his sig that gives you IP and browser version. You will see that they are different.

It is possible that each machine could have a separate IP address being shown externally, but it takes a bit more work and I am not sure how they would justify doing it.

MrP

The machines in the betfair lounge will not appear to the poker website as their own IP address. They will appear as the external IP of the firewall. The same way when you connect to this website from work, you appear to be connecting from your business firewall when infact you are connecting from a machine behind that firewall. That's why when two machines in the betfair lounge attempt to sit at the same table you will get the same IP error, since they both sit behind the same firewall.

MrPudding

NickyOD wrote:

The machines in the betfair lounge will not appear to the poker website as their own IP address. They will appear as the external IP of the firewall. The same way when you connect to this website from work, you appear to be connecting from your business firewall when infact you are connecting from a machine behind that firewall. That's why when two machines in the betfair lounge attempt to sit at the same table you will get the same IP error, since they both sit behind the same firewall.

That is what I said.

MrP

Krusty_Clown

NickyOD wrote:

Some sites also use code built into their client to take screenshots of your PC, which is fed back to the site to tell them if you are using an instant messenger or a bot like Win-Holdem.

I find this hard to believe, as this would negate any data protection or privacy rights of the individual (you code also have source code / company finances visible on your screen, not just porn!). I haven't read the T&Cs but I kind of doubt that they can make you waive your rights by using the company's poker client..

Their client software could potentially analyse the applications you have running, or the network protocols you are using to identify collusive communication, but who's to say that you're not just having a chat with a friend while playing poker? It's also a grey-area, i.e. rights/spyware and we all know how much attention spyware companies get..

I think it highly more likely that they concentrate on seeking collusion using the means mentioned above, i.e. finding players who regularly play together, unusual bet and fold patterns (i.e. Player A has pocket Kings, Player B has pockets Aces, and player A folds to player B on a low flop, etc).. I would imagine that to make decent money by cheating, you'd need to play with your fellow bandit a fair bit, i.e. it wouldn't be worth it for a once-off opportunity, because of the hassles of setting up unique credit cards, addresses, users, etc.

Much easier (cheaper) to have a couple of algorithms filtering table and user information, than paying a couple of hundred people to watch people's desktops!

Here's a question: Is cheating in online gambling illegal?

NickyOD

Roy Cook wrote an article about cheating recently in Cardplayer. He mentions programs called sniffers which determine what other programs you're running. You're right, it most likely isn't in the form of screen capture, that's just something that's been bouncing around in other forums I've read but its very possible.

http://cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/archives/showarticle.php?a_id=14638