Major Online Poker Cheat Collusion Cheating Ring Exposed at PokerStars!

An organized group of online poker cheat colluders operating in China has been exposed by vigilant players at PokerStars who persistently complained about collusion cheating to the giant site's security department. Most of the online cheating happened at the $52-$108 Double or Nothing tables, where up to a half-dozen Chinese colluders huddled up at the same online poker table on many occasions.

This latest major online scandal surfaced when one of the accused poker cheats (supposedly a woman?) posted on the 2+2 Poker Forum that PokerStars had frozen her account under the screen name Jane0123. That post led to a chain reaction by members of the forum who immediately believed she was one of the online poker colluding cheats. PokerStars quickly launched an investigation and concluded that the collusion cheating ring did infact exist and that as many as fifty players might have been part of the cheating team. The site has already paid victimized players more than half a million dollars, a bit generous on its part as less than $100,000 was confiscated from the cheaters' accounts.

At this time it is not known exactly how much the victims lost to the organized online poker cheat colluders, nor how PokerStars plans on compensating them for lost leaderboard points.

If you believe you have been victimized by this online poker cheating group, contact PokerStars security at gamesecurity@pokerstars.com

Party Poker Takes Online Poker Cheats and Cheating to War!

I have been blogging about player safety in internet poker for six years now and Party Poker has been one of the few sites that during this time has both avoided cheating scandals and consistently appeared on my Top-10 rankings for the safest poker sites. In addition to its clean record as far as cheating and player-accounts security are concerned, Party Poker has also been a leader in offering the best player sign-up bonuses as well as maintaining top of the line customer support and service, with online response times among the best in the online gaming industry.

Another field of excellence from Party Gaming is its online betting and sportsbook offering accurate wagering lines on various sporting and gaming events from all over the world including American, Australian and European professional leagues as well as wagering opportunities for popular lawn and pub games like cricket and darts. Just about all the action you can think of is waiting for you at Party Poker, so if you´re new to Internet Gambling or you´re a veteran looking for a change for the better, don´t hesiteate to sign up.

My advice is that you can feel safe and protected from cheating scandals when playing on Party Gaming´s sites.

Dice Sliding....Effective Way to Cheat at Craps?

If you're a steady reader of my blog, you know I have not been much of a fan of so-called dice control, especially the form of dice-control cheating pushed by Frank Scoblete. It has always been my belief that if the dice are thrown according to casino regulations and make contact with the far wall of the craps table, they will tumble randomly, and with the tumble crumble all attempts at successful dice control (excuse the cheap rhyme). However, dice-sliding is cheating because the dice-slider is attempting to roll the dice in an illegal fashion. The key is to slide one die along its surface close to the back wall without touching it, or if touching it, only touching it softly so that the die does not tumble. The other die is thrown normally to hit the back wall and give the impression that both dice were thrown normally without any attempt at illegality. The goal is to keep the boxman sitting at the craps table silent, or in other words, preventing him from calling out the dice-slider's dreaded phrase "No roll!"

If this can be done, one die controlled to come out a six makes certain craps proposition bets like box-cars (double-sixes) extremely attractive at odds of 30 to 1. If you can control one die to come out six, with the odds of the other one coming out 6 on the square being 5 to 1, your total bet has been made against true odds of 5 to 1 while the casino is paying you six times that amount. Not bad, huh? And even if you screw up with the slide control half the time you still have way the best of it.

How is dice-sliding done? The slider usually positions himself right next to the stickman so that the dice have the shortest distance to travel to the wall. For some reason as well, the boxmen have a tendency to let short rolls where one die doesn't hit the wall play more than they would for longer rolls coming from the ends of the craps tables. Also, dice-sliders usually work with a partner who will try to distract the boxman or dealers just at the moment the dice reach the far end of the table, strengthening the probability that "no roll" will not be called.

My opinion: Dice sliding is the best form of dice control out there, but will only fool casino craps staffs a small percentage of the time. This means that if dice-sliding teams are patient and diligent, they will find opportunites to make their money.

