Monday, April 11, 2011

Electronic Poker Tables Versus Online Poker Tables--Which Are Safer Against Cheating?

ePoker Table
You all know what online poker tables are, but some of you might not be aware of electronic poker tables or "ePoker" tables that are sprouting up in casinos across the world and in many jurisdictions in the United States that do not allow live poker in casinos.

Basically ePoker is a similation of live poker that is played on an automated poker table with up to 10 players, who each bank the games in turn. Their appearance is very close to live poker tables. The big difference is that there is no need for a dealer, nor do they use cards or chips but rather graphic representations of cards, chips and dealer buttons. You might call it a mix of live poker and online poker, live because you are seeing the faces of the people you play against, and online because you are using buttons instead of actions to play your hands.

So the question arises: What about electonic poker table cheating? Is is more or less prevalent than online poker cheating?

The answer is simple. ePoker cheating is far less prevalent than online poker cheating for one simple reason. Although both forms of poker do not use the human element in the dealing and payoff functions of the game, each player can see the other players, which in itself protects all players from some forms of poker cheating. In online poker you cannot see your opponents using laptops with bot and collusion programs. In ePoker, colluders would have to cheat manually, meaning they would have no computer assistance to help with their calculations. Of course colluders can still collude but their advantage would be less than it is online, therefore you would expect to run into a smaller percentage of cheating players on electronic poker tables because cheats go where there best opportunities lie...online.

My advice: Play electronic poker wherever you can. It is generally the safest form of poker. There is also no card-marking that is seen in live poker games, nor is there any other manipulation of the cards.