Is this legal?
 

I've played in a few live ring games in which this one guy has always lost terribly to me. Saw him out at a local bar one night and we struck up a conversation. I'd had a few beers and basically told him his playing skills were lacking. He smiled and asked if I played online poker (I don't). He proceeded to tell me that he has developed a method for winning big. He's a computer geek and is a sysop at a local company. He has over thirty computers at home that he plays online poker with. According to him, he signs on as 4 or 5 different players at a time under different accounts, and all of the "players" will play at one 8 handed table. Ergo, collusion with a twist. When he can see 4 hands at once, he's able to work it so one of his identities wins big. So - is this legal? Is it commonplace?

Re: Is this legal?
 

not a bad idea, huh? what's the big deal? i don't see a problem with it.




do you??

Re: Is this legal?
 

In the sense that there is no way that this person would be prosecuted in a US court of law for what he is doing, then yes it is legal. Surprisingly, collusion on online poker has not been high on Congress' to-do list.

Re: Is this legal?
 

Dude, pretty much all of us do this. Seriously. This is commonplace. Not a big deal at all.

Re: Is this legal?
 

Oh my god, he multi tables? What a concept! 10X as many hands an hour.

Re: Is this legal?
 

its possible. however if hes as bad as you say i wouldnt worry even if he was controlling all of the other players at the table. i also dont know which site has 8 max tables. all ive seen are 10 and 6 and heads up.

at the lower limits its not worth colluders time. the higher staked games are where they would play and any decent player at that limit would catch onto what they were doing very quickly unless they were very suble about it.

i played in a 5/10 6 max game the other night where i felt that 3 of the players were colluding. i cought onto very easily and im no pro. i just reported my suspicion and the hands in question and moved to another table. that was the first time in 3 years online that i suspected collusion. so its not common. the funny thing is i left the table with a nice profit because i flopped quads and they tried to trap me with raises when one of them flopped a full house..lol. the other 2 folded on the river like they had done a couple times earlier. i looked back at the hand history and they had nothing.

Re: Is this legal?
 

Well, I don't do online poker but, if I were in a live game and four players began showing their hands to each other I'd have to shoot a few kneecaps. If I had control of 4 of the 8 (or 10, or however many) hands, the other players are going to lose their money to me. If a good player were doing that to me, there would be no way of beating him/her. I guess that I'm just a little naive to online poker.

Re: Is this legal?
 

people try it. people get caught. people lose all their money.

also, in your scenario, one of the MANY MANY security measures in place would pick up the frequency of all these bogus accounts playing together. it would last 10 minutes, and you are done.

more importantly, anyone who tries this is a piece of scum and is hurting the very game that feeds the pros that post here.

Re: Is this legal?
 

Just in case it wasn't clear, sarcasm is present is a number of the replies. This is obviously cheating and would certainly get him banned from whatever sites he's doing it on if he's caught. If he's logged on to multiple accounts on the same site with the same IP address, that could set off a red flag. Most poker sites have systems they use to detect likely cheaters, but there are, no doubt, some people getting away with some cheating. For the most part, it doesn't seem to be prevalent enough to do serious harm to most players, but there must be some cases where it does.

Laws relating to online poker are fuzzy at best and would depend on where he is and where the poker sites are.

Re: Is this legal?
 

flat out cheating

Re: Is this legal?
 

I've played in a few live ring games in which this one guy has always lost terribly to me

Humor him, poker needs people like this.

He proceeded to tell me that he has developed a method for winning big

It has probably crossed the mind of nearly every new player at some point, it's a simple thought, but also the easiest thing for even the not-so-good sites to catch.

Lori

Re: Is this legal?
 

He mentioned the guy is pretty computer adept, so I would imagine he fixed the IP problem. Theroretically someone with the computer knowledge could easy milk Party Poker and NEVER be caught if they wanted to spend the time setting it up and debugging. Which brings up a good question. Yes, Party can just close accounts and take funds, but what about already cashed out funds? Will there be any legal problems in the US for someone if they, say, made a couple hundred thousand off of cheating in online poker assuming all taxes are paid properly? And, of course, they're doing this in a state that online poker is "legal."

Re: Is this legal?
 

Do we know this for a fact, though? If someone were to milk an online poker site for a LARGE sum of money, but all taxes, etc. were filed properly, would the US gov't have any problem with it?

Re: Is this legal?
 

not the us govs problem

Re: Is this legal?
 

Then why aren't some computer geniuses doing this? It's a VERY lucrative proposition if done correctly. Maybe they are and we just don't know? Literally, if done correctly there is NO way a site would catch them...or care I would imagine, they make the rake anyway...plus done properly no one would ever know they were colluding. Just think if you had half the players at a table, just by the fact that you know 10 cards gives you a HUGE advantage.

Re: Is this legal?
 

You do realize it would take more effort to collude effectively that to just win normally, right? Even so, I call BS on this story. I am willing to bet MONEY the original poster is making this up. I see so many posts on colluding like it's the worst thing in the world, but what most people fail to realize is that for the average person, the edge gained by collusion is extremely small. Afterall, when you are behind a dominating hand you are losing twice as fast, if not more in your attempts to push him off which is really the only thing colluding would be good for.

Re: Is this legal?
 

"the funny thing is i left the table with a nice profit because i flopped quads and they tried to trap me with raises when one of them flopped a full house..lol. the other 2 folded on the river like they had done a couple times earlier. i looked back at the hand history and they had nothing."

I generally don't call poo-pahs, but I call here.

Please produce said HH OR El lame-o story why not. I will not accept "my dog ate my hard drive".

If I'm in error here I'll play poker naked tomorrow.

MS Sunshine

Re: Is this legal?
 

I assure you, a computer programmer (or team of them) could EASILY devise a VERY lucrative scheme. It'd take a while to get off the ground (month full time I'd say), but the rewards of it would be MASSIVE if done properly, and if there's no legal repurcusions...why not?

Re: Is this legal?
 

legal: yes
ethical: maybe
likely to get caught eventually: almost certain

however, it's certainly feasible. he likely has each client run through various proxies and has many many different accounts set up in order to mask it better. However, eventually it'll show up if he does it with any frequency, and it sounds like he does.

Re: Is this legal?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I assure you, a computer programmer (or team of them) could EASILY devise a VERY lucrative scheme. It'd take a while to get off the ground (month full time I'd say), but the rewards of it would be MASSIVE if done properly, and if there's no legal repurcusions...why not?

[/ QUOTE ]

If I had a team of people, I guarantee you I could get it off the ground in the time it takes to register some accounts and set up some bank accounts... I know some java and c++, but I am no programmer. It'd be easy as pie to make some bucks off of it. Despite their best efforts, a well thought out plan should be able to take great strides in counteracting their countermeasures. again, probably not out to inifinity, but long enough to turn a profit.

Fortunately, it's less work and still quite profitable for me to just be an honest player 4-tabling small stakes...

Re: Is this legal?
 

Perhaps for you, but I assure you a programmer or two could setup a nice, nice system to make profits ridiculously, and the best part would be it could be completely automated once it's setup.

Re: Is this legal?
 

Like most chronic gamblers who are incapable of beating the game, I believe that this guy is in denial and refuses to admit he is completely incapable of beating the game. I do not believe his story.

Re: Is this legal?
 

[ QUOTE ]
If I'm in error here I'll play poker naked tomorrow.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again?

Re: Is this legal?
 

This is probably already been said, but...

Will he be prosecuted? Probably not.

Should he be taken out back and hanged? Most definitely yes.

Re: Is this legal?
 

The answer to the original question: yes it's illegal in the U.S. and just about everywhere else. You're defrauding the poker site and the other players. The fact that 1) the victims are overseas and 2) the game itself may be illegal are irrelevant. You are still winning money through fraud.

Finding someone interested in prosecuting may be another matter [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img].

Re: Is this legal?
 

This sounds like total bs.

Now if your friend has a <font color="green">p</font><font color="red">a</font><font color="blue">t</font><font color="pink">t</font><font color="orange">e</font><font color="gray">r</font><font color="purple">n</font> <font color="red">m</font><font color="purple">a</font><font color="orange">p</font>...then it might be believable.

Re: Is this legal?
 

You continue to "assure" us of things.

I don't see that you have any credibility to your statements. Some of the things you have said tell me you don't know how all this works.

Your mention of "IP addresses" clearly misses the key issue. It doesn't matter if you can spoof IPs. The security built into the software is going to pick up on all these players playing at the same table on a consistent basis. Furthermore, the action of proper collusion is very strange and also will be picked up by the software. These two facts alone are enough for them to take your money. They don't care if it's just one person using multiple accounts. Don't you think they have thought about a group of people from different areas of the globe colluding together?

I'm sure you think it would be "soooooo easy", And there is "NO WAY" they could get caught.

But the fact is, it's not that easy at all.

I can "asssssure you" of that.

Re: Is this legal?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Even so, I call BS on this story.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do the same.
My guess is the original poster was fishing for info. about this and wanted to deflect the attention away from himself.

Re: Is this legal?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps for you, but I assure you a programmer or two could setup a nice, nice system to make profits ridiculously, and the best part would be it could be completely automated once it's setup.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, in a month or two you could set up a AI for playing poker that is actually good?

I think they got a research position for you at University of Alberta, as they've been struggling for a decade to build poker AI that's merely decent.