Is RealDealPoker.Com Any More Secure Against Online Cheating Than Fully Automated Sites...Or Just Another Gimmick to Lure Players?

First, if you don't know what Read Deal Poker is, it's a new online poker room that uses real cards with shuffle machines and allows players to virtually cut the cards before each deal, all of which they claim are strong anti-online poker-cheating measures. Their slogan is "play poker online, not online poker." They state that integrity is higher because Real Deal Poker's actual cards shuffled and dealt by machines ensure the true randomness of their games. Moreover, they claim that allowing the players to cut the deck and using burn cards is a deterrent to using online poker bots (I disagree with that). And, of course, they state that all hands can be reviewed by a third-party upon request.

AND, they just signed ex-boxing champ Evander "The REAL DEAL" Holyfield to be their publicity front man.

So, what's the REAL deal here?

Well, it's about as real as it sounds, meaning that the use of real cards and card-shuffling machines, and allowing players to cut with burn cards does absolutely nothing to make ME feel more secure playing online poker...or poker online...or whatever they want to call it. This is because any cheating method in the world can be employed by the site itself to cheat you (the possibilities are too long too list here). Imagine, if sleight of hand in person is so effective, how much more effective and easy to pull off would it be when viewers are seeing it on a compuuter screen? Come on, gimme a break! Now I am not saying or suggesting that the operators of Real Deal Poker are thinking of cheating their customers--it's probably the last thing on their minds--I am only saying that given the low percentage of problems with automated random number generators, plus the fact that the vast majority of online poker cheating comes from players on the outside and not key employees within (despite the huge Absolute Poker and UltimateBet inside scams), Real Deal's real-card presentation is not going to change the online poker cheat-factor. And then you have the problems when these machines--if they are functioning without manipulation, which they should be, break down or don't operate with 100% efficiency.

Bottom line: It's a great gimmick!

If Only Poker Forum Members Didn't Post Such Dumb Comments!...Especially When They Talk About Cheating

Like many other thousands or millions of people, I read the posts on many different poker forums, even though I am not a member of any. Frankly, I just couldn't contribute to these forums that are populated not necessarily by dumb people, but by people who make dumb comments, especially when it comes to cheating at poker online and in brick and mortar poker rooms.

To give you an example of this poker forum dumbness, I am not going to quote something said that is so obviously stupid but rather something that is more subtily stupid. I found this "subtlepidity" on the PocketFives forum on a thread discussing how rigged Full Tilt Poker is or isn't. One poster said, "But online poker, with the exception of known cheating scandals, is not rigged."

Now, let's break down the stupidity of that statement. Of course we know that if cheating scandals are not known, they are not known. Which means we know about the cheating scandals only to the extent that they are known, right? So in other words, if the cheating is not known, then we can't say it isn't happening, right? I can sit here and bend sentences in a million different ways, but in the end, I know--and I hope you do too-that since so many cheating scandals ARE known, we have to assume that there are many other cheating scandals that are not known, right? Which means there is a heck of a lot of online poker cheating going on at Full Tilt Poker...and just about every other online poker site as well...right?

Confusing Story of Korean Hackers Busted in Major Online Poker Bot-Cheating Operation!

I ran across this article from informationweek.com and don't really know what to make of it, but it seems worthy enough to publish on RMB.com

Korean police nabbed 33 hackers who were using bots to cheat online poker players from November 2009 through May of this year.

I've heard of targeted cyber attacks, but this isn't something I'd previously considered: using botnet bots not to launch denial-of-service attacks, but to spy the hands of opposing card players.

This is from a story that ran in today's JoonAng Daily:

The Cyber Terror Response Center in Gyeonggi said the gang used a DDOS attack to infect 11,000 computers at 700 PC rooms across the country.
Police said Yu bought the “Netbot Attacker” program from a Chinese hacker last November, then sold copies online to Kim and others. The gang broke into the administrative systems of the PC rooms and installed the virus in their computers to allow them to see the hands of poker opponents.

