When you join an online poker room, the fact is that you have absolutely no idea who you are playing against, what their aims for the game are and if they know anyone else at the table. You are going in completely blind here, and there is a small risk involved in this.
Of course, if you are playing inside a poker hall, the same could well happen to you there, though you will be able to see the faces of those at the side of you. Online, the only thing you see is a username.
There have been many cases of colluding in online poker, where players have taken advantage of the fact that others do not see them, know who they are, and more importantly, who else they know on the table. When you play online, each site has several different tables, with names, numbers or codes to differentiate them, so if someone wants to meet up online and play in the same room and on the same table, they can, when seats are made available.
This has led to colluding taking place, it is not something that happens all the time, but it is certainly common enough for it to be something that you need to think about, be aware of and have in your mind while you are playing.
What is Colluding?
First, let’s take a look at colluding and what it actually is. The definition of colluding in poker is two (or more) players working together without the rest of the room knowing, intending to increase the chances of one of those players winning the game.
The two players will log onto the same website at the same time, go to the same room and play at the same table. While they are playing, they use something else, a phone, Skype, or another method of contact, to share information about their cards and chances of winning.
There are two reasons and things that colluders will do here. By knowing the cards they have, they can try to work out the chances of what cards are remaining in the deck, by knowing more about which aren’t in the deck.
Secondly, they will also work together in a bid to increase the size of the pot, so that if they do win, the win will be as big as it can be. This is done by betting and trying to force others to bet more and keep the pot building or to get them to fold and move out of the way leaving a path to the pot.
At the end of the game, the players who are colluding will split their profits from the two accounts and hands that have been used in the room.
How to Spot Colluding?
The first thing to say here is that colluding is not easy to spot, and if you have been in a game where this has taken place in the past, then you may not even know about it. Spotting the difference between a player working with someone else or making their own poker decisions is not easy, the two are separated by a very fine line.
Think of it this way:
Is it feasible for a player to fold AQ because they are short of funds and only want to bet on a hand that genuinely gives them a great chance of winning? In those circumstances, yes it is.
Is it also possible that folding on AQ is a sign that someone is colluding with another player and letting them go through with an even better hand? Yes, that is certainly possible.
There is some good news for players though, and it is that even though things are difficult for us to spot while we are playing along, it is much easier for the online casinos themselves to spot. The technology behind online casinos has improved dramatically, and for this reason, they have the ability to check out a number of different things.
They can look at usernames of players and work out which play together on the same tables on a regular basis. This is a great way to try and determine who is playing with each other intentionally. They can also access full player hand history, which means they can see how often players are folding what would be considered a good hand.
Algorithms are put in place to scan through these two points, plus a few more, in a bid to bring together potential colluders, and these are brought to the attention of the backroom staff for further investigation.
There is also the option for players to put in a complaint to their poker site if they believe they have been involved in a game where two players have been colluding with each other, and this will be looked at by the site.
While this is something that players should think about, and it will be a worry to some, it is important to remember that with the type of technology we have available, catching people doing this has never been as easy.
Famous Poker Colluding Cases Where People Were Caught
Pokerstars have been at the centre of one of the biggest colluding rings in online poker, so much so that they have been refunding their players who came up against this ring. When this happened, back in 2017, the ring were known as the Chinese collusion ring.
This all took place on the Pokerstars website, and players who have come into contact with this ring, and lost money because of their collective play, have been refunded those losses. These refunds have reached 25,000 people, showing the size of the collusion ring, and just how many people can be affected by something like this.
It happened on one of the world’s biggest online poker sites too, so if you are playing on a big name site, with strong security and protection in place, this may still not be enough for you to escape the world of collusion.
In total, the incident that was uncovered in 2017 has cost Pokerstars over $2 million in payouts to those who were affected. Since then the company has further increased its security and detection software, in a bid to try and stop this and keep players safe on their site.
Previously, Pokerstars have been involved with a bots scandal, where players were using poker bots to beat their opponents. This resulted in $80,000 worth of refunds to various players who came up against these automatic bots in the rooms at Pokerstars.
The Chinese collusion ring were playing high stakes games and tournaments against each other. The idea behind their plan was to go easy on each other, rather than playing fully. This would mean that the members of the ring could stay in the tournament longer, and the longer you stay in these kinds of events, the bigger your prize at the end of it.
They would play regularly against non-ring players, in a bid to push them out of the game, but these players were completely oblivious to what was taking place, as they understood it, they were inside a regular poker tournament.
What Strategies do People Use to Cheat?
There are unfortunately a few different ways that people can cheat while they are playing online poker. If anything online poker has made it much easier for people to collude compared to land based casinos, but largely the tricks are similar.
There will be strategies out there that are even not known about or not even invented yet. As we know as soon as someone stops one avenue the unscrupulous find a new on.
In any case here is a look at the top ones, and what happens with each of them.
Colluding
We’ve spoken in-depth about this already, so here is a recap. Colluding involves two players working together with the aim of using their combined knowledge to win games. They can detail each other’s cards and bet in a way that gives one of them a better chance of winning the pot. At the end of the game, colluders will split their profits.
Multi-Accounting
This is something that is not allowed in online casinos and poker sites, to prevent players from accessing the welcome bonuses more than once. However, it has an impact on other players too, if it does happen. With two accounts, players can take two seats at the table and gain the same benefits as they would from colluding, but this time they are doing it all themselves.
With two seats they have two hands, can choose the best, force people to bet on more occasions and try to work out possible hands by having more cards to view in the game.
Poker Bots
We’ve mentioned bots already, these are automatic playing bots that use the perfect poker strategy every single time, to bet in the best possible way. Bots are essentially the best poker players, if a bot goes up against a poker pro then the bot will win more often than not.
Poker is a game of skill, and by using a bot, a player is giving themselves the best poker skills in the world, so a better chance of winning.
Ghosting
This is easy to stop in a real-life poker game, but almost impossible to stop online. Ghosting is when a player has someone else effectively playing for them and adding their knowledge, in a bid to win the game. This means they would be logged onto the site and playing themselves, but have a high-quality poker friend either sat with them or available on something such as Skype, to offer poker advice.
You will usually see this happen in tournaments, where prizes on offer are bigger, but ghosting can be used at any time. It isn’t a form of cheating that guarantees a win but certainly stacks things in the favour of the player doing it.
What Happens to the People Who are Caught?
If we are talking about small-time gaming then anyone who is caught cheating at online poker, through colluding or something else, will certainly be removed from the site and have their account banned.
This is the basic first step, if you are colluding yourself and you are caught, don’t expect to be back on that site. Online poker companies are spending a lot of money putting together various preventions to stop this from taking place, so when they do find someone doing it, of course, they are going to ban them.
The next steps will depend on what has happened, how long it has been happening and the amount of money we are talking about. There is also the reason for colluding too, if this is for money laundering purposes, for example, then there are further implications.
If anyone is found guilty of colluding in a big way, then the full force of the law from their country will no doubt be thrown at them. One of the best deterrents for stamping out something like this from online poker is to show that it has big repercussions, hopefully leading to people thinking twice before they do anything.