Online Poker Scams
Join a poker or a rakeback forum today, and I bet the 3rd or 4th topic you’ll come across will have something to do with online poker being rigged. Even though we all know poker is not rigged (a friend of mine who had access to inside information on an online poker operation, once told me: if you had any idea about what the poker room goes through to make sure their games are fair, you’d never again even consider the possibility that a poker room is rigged), deep down inside we always feel like something unfair happened to us when we get beat on 90% pot odds by a two outer calling our all-in.
The fact is however, that fairness has nothing to do with poker. He who plays positive EV all the time, wins in the end, he who doesn’t, loses. It’s that simple. The variation in-between is part of the game, and weird draws are too. No, the poker room is not to blame for extreme bad beats. They happen and the nature of the game of Texas Holdem is responsible for them. If you’re looking for a culprit in that respect, don’t blame the software or the room for it.
In extreme cases, cheating does happen in online poker though.
In such instances, it usually takes and insider to pull a fast one on players (like it happened not so long ago at one of the poker rooms we all know and used to appreciate) and the perpetrator usually gets caught because there is no way he can avoid leaving a telltale trail of betting patterns behind. Do such isolated incidents mean online poker is at the mercy of insiders? By no means. It is in the interest of the poker room to provide fair games, and as difficult as it may be for some to believe, they can make much more money legally and fairly than they ever could by cheating. Most online poker rooms are safe and they treat their financial transactions with the utmost professionalism.
Scams do happen though, because wherever people congregate to play for real money, some wise-guy will always try to prove he is smarter than anyone else. As far as online poker scams go, it’s your fellow poker players you should worry most about, not the poker room and its RNG.
One of the most dangerous online poker scams concerns money-laundering. A person (someone who’s stolen money from another player’s account in poker room A, or has deposited his own dirty dollars) asks you to do him a favor and trade money with him. He’ll give you $100 in room A, for $75-80 in another poker room. He’s grown sick of poker room A and regardless of the cost, he just wants to move to poker room B and be happy there.
One advice regarding such offers: do not help out. Money laundering is a serious crime and you could get yourself into trouble, while the crook gets away with your clean dollars at room B. Side-bets are always interesting props for anyone who has a tiny bit of the gambling bug eating away deep down inside. You’ll often see people at the table (in a STT for instance) throwing together side-bets on who will eventually win. Often, these people are not even actively involved at the table, they’re merely hanging around looking for victims.
If someone is ignorant enough to be drawn into such a bet with them, they hope the person in question pays them out if they win the bet. If they happen to lose it, they’ll act like nothing happened, make like a tree and leave. Another online poker scam artist is the borrower. He asks someone for some money which he promises to return with interest (this scam runs on forums and community sites as well, not only in actual poker rooms). The first time, the sum is meager ($10 or so) which he indeed repays interest and all.
The second and possibly third times, our guy asks for even more, which he – again – promptly repays with interest and everything. By this time, the victim begins to see the scammer as a source of income, and trust issues are long forgotten. Fourth time the scammer asks for even more (maybe as much as $1,000) which he disappears with. In order to steer clear of all these scams and scam artists, never engage into anything involving real money transactions with anyone in the poker room. The only entity you should ever give money to and expect money from, is the poker room itself.
Poker Rewards is Latest Scam Offering Free Poker Calculator
Here is one of those casino promotion sites getting very clever while layering thier scam with the offer of a free (useless) poker calculator. have a look at this video: