Prevalence/importance of online collusion

[Piers]

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How often do you think it happens at any one table?

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Difficult to judge exactly: at a quick off the top of my head guess, I would say about a third of the tables have at least two entities colluding. However only about one in twenty have professional colluders that know what they are doing.

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With 2 people or more?

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Taking in account the rake, and the unpredictability of poker, I would suspect more than three is counter productive but have not done any maths to back this up just feel.

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Is it really all that destructive?

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I guess one can make a good case for any thing anyone perceives as a crime as being destructive. Personally I think there are bigger problems.

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What can colluders do to win more money off me?

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Armatures are likely to distort the bidding, for instance jamming the pot when one of them has the nuts. This is quite easy to detect and I doubt that anyone could keep it up at a single site for any length of time using the same screen names.

The better way to do it is to just use the extra information to improve pot odds decisions and what hands to play pre flop. Problem really needs to be a winning player(s) before this technique is useful. Otherwise the cheater(s) could probably get better results just by learning playing better.

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Would they even care to do it in the lower limits?

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Yes of course. School children messing around on the school computer might not have the bank role for higher stakes. Some people might ease their conscience by telling themselves it does not count at low limit. More cunning cheaters know that lower limit players are less likely to notice. Maybe someone’s suit of bots does not do so well at higher limits.

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What can I do to counter it?

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The only effective technique for you to counter collusion is to get good enough at the game that you win despite cheaters and whatever else gets thrown at you.