I’m a few days behind on this. It is troubling to me.
I play poker on line. For years I played about even. Then my ‘luck’ changed.
No matter how I honed my skills, I lost more than I won. We’re not talking large sums of money, I only play for a few dollars at a time.
I can’t tell you how many times I played tough only to be fourth when only three were being paid. Often, I was beaten by an unlikely set of circumstances.
Hey – that’s cards. It’s a game of skill and luck. At least that’s what I thought.
Then this from the New York Times Freakonomics blog: “The Absolute Poker Cheating Scandal Blown Wide Open.”
The allegation is, someone was seeing all the cards as he played. It’s tough to lose under those circumstances!
This kind of fraud takes place outside the casino. A real inside job could easily be made totally undetectable from the outside.
I don’t play on Absolute Poker, but the allegations are still very troubling. I have no idea what’s going on with Absolute nor any of the online poker operators who are answerable to no one in the United States.
I wish these operations were legal here, so they could be regulated. Maybe then, I’d have more confidence.
Right now, my confidence is shattered.
I had a friend who claimed to have set up multiple computers, set up each computer with its own ISP (so the IP would be different), etc, and played 5 or 6 hands on the same table at a time and just beat the crap out of anyone unlucky enough to sit at his table. I don’t know if it’s true but it seems like there’s more than one way to cheat at online poker. I like playing poker in person, that way I can reach over the table and smack someone if they cheat.