$20million dollar online poker cheating scandal on 60mins this Sunday night

[Breakage]

This story will apparently be on 60minutes this Sunday night.

Home » 60 Minutes

How Online Gamblers Unmasked Cheaters
60 Minutes/Washington Post Joint Investigation Questions Honesty, Security Of
Cheating Gamblers On The Web
Internet gamblers suspect there's cheating in the off-shore, unregulated $18 billion industry of online betting. | Share/Embed



(CBS) A collaboration by two of the world's most respected news organizations reveals how online poker players suspecting cheating were forced to successfully ferret out the cheaters themselves. That's because managers of the mostly-unregulated $18 billion Internet gambling industry failed to respond to their complaints.

The results of the four-month investigation by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, producer Ira Rosen and The Washington Post’s two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Gilbert Gaul will appear this Sunday, Nov. 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT on 60 Minutes.

"He was raising, just really, really bad hands against very good hands. He seemed to play crazy," says Todd Witteles, a computer scientist turned poker player who believed he was losing too much to the same person. "It seemed like he was giving his money away. Except the only thing was, he wasn't losing. He was playing in a style that was sure to lose, but he was killing the game day after day," Witteles, who played a key detective role, remembers.

Michael Josem, a player and a computer security expert, plotted the odds of such consistent success. "We did the mathematical analysis to find that they were winning at about 15 standard deviations above the mean…approximately equivalent to winning a one-in-a-million jackpot six consecutive times."

The cheating, which netted the cheaters more than $20 million, occurred on two of the Internet's most popular sites, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. The two sites operate out of a shopping mall in Costa Rica and run their games on computer servers housed on an Indian reservation outside of Montreal. They are licensed by a Mohawk tribe that has no background in casino gambling, a tribe that previously made the majority of its money selling tax-free tobacco. Though such gambling is illegal in both Canada and the U.S., the betting laws in those countries have no jurisdiction on the sovereign reservation

[Breakage]

Some more material about it:

A few things about this off the top of my head.

1)Chuck Barnett used to post at MW under the nickname REDEYE,
he is basically a worthless individual.

2)The fact that they don't actively patrol win rates and compare them against some kind of norm is horrendous.

3)I would love to sit with Phil at one of these WSOP and ask him why anyone should believe he wasn't cheating at UB or for that matter how it feels to take millions from a place that housed the largest poker fraud ever reported.






Poker site cheating plot a high-stakes whodunit
$75 million claim filed against Canadian software firm with murky pedigree



Mike Brunker
Projects Team editor



Allegations that cheaters manipulated the software powering a leading Internet poker site so they could see their opponents' hole cards have triggered a $75 million claim against a Canadian company, msnbc.com has learned.

The alleged subterfuge on UltimateBet.com — one of the 10 top poker sites — is the biggest known case of fraud targeting an Internet gambling site and its customers, according to the company that owns the site. It is similar to a case of cheating that occurred last year on UltimateBet’s sister site, AbsolutePoker.com, but this time the thieves ran the scheme for far longer — at least from January 2005 to January 2008, it said.

Word of the $75 million U.S. claim ($80 million Canadian) — the first indication of the scope of the alleged cheating — emerged this week when msnbc.com contacted a court-appointed liquidator overseeing the voluntary dismemberment of Excapsa Software Inc. of Toronto, which formerly owned and licensed the poker software to UltimateBet and other gambling sites. The claim was filed by Blast-Off Ltd. of Malta, a private company that currently has an ownership interest in Ultimate Bet.



“We’re taking it seriously and are in contact with the stakeholders with a goal of settling the claim,” said the liquidator, Sheldon Krakower, president of XMT Liquidations Inc. “… It’s a very touchy situation. We’re just trying to get everything done.”

Krakower said the amount of the claim did not directly correlate with the amount believed to have been stolen from UltimateBet players, but he declined to provide additional details. He said he was hopeful that the parties were nearing a settlement.

The unprecedented claim is just the latest twist in a slowly unfolding whodunit that began more than nine months ago when poker players posted comments about suspicious play on UltimateBet in an Internet poker forum. It’s a mystery steeped in international intrigue and featuring a cast of characters that includes some of the world’s most famous poker players, the former grand chief of a Canadian Mohawk community and executives of a secretive Oregon Internet security company.

The company that claims ownership of UltimateBet — Tokwiro Enterprises, headquartered in the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in southern Canada — has issued some refunds and promised to repay any players who lost money once an outside investigation is completed. But many players who haven’t received credits remain fearful they will never see a dime.

‘Who's going to make them pay?’
“I know I’m not going to get my money,” one dejected player, Daniel Cardoso of Utah, told msnbc.com. Cardoso believes he lost several thousand dollars through the alleged scheme but has not been able to obtain records from UltimateBet to verify that. “I know there are thousands of people who aren’t going to get reimbursed.”

Adding to the sense of mistrust is the fact that Tokwiro Enterprises apparently is owned by Joseph Norton, the former grand chief of the Kahnawake Mohawks, who helped establish the territory as North America’s only bastion of Internet gambling.

“Who’s going to make them pay?” asked Nat Arem, a professional poker player and blogger who helped unravel the alleged cheating rings at UltimateBet and Absolute Poker, referring to Excapsa. “What court is this going to end up in?”

Though most forms of Internet gambling, including online poker, are considered illegal by the U.S. government, millions of players routinely risk their cash on the virtual version of the popular card game, ignoring the fact that many of the Web sites are unregulated or loosely regulated and are based in jurisdictions where a player would likely have no legal recourse in the event of wrongdoing.



UltimateBet is a popular destination for these players, largely because of its television advertisements featuring famous players such as Phil Hellmuth, the winningest player in the history of the World Series of Poker, with 11 victories, and Annie Duke, arguably the best-known female poker pro. UltimateBet and other poker sites are able to advertise on television by promoting free “play for fun” sites instead of their cash games, which are just a few clicks away.

As was the case in the Absolute Poker scandal last year, the UltimateBet case was uncovered by the players rather than Tokwiro Enterprises or the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, the agency charged with regulating online gambling from the Kahnawake territory, just south of Montreal across the St. Lawrence River.

Players aired suspicions in January
Suspicious players wrote in a Jan. 8 post on the Two Plus Two online poker forum that they had noticed that certain players in the highest-stakes games on UltimateBet were playing extremely unusual strategies and winning at an unbelievably high rate. (Click here to read a synopsis of the early posts.)

Two of the players — known by the screen names “trambopoline” and “dlpnyc21” — reviewed their hand histories and found that one account in particular, using the screen name “NioNio,” was making a killing, having banked an astonishing $300,000 profit in just 3,000 hands. They turned to the MyPokerIntel.com Web site, which tracks high-stakes online tournaments, where many thousands of dollars can change hands, and found that NioNio had won in 13 of the 14 sessions recorded there, cashing out with approximately $135,000.



When that information was posted, Michael Josem, a mathematics-minded Australian poker player, charted NioNio’s results in comparison to the results of 870 “normal” accounts with at least 2,500 hands recorded by poker-tracking software. The result, seen at left, showed that NioNio’s win rate was 10 standard deviations above the mean, or less likely than “winning a one-in-a-million lottery on four consecutive days," Josem said.

As the players continued to dig, they concluded that NioNio was at the center of a web of accounts that were able to change user names with ease, making it harder for victims to detect the cheating.

“They would get a regular player, one of the accounts would play them, then that account would leave and the other account would come play them,” said one poker player who helped uncover the cheating, speaking on condition of anonymity. “… They were careful to only play each player a few times, and then they went and created new account names."

Tokwiro said it was alerted to the accusations by UltimateBet players on Jan. 12 and immediately launched its own investigation.




Unauthorized software code’
Tokwiro issued an “interim statement” on March 6 stating that it had determined that NioNio’s results were indeed “abnormal.” Then, on May 29 — nearly five months after the first poker forum post —the company acknowledged that NioNio and other player accounts “did in fact have an unfair advantage” obtained through “unauthorized software code that allowed the perpetrators to obtain hole card information during live play.”

The company blamed the intrusion on “individuals … (who) worked for the previous ownership of UltimateBet prior to the sale of the business to Tokwiro in October 2006.”

Tokwiro’s chief operating officer, Paul Leggett, in a Two Plus Two Poker podcast on June 2, said that the cheaters were able to evade UltimateBet's anti-fraud protections by “setting up these accounts so they appeared as VIP poker professionals. Because these players had this kind of status, they were able to get fast withdrawals and basically bypass our security.” He also said that the company was “pursuing our options, both criminal and civil.”

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(Tokwiro spokeswoman Anna Molley told msnbc.com that Leggett had stopped giving interviews at the request of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission pending completion of an independent investigation.)

