Cheating.....

[HopeydaFish]

The only "real" cheating you have to worry about is people colluding at the tables. However, it's usually pretty obvious (to an observant player) when your opponents are colluding, and you can quickly report the colluders to site's security if you are at all suspicious. Once the site views the players' hand histories, it is obvious whether or not the players are in cahoots. They'll even share the results the investigation with you, in order to try to assuage your fears.

Sites have an immense amount to lose by allowing cheaters to prosper. They want to stamp out cheating even more than the players do.

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The only "real" cheating you have to worry about is people colluding at the tables. However, it's usually pretty obvious (to an observant player) when your opponents are colluding, and you can quickly report the colluders to site's security if you are at all suspicious. Once the site views the players' hand histories, it is obvious whether or not the players are in cahoots. They'll even share the results the investigation with you, in order to try to assuage your fears.

Sites have an immense amount to lose by allowing cheaters to prosper. They want to stamp out cheating even more than the players do.

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Hopey, can you talk about ways newer players like myself can catch colluders at our tables? Can you give a good HH example, or just discuss things to look out for?

[HopeydaFish]

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The only "real" cheating you have to worry about is people colluding at the tables. However, it's usually pretty obvious (to an observant player) when your opponents are colluding, and you can quickly report the colluders to site's security if you are at all suspicious. Once the site views the players' hand histories, it is obvious whether or not the players are in cahoots. They'll even share the results the investigation with you, in order to try to assuage your fears.

Sites have an immense amount to lose by allowing cheaters to prosper. They want to stamp out cheating even more than the players do.

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Hopey, can you talk about ways newer players like myself can catch colluders at our tables? Can you give a good HH example, or just discuss things to look out for?

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I'm not the best person to answer this question. I play recreationally so I don't have the thousands of hours of experience on-line to give you a definitive answer.

Mostly it has to do with players raising and re-raising the pot to chase out opponents and/or pump up the pot when one of the colluders is holding the nuts or the near nuts. For instance, colluder #1 is holding AA, so he raises, you're holding QQ, so you call, colluder #2 is holding 24o and re-raises to pump the pot for his buddy, colluder #1 four-bets, so now you must call 2 bets to stay in.

One sign is that colluders either both call pre-flop, or both fold pre-flop. They're either both in or they're both out.

One way to be able to detect colluding is to check out the hand histories when the two suspected colluders reach showdown. Even if one of the colluders mucks a losing hand at showdown, his hole cards will appear in the hand history. If the player was raising and re-raising on every street with cards that nowhere near merited such action, it's possible he was colluding with someone at the table who held a strong hand and was pumping up the pot for his partner in crime.

Of course, there are plenty of fish and maniacs who will raise and re-raise with nothing, and who *aren't* colluding, so don't start getting paranoid every time someone doesn't play by the book.

[Zetack]

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Mostly it has to do with players raising and re-raising the pot to chase out opponents and/or pump up the pot when one of the colluders is holding the nuts or the near nuts. For instance, colluder #1 is holding AA, so he raises, you're holding QQ, so you call,

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I hope not...


--Zetack

[HopeydaFish]

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Mostly it has to do with players raising and re-raising the pot to chase out opponents and/or pump up the pot when one of the colluders is holding the nuts or the near nuts. For instance, colluder #1 is holding AA, so he raises, you're holding QQ, so you call,

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I hope not...


--Zetack

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In any event, my point is that if it weren't for the collusion you could get away with calling the initial 2 bets to see the flop, but now you'll have to call 2 *additional* bets to see the flop (if you still decide to call when at least one of your opponents almost surely has you beat).

Whether or not the colluders actually did you a favor by telgraphing the AA in my above scenario is another story.

[adanthar]

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In any event, my point is that if it weren't for the collusion you could get away with calling the initial 2 bets to see the flop

[/ QUOTE ]I hope not

[itsmarty]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In Antwort auf:</font><hr />
my point is that if it weren't for the collusion you could get away with calling the initial 2 bets

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What the other posters are correctly telling you is that you should re-raise with your Queens before the flop.

The rest of your post, including the part about don't wig out every time someone overplays a hand against you, was very good.

Martin

[HopeydaFish]

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my point is that if it weren't for the collusion you could get away with calling the initial 2 bets

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What the other posters are correctly telling you is that you should re-raise with your Queens before the flop.

The rest of your post, including the part about don't wig out every time someone overplays a hand against you, was very good.

Martin

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Ah. I thought he was suggesting that you should fold pre-flop after the 4-bet, which seemed crazy weak-tight to me...but I wasn't about to argue because strategy wasn't the point of my post.

For the record, I'd have been re-raising QQ every time. I'm too LAG, so folding or just calling isn't really in my blood (though this example doesn't constitute LAG play, I realize).

[HopeydaFish]

Oh, and to the OP, another way that you might get "cheated" are through bots. The prevalence of bots, their skill level, and the sites' abilities to detect them have all been debated to death on here.

The concensus is that there are definitely bots out there (WinHoldem bots, specifically), but they aren't all that good and good Hold'em players can still kill them (and the really good players probably always will).