Re: Is this legal?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I think they got a research position for you at University of Alberta

[/ QUOTE ]

Clearly.

It\'s hard to do
 

I agree. I am a computer scientist and can judge the feasiblity of a project such as this.

To collude undetected would be very hard. It would take so much work that it's not worth it.

There's so much more opportunity in creating software that people will pay for. This sort of project would be very low on the to-do list of any software developer.

The main reason is collusion (without being detected) gives a very small edge. The colluders can't collude too much because it will become obvious very quickly. I'm sure the sites monitor how you play your hand, who you play with etc. Collusion is a big threat to their business model so they take it seriously.

As with most things, to make really good money, you're better off doing something more ethical. If you make big money at collusion, you will get caught.

Re: Is this legal?
 

I didn't realize that I would get so many critical responses when submitting a post that was merely meant to satisfy a question that had been nagging me. First, I don't play online poker, so how is this post an attempt to deflect attention away from me? Second, I didn't believe this guy either. It was a discussion taking place in a bar with alcoholic beverages being consumed. I went to his house a few days later and saw it for myself. He was on Party Poker btw. He had a pretty impressive setup. I know enough about computers to ask about the ISP address issue. He didn't go into details but said he had several ISP addresses. I never asked him how much he actually made, didn't figure I'd get a truthful answer. The bottom line is, I wanted to know if this was legal, and sought this forum for an answer.

Re: Is this legal?
 

Few comments here. There's some of this going on, and you need to keep your eyes open for it.

This is not a major problem though and nothing to get alarmed about, and these games are going to be noticibly tight. They do get caught occasionally but just open up new accounts and they are back in business.

As tracking software gets more sophisticated, the hope is to catch these people sooner and more often, to put a stop to this. In order for the sites to be motivated enough to police this to the level that they should, we need to be vigilent and report and express our concerns promptly.

I was thinking about Jethro from the Beverly Hillbillies trying this. It's a 10 person table and he's all 10 [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Look at all the hands I'm winning Uncle Jed! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

KC

Re: Is this legal?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I've played in a few live ring games in which this one guy has always lost terribly to me. Saw him out at a local bar one night and we struck up a conversation. I'd had a few beers and basically told him his playing skills were lacking.

[/ QUOTE ]

Does this mean he's also lacking in collusion skills?

I call bull also.

Re: It\'s hard to do
 

Think about it. What if you have 5 players (more?) sitting at a table. Knowing 10 cards, you don't even NEED to use normal collusion techniques. The fact that you know 10 cards instead of 10, gives you a HUGE advantage. Several players stay in (the ones with the best chances of winning the hand given the board), and of course they won't win every hand, but they would know enough to know what possible hands the other players MIGHT have, which gives them a VERY close approximation to their true winning percentage.

Re: Is this legal?
 

You're looking at it the entirely wrong way.

Re: It\'s hard to do
 

If you know 10 cards instead of 2, you have a big advantage. However, this doesn't easily translate into making big money.

The reason you don't make big money is that you cannot act on this information very often without getting caught. So what at first glance appears to be a huge edge, really is a small edge because you can only use it rarely.

If a human player can detect or get a sense for collusion happening during his game without knowing his cheating opponents' hole cards, then a computer with perfect information of the situation certainly can. A simple policy is to suspect all winning players as potential cheats and give their games the once over.

The play of a cheating colluding scum-bag will deviate from the play of a normal winning player. This sets off a red flag and the cheating son-of-a-whore's hand history then gets more scrutiny from more resource intensive algorithms. Finally, a human can look at the supect games and come to a conclusion.

My gut says that it would be very hard and very tricky to setup a colluding network that goes undetected. To set one up that gets detected after a month or two: maybe not so hard.

Re: Is this legal?
 

he may just be schitzophrenic.

cheers!

Re: It\'s hard to do
 

I think you're overestimating Party's willingness to actively catch cheaters. Why should they want to? It doesn't matter to them, rake is rake. I would imagine the only time Party DOES catch people is when other people complain. I'm not talking about collusion in the traditional sense. Knowing hole cards is enough, and I don't think the human opponents will have any idea what's going on, it's not like they're trapping opponents in a raising war and then folding.

As I said, it'd be a a bit complex to set up correctly, but I think if you could do it, it'd be very profitable for quite a long time.

Re: Is this legal?
 

[ QUOTE ]
You're looking at it the entirely wrong way.

[/ QUOTE ]

No. I'm not. I actually know what I'm talking about.

You have no idea how the software for these sites works.

Again, I point out that your statements lack credibility.
You failed to answer any of the legitimate points made by those who clearly have more knowledge than you about this issue.

By the way, it's fun to MAKE words BIG to add EMPHASIS.