According to the story, the 33 hackers cheated online poker players out of 55 million won, the equivalent on about $45,265. I'm sure the reporter meant that the attacker's used bots designed for DDOS attacks to infect the PCs, not that the PCs were infected through a DDOS attack.

Now, these bots are commonly used to launch attacks that swamp Web sites and servers with so much traffic that they can't keep up with requests and either become painfully slow or crash until the attack can be stopped or mitigated. However, once an end point is infected with a bot, that bot can be often used to download other types of attack software, or do other things on the system: which is apparently what these attackers chose to do with their poker cheats.

Online gaming is a popular target for online attacks, but usually it's the gaming site owner that is targeted, not the players. I wrote about such attacks in a story, Extortion Online, in late 2004.

In those threats, botnet operators were threatening to use their networks to make the gaming sites unavailable - unless they were paid $100,000 annually.

South African Casino Cheat Gets 7 Months in Singapore Slam!

Apparently, Sibongile Arthur Mgxashe, a 33 year-old South African businessman, came to Genting Highlands, Malaysia last May to buy clothes for his clothing business in South Africa. But he stopped off at Resorts World Sentosa Casino to play a little roulette and blackjack and dropped two grand. Evidently he was pissed off about the loss and decided to return to Resorts World and get his money back the easy way--pastposting!

He not only got his two grand back but ended up cheating the Sentosa casino out of $14,000 by twice pastposting two black chips ($200) straight up on inside numbers. But then he got caught and ended up in front of a Singapore judge, who's been quite busy these days sentencing Singapore casino cheats. Facing ten years in prison, the judge decided to go easy and gave Mgxashe seven months in prison, just enough time to get accustomed to the prison variety of Singaporean cuisine.

The judge heard from the prosecutor that Mgxashe's casino cheats were premeditated and therefore warranted a tough sentence. However, the accused's lawyer said that Mgxashe is a legitimate businessman who couldn't cope with having lost his $2,000 and desperately tried to cheat to win it back...ha-ha-ha! Then why did he do the second move after he got paid $7,000 after the first? Seems more like greed or professional cheating than a regretful man trying only to recoup his losses.

Actually, the prosecutor claimed that Mgxashe cheated the casino out of more than $30,000 and that only a fraction of that amount was recovered. In any case, the South African "clothing cheat" copped out to three counts of theft and one count of attempted casino cheating in exchange for his seven months in jail.

My take: Mgxashe got off cheap! And how the hell do you pronounce his name?

AngryShark68 Joran van der Sloot Was Major Online Poker Player...Cheat?

Joran van der Sloot, sitting in his Peruvian prison cell and probably up in arms over a judge's decision to let his original murder confession stand, was quite the online poker player and, according to some sources, had enjoyed some significant successes. His main online poker screen name, AngryShark68, seems to sum up the killer/poker player/cheat character well. He sure as hell must be an angry guy killing these innocent women, and the shark part of it might pertain to his own self-praise as a "card shark", or maybe as an overall shark who endlessly preys the poker and casino worlds for victims (his first alleged victim, Natalee Holloway, was also seen with him in a casino in Aruba).

Van der Sloot reportedly won US $12,000 in a Party Poker tournament. He is also known to have played in several other online tournaments under the same screen name. Did he cheat online poker tournaments? Well, I have no proof that he did, but considering how he cheated in everything else in life, including his extortion of poor Natalee Holloway's parents, I would bet my last chip that he did!

Also, note the irony that when van der Sloot was apprehended in Chile before being extradited back to Peru, he was grabbed up on Route 68. Could the mentally freakish van der Sloot somehow have known that his poker road would come to an end there and for this reason used "68" in his online screen name?

I'll let you think about that!