The explanation is similar to that given by Tokwiro after the Absolute Poker cheating scandal, which it blamed on a “high-ranking, trusted consultant … whose position gave him extraordinary access to certain security systems.” The alleged cheater in that case has never been publicly identified because Tokwiro, in a private settlement, agreed to withhold his or her identity. The site did repay the players who lost money, however.

By blaming employees of a prior owner, Tokwiro might have resolved the mystery had UltimateBet not been the rubber ball in an international shell game.

A murky corporate pedigree
Published accounts indicate that the poker software used by UltimateBet was developed in the late 1990s by ieLogic, a Portland, Ore., company. After that, things quickly become murky.

An undated and unbylined article on the TotalGambler.com Web site, titled “The history of online poker,” alleges that ieLogic founders Greg Pierson and Jon Karl created the UltimateBet site at the end of 2000, along with “some secretive high stakes poker players.” The article did not identify the players, but it stated that Russ Hamilton, winner of the 1994 World Series of Poker Main Event and a well-known Las Vegas gambler, was employed as a consultant and began recruiting some big-name poker players, including Hellmuth, to promote the site.

An UltimateBet spokeswoman boasted about the presence of the poker pros in a May 2001 interview with winneronline.com, saying, "UltimateBet is lucky to have so many world poker champions choose to be a part of our project. ... (They) have helped us develop a site that is true to the game."

Barry Greenstein, a respected professional poker player, has publicly stated that some of the players involved in the development of the site were given an ownership interest as compensation. “They are all very concerned that with these bad things happening, they’re not going to get their money,” he said in an interview on Poker Road Radio on July 16.

IeLogic never acknowledged any ownership interest in UltimateBet, saying only that it licensed its “multiplayer online games” software to the site. Then the company sought to disassociate itself from the Internet gambling business entirely by selling its gambling software to a newly incorporated Canadian company, Excapsa Software Inc., in the spring of 2004.

Pierson and Karl held onto the other portion of ieLogic’s business — “a system for predicting online fraud” — and changed the name of their company to Iovation, according to a January 2005 article in the Portland Business Journal, which first reported the sale of the gambling software.

But it is unclear to whom —and even whether — the software business was sold.

Excapsa Software, incorporated in April 2004 in British Columbia, eventually went public, making an initial stock offering on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternate Investment Market in Feb. 16, 2006, that gave it a market capitalization of approximately $393 million. Documents filed in connection with the offering listed nearly 40 percent of the shares as being held by insiders — CEO Jim Ryan and five irrevocable trusts that provided no clue as to the identity of the beneficiaries. (A spokesman for Ryan, who is now CEO of Party Gaming, operator of the Party Poker Web site, declined msnbc.com’s request for an interview, saying questions should be directed to Excapsa.)

In an earnings announcement on Aug. 16, 2006, Excapsa stated that it had a 20-year license agreement with UltimateBet’s owner, which it identified as eWorld Holdings Ltd. of Antigua.

Lines not clearly drawn
But the lines between ieLogic, Iovation, Excapsa and eWorld Holdings were not always clearly drawn.

When UltimateBet issued a news release on July 25, 2002, announcing a joint venture with another poker site, it for the first time identified eWorld Holdings as the owner of the site and listed Jon Karl, co-founder of ieLogic, as the person to contact for further information.

IeLogic also was the first company to register the UltimateBet trademark with the U.S. Patent Office in June 2000. A little more than a year later, the company abandoned the mark and it was re-registered by eWorld Holdings.

And Melissa Gaddis, identified as the public relations manager at ieLogic in a May 2001 article on winneronline.com, also is identified in papers filed in connection with Excapsa’s liquidation proceedings in Toronto as a “director of Excapsa since November 2006” … and a “beneficial shareholder.”

IeLogic co-founders Pierson and Karl, and other officials at Iovation, did not respond to msnbc.com’s repeated phone calls seeking comment and refused to meet with a reporter who visited the company’s Portland headquarters. Gaddis did not return a phone call to her home.

Excapsa’s run as a public company was short-lived, as it sold all its assets to Blast-Off Ltd., a privately owned Excapsa licensee based in Malta, on Oct. 12, 2006, and was delisted from the AIM exchange. Blast-Off Ltd., had previously been listed in filings as an Excapsa license holder for Elimination Blackjack, a tournament version of the popular card game invented by Hamilton, the ieLogic consultant.

