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New Skill Quiz 2024
Take quizIs online poker rigged?
If we’re still asking this question in 2022, we’re probably a losing player and need some help.
Sites make money from people playing. Rigging the deck in certain players’ favour would do little to nothing to help their bottom line whilst amplifying risks of losing licenses to operate, which are already hard enough to acquire and maintain from regulators.
Are people cheating at online poker?
Now this question has a bit more legs. For sure, in 2022, people will be cheating online. With RTA becoming a more prevalent option, collusion rings and unregulated games on apps, there are many ways people can cheat in 2022.
In a recent Q&A, Fedor got onto the topic of Cheating in online poker, outlining that it’s clear that it’s happening and pinpointing a two-pronged approach we as a community should take to stomp out Cheating in 2022.
We as the poker community need to talk about cheating more; we need to be bringing these situations to light and ensuring suspected cheaters are caught.
Sites also need to continue working harder to catch cheaters. Fedor highlights GGPoker as a site working very hard to stop Cheating whilst also giving props to the long time industry leaders as a company who have always worked hard to ensure Cheating isn’t happening on their site.
Sites need to continue to get better not only at catching cheaters but also at tracking them. Whilst sites are direct competitors, ensuring games are fair for us at pokercode at least seems an industry-wide goal that surpasses the competition.
Suppose sites were to begin sharing information on cheaters (within legally allowable sharable details). In that case, we could stop cheaters who are being caught on one site but allowed to continue playing elsewhere.
This one links nicely into the work sites can do on catching, tracking and sharing information on cheaters.
Harsher punishments would undoubtedly go a long way in stopping Cheating.
Lifetime online bans for players caught Cheating would stop the likelihood of cheating tenfold. Especially as mentioned, if we could ensure sites share information about banned players. People aren’t going to risk their livelihoods for an extra bit of EV.
Additionally to lifetime online bans, looking at banning players caught Cheating from live events would also curb this behaviour. Stopping people from playing WSOP, WPT & EPT events or cash games at these events would go a long way in influencing behaviour online.
In short, No.
Whilst people are cheating. A lot are being caught and punished. This phenomenon is fortunately not as widely spread as it could be. Still, as tools to aid cheaters to improve with technology, we as a community & industry need to do all we can to ensure the risk of being caught—the implications of being caught need to outweigh the benefits of Cheating massively.
Check out the video below to hear a few more of Fedor’s thoughts on the topic and other questions he answered, including “The craziest hand of his life” and how Fedor got started with a Poker Bankroll.
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