Gambling 911 Pushing Poker Cheat Video DVDs

There have been too many poker cheating and anti-poker cheating DVDs offered online for years now, but evidently Gambling 911, a highly-viewed and even higher-glamorized gambling information website, doesn't think so. It is now pushing a series of poker-cheat DVDs claiming to thoroughly educate you on everything from false dealing, false shuffles, card-peeking, card-switching, card-marking, card-bending, card-control while shuffling to culling discards (what the heck is that? LOL), card-crimping, card-palming, cold-decking, false cuts, card-daubing (another form of card-marking), how to nullify cuts, holding out cards, etc, etc.

Is there anything new or worthwhile to see on these DVDs (which I have seen)? Well, I guess if you haven't seen any of the others, which is unlikely, then you might want to take a look at these. But remember, practically all the cheat methods you see on these DVDs are only feasible in home poker games, where cheating is of course much easier and much less seriuos for those getting caught at it---unless, of course, the accused ends up getting injured or killed, which was the case recently in Chicago.

Gambling 911 is also pushing the same sort of DVDs on blackjack cheating, also which are not that useful in casinos.

Are You a Banned Facebook Texas Hold'em Poker Cheat? Read This!

Source: gather.com

The explosive growth of online social gaming in the last few years has lead to the meteoric rise of popular games like Facebook Texas Holdem Poker on social networks like Facebook and Myspace where players join their friends to play in tournaments and sit and go games. As with any other type of online game, arguments and misunderstandings that result in heated attitudes and inappropriate words at the tables are certain to spill over into this realm as well. Quite often this may end up in a player's account getting banned from the game or their zynga poker chips becoming frozen or totally reset. Since facebook poker participants regularly spend hours and hours playing and competing with each other to win facebook poker chips, nobody likes it when they log into their account one day only to find that they've been banned for inappropriate conduct. But fear not, you don't have to punch your computer or huff and pout and kick the cat though, there are simple steps you can take to restore your account and get back to playing with your facebook poker chips.

Because there a wide range of facebook texas holdem applications from several different game makers and developers, you need to find your way to the applicable game developers website that allows you to get in touch with the right administrators in charge of suspending and unbanning accounts. Competitors in Zynga's Poker application will have to pay a visit to Zynga's homepage, online players in Playdom's Poker Palace need to take a look at Playdom's page, and participants of Playfish's Poker Rivals application must stop by Playfish's home page so they can ensure that the correct administrators are receiving their emails and support tickets.

As soon as you choose the correct site for the application designer, find the corresponding "Support" section of their website. That's where they post replies to commonly asked queries, document notices about game glitches and updates, and allow users with game issues to contact them. Sometimes getting your account back is as easy as filling out a ticket and waiting a few days, other times it may involve investigating the reason you were suspended in the first place and you might end up waiting a week or longer, but it's best to get the process rolling as soon as possible.

And what can you do to prevent it from happening again? Players in these online games can have their facebook poker chips frozen for a variety of reasons. They might have their facebook chips frozen for swearing too much in the chat window, racist remarks, colluding with other players to user poker cheats, or using offensive pictures in their profiles. The programmers count on a system of reports where they are able to evaluate a gamer's bad behavior in the game depending on the number of other players that report them. This enables them to observe everyone in the game without being in every single room of the game at all times of the day.

Whether your facebook poker chips are given back to a player is dependent upon the severity of that players individual infractions. Sometimes a player who dropped a few stray swear words in the game will get their chips back by agreeing to improve their behavior once they're notified of what rules they broke. Many times players simply aren't aware that they violated the rules or crossed the line and so most game developers are willing to give them a second chance once they're made aware of what they did wrong.

Other sorts of violations might not be pardoned so readily or may well hold a longer penalty. For example, your zynga poker chips may remain banned for a few weeks or in some instances only a portion of your chips may be refunded to you as punishment. You can of course, appeal this and ask that the complete sum be refunded, but if you really misbehaved in the game then the odds of this happening are quite slim. Whichever you choose to do, it's generally best to write them an email quickly after you discover that your facebook or myspace poker account has become frozen. The sooner you fill out a support ticket, the earlier your issue will be checked and the sooner you can get back to playing facebook poker with your friends and family. Best of luck!