U.S. legislation prompted sale
The sudden sale of Excapsa’s assets for $130 million, with $120 million deferred, was prompted by President Bush’s looming signature of the so-called Safe Port Act, which contained a provision barring U.S. banks and other financial institutions from doing business with Internet gambling operators. That effectively put to rest the argument that companies could legally provide Internet gambling to Americans because federal law on the matter was ambiguous, and heightened the legal risks faced by owners of gambling Web sites.

Nearly a year later, Tokwiro claimed ownership of both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet. It later said it had acquired UltimateBet in October 2006 — the month Excapsa announced the sale of its gambling software to Blast-Off Ltd. — but it has never explained how or under what terms it had acquired the site.

Krakower, the court-appointed liquidator overseeing Excapsa’s bid to cease to exist as a corporate entity, said that Blast-Off and Tokwiro “are somewhat one in the same,” but added, “Blast-Off … that’s the key name.”

The tangled corporate trail has persuaded some players that Tokwiro is a false front created to obscure the true ownership of both UltimateBet and Absolute Poker.

“(Norton) may be the plurality owner, he may be the majority owner, but there’s no way he owns 100 percent,” Arem said of the former Kahnawake Mohawk grand chief, who did not respond to requests for an interview.

The ownership question could be cleared up at the conclusion of an outside investigation of the UltimateBet cheating ordered by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. On July 27, the KGC announced it had asked Frank Catania, a former New Jersey state gaming regulator, to conduct “a full forensic audit/investigation” of Tokwiro to ensure that UltimateBet’s games are fair and anyone connected to the alleged cheating ring is removed from the company


‘The first significant incident’
“We are all well aware of the criticism that this has drawn and are doing our best to update and implement modifications to ensure that this never happens again,” said Chuck Barnett, a spokesman for the gaming commission, which has licensed more than 470 gambling Web sites operated by 55 different operators. “... In the KGC’s past decade of i-gaming regulatory enforcement, this is without doubt, the first significant incident.”

Some players questioned the selection of Catania, noting that he had helped the KGC develop its gaming regulations and could hardly be considered an independent investigator. But in an interview with msnbc.com he insisted he would pull no punches in getting to the bottom of the cheating allegations as well as the ownership issue — regardless of Norton’s stature in the Kahnawake Mohawk community.

“We’ll go in and look at reports from (KGC auditor) Gaming Associates, we’ll look at employees, including ownership, look at the software … whether the games are fair and honest and what protections have been put in place,” he said. “It’s going to be a complete examination of the company and no one will get any special preferential treatment because of a past position with the tribe or anything like that.”




While the official investigation grinds on, the Internet sleuths have settled on a leading suspect: A professional poker player who was associated with ieLogic in the early days.

Their version of a “smoking gun” came from what they say is information on several of the cheating accounts leaked by company insiders. Arem discovered that one of the accounts, which used the screen name “sleepless,” was established using the address of a Las Vegas residence formerly owned by the poker player.

Poker pros visit prime suspect
After Arem published that information, poker pro Greenstein posted on Two Plus Two that he had spoken with other players who confirmed that they had received fund transfers from the player via the “sleepless” account.

Greenstein and his stepson, Joe Sebok, also a poker pro, said the player agreed to tell his side of the story on the Poker Road radio show on July 16, but later backed out on the advice of his attorney.

Instead they arranged to speak to the player in his lawyer’s presence — the only people believed to have done so. (Despite numerous attempts through multiple channels, msnbc.com was not able to contact the player.)

While the player told the men he couldn’t answer many of their questions, they said he maintained his innocence and predicted that his name will be cleared when the investigation is complete.

Both Greenstein and Sebok, who as poker players put a lot of credence in gut instincts, said they arrived at the interview all but persuaded of the man’s guilt, but left feeling less certain.

“We expected him to be dodgy, but he was just very comfortable discussing the situation as much as he could legally … that once everything did come out, he would not be among the people incriminated,” Sebok told msnbc.com.



Greenstein applied his mathematical perspective to the situation in a posting on Two Plus Two forum: “Before I talked to (him), I thought it was more than 95 percent likely that he was involved in cheating. … Now I think it’s more than 99 percent that he knows people who cheated well enough to transfer money with them, but I think it’s less than 50 percent that he actually cheated or knew that the people were cheating at the time.”

In an e-mail interview with msnbc.com, Greenstein said he believes it is likely that the KGC’s investigation will confirm that the crime was carried out by an employee or employees of the former ownership of the site — whether it be ieLogic, Excapsa or eWorld Holdings —not the professional poker players who lent their expertise to the site’s developers.

‘A bunch of kids ... who jump to conclusions’
“There is no evidence to the contrary, except for some circumstantial evidence against (him) and a bunch of kids on Two Plus Two who jump to conclusions every time they are given a name,” he said. “… I'm not saying these people (the poker pros) are clean. I don't know for sure. But just because someone's name is associated with a company where there was cheating, it doesn't mean that the person was involved.”

Arem, however, said he remains unconvinced by the player’s protestations of innocence. But he said he’s open to the possibility that the circumstantial evidence leaked by the company insider could have been an attempt to shift the blame.

“(The player) has said that within three months all the information will come out and he’ll be cleared,” he said. “… In my mind, it’s a tiny chance, but if I was the one being accused, I’d want someone to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

[bigrun]

Just watched the 60 minutes story....Don't play that game so was amazed at the $$$ involved....and the players, lawyers, puter geeks and a guy that won big at Vegas...
Inside man the culprit at one of the poker sites, big surprise....reminds me of breeders cup scam trio Derrick Davis, Chris Harn and Glen DaSilva....Hope there's no cheating in on-line racing.......lol......

[turfnsport]

It was amazing how reckless they were against very knowledgeable players.

I did play at a site (a small one that shall remain nameless) that I thought was doing the same thing. They advertised on Turf 'n' Sport so I started playing there. I saw so much amazing crap I pulled their ads after a month.

In the cash games it seemed like everyone at the table hit every flop, keeping everyone in the hand and raising the rake. I saw more full houses and four of a kinds in a month than I have seen at Pokerstars in 5 years.

I had a couple of reckless players just streamroll everyone at the table, including me a couple of times.

[cre8flow]

i dont play poker

however i have visited some poker sites

was so obvious to me that people were going to cheat

[cre8flow]

this is just the tip of the iceberg

[turfnsport]

Originally Posted by cre8flow

i dont play poker

however i have visited some poker sites

was so obvious to me that people were going to cheat

If you don't play poker, how was it so obvious?

[cre8flow]

are you saying that you didnt think that that possibilty existed

that two or more people invisble or unknown at a table would not conspire to cheat

my friend plays poker

i asked him

how do you know people arent conspiring to cheat

he said that the site provided safeguards against such actions

lol-safeguards-i was like give me a break

then he said-well i guess it could happen

we started laughing about how two people could communicate through cell phones and cheat and make hundreds of thousands

but he stated something like they monitor stuff for patterns and connections

yeah some monitoring

[Breakage]

I have been an avid online player in the past.

But I always stayed in the lower limits except if I saw a really live one at the higher tables,

likewise I was an ultimate bet player-I am very, very fortunate to not have been cheated here.

The guy who says how he saw this loose cannon and could not wait to get in there and get his money-that is me. When I used to play a lot, the key was to look arouund and find bad players, regardless of level of play. In the early days while people were still trying to figure out strategies, I was posting it doesn't matter just find players who understand the game less than yourself.



The real killer to me, is although cheating is obviously easier online than in real brick and mortar rooms-I really believed that these people at the very least would look at people's win rates, compare them to some normal and vigorously investigate vast differences.

Cheating has broken out before and crushed the room, PlanetPoker was the first online commercial site and it doomed itself because of some programming code that got out there that enabled some to cheat. To me that means spend money on dilligently patrolling site or risk losing it completely. I went onto Ultimatebet last night while the report was running and although bsuiness is down, they have not gotten crushed.

Likewise, I feel Dutch Boyd and his stealing all his players money from Pokerspot.com, then showing up to play in several world series of poker as if nothing happened,
probably put it into Hamilton's head that even if caught nothing would happen.

and this is in some part to the complete lack of journalistic integrity at ESPN,
where they ignore stuff like Boyd stole millions and instead promote him as graduating from Harvard or whereever it was at age 17.


Nothing in that report was news to me, I have followed this closely for a while,
the potripper mistake email has been hashed out many, many times and many conclude that it was a purposeful whistle blowing type of event.



and the best of all Croft's repeated assertions of unregulated, unlicsened et al,
as if they were legal and licensed in the US would have prevented this from happening,
make me wanna vomit.

[turfnsport]

Originally Posted by cre8flow

are you saying that you didnt think that that possibilty existed

that two or more people invisble or unknown at a table would not conspire to cheat

my friend plays poker

i asked him

how do you know people arent conspiring to cheat

he said that the site provided safeguards against such actions

lol-safeguards-i was like give me a break

then he said-well i guess it could happen

we started laughing about how two people could communicate through cell phones and cheat and make hundreds of thousands

but he stated something like they monitor stuff for patterns and connections

yeah some monitoring

Of course the possibility exists, and I have seen what I have thought was collusion first hand. I have left a few tables because I thought there was a hint of it.

It probably happens to some degree every day at every site.

I just thought your statement of:

"i dont play poker
however i have visited some poker sites
was so obvious to me that people were going to cheat"

was curious since you said you don't play yet found cheating so obvious.

[cre8flow]

as a teen ager i saw races fixed by the drivers and gamblers-not 1 race but numerous races

i know also that a superior court judge was paid off to make sure drivers got off the hook for cheating

i know a jockey who was paid by the mob to stiff his horses-he conveniently fell off his horse many times


so yes it was obvious-humans will always try and conspire to steal money from others

[irishnip]

Originally Posted by turfnsport

Of course the possibility exists, and I have seen what I have thought was collusion first hand. I have left a few tables because I thought there was a hint of it.

It probably happens to some degree every day at every site.

I just thought your statement of:

"i dont play poker
however i have visited some poker sites
was so obvious to me that people were going to cheat"

was curious since you said you don't play yet found cheating so obvious.

what would stop say 2 or three people from playing from laptops with wireless connections from 3 different ip addresses sitting together in the same room and playing in the same tournament or the same table for that matter..?? it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out when your the meat between 2 slices of bread...

[turfnsport]

Originally Posted by irishnip

what would stop say 2 or three people from playing from laptops with wireless connections from 3 different ip addresses sitting together in the same room and playing in the same tournament or the same table for that matter..?? it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out when your the meat between 2 slices of bread...

That happens....but most of the major sites have software to detect when common players play together on a consisent basis. (so they say anyway).

I would say no doubt anyone that has played 1000's of hours have been on a table with collusion.

I would guess it goes on mostly in cash games and single game SNG's.

One of the reasons I play mostly multi table tourneys now.

I play now only at pokerstars (and don't play nearly as often as I used to), and I am assuming they have the best security software.

But I could be assuming wrong...lol..maybe a few of you that play cash games would know better than me.

I don't peruse the Poker forums the way I used to, so I may not be up to speed.

[Breakage]

The level of cheating was tolerable because the games were so beatable.

A good story I may have posted here before, I played in a CC Gin game for a while,
there was a guy who routinely cheated but still routinely lost. We didn't care, we knew don't trust this guy in some kind of business deal or on the golf course but here who cares he lost anyway-many cheaters are bad losers if forced to play on the level, it is why they turn to cheating-anyway some new blood joins the CC and within two weeks they have the cheater before some commitee trying to kick him out of the club. Eventually they succeeded and it is not like it wasn't tough, who the hell is going to go in there and say "yea we knew he was cheating but who gives a **** you people are morons" Shortly thereafter the game broke up which made me think, hmm I wonder who else was cheating?!?!??!?! Regardless there is such a thing as a tolerable level of cheating. There is probably nothing I have gambled on in my life where I wasn't cheated at some point or another, just the nature of the beast.
I was even cheated once playing BJ in a licensed Nev casino, I saw the same card three times in a two deck BJ game in 1984 in Laughlin-I said something and got up and left,
some guy wanders in behind me and tells me-don't forget how far away from home you are.



Explicit collusion is not tough to sniff out if one is paying attn,
the play will show it. If I saw anyuthing remotly fishy I would make a note of the players nicknames and leave.

The implicit collusion where they are only sharing cards but not altering play is very difficult to sniff out.
This is a big peril in the omaha games where each player holds four unknown cards,
hands like a5xx suited become worth less in Omaha hilo if another player has four of that suit.


I guess it is a rarity but being very results oriented is usually not a great idea for gamblers,
the results are largely incidental as long as one keeps making good bets,

with the online poker if I couldn't find an overtly weak player to take advantage of I wouldn't play and while I was playing I would spend most of the time looking for the next great seat. that plan translates into win almost ever session unless real cold decked or being blatantly cheated. THe software progams came along that can track weak players and alert you to when they sit down. Right around then is when I stopped playing online poker between races and started looking at stocks, posting more, looking at sports basically everything but poker.

Now I play for an hour or two a night every once in a while just to play some since I like playing the WSOP and it would probably be foolish to just give it up completely to play that once a year. It is very tough, I play 1/2nl and it is as tough as the 5/10 NL was just three yrs ago.