HOW DO ONLINE POKER SITES AVOID COLLABORATION?

Unfortunately, where there is money to be made, there are those who try to make it without scruples. The same goes for poker and some people will try to collude to gain an unfair advantage.

We will look at the different types of online poker 카지노사이트 collusion and exactly how online poker sites prevent collusion.

EXPLANATION OF ONLINE POKER COLLABORATION

Collusion occurs when two or more players at a table actively work together to gain an unfair advantage. They work together by sharing information about their hole cards, sharing information about other opponents' playstyles, and playing smoothly with each other. Their goal is for all players in the group to win a hand and divide the prize money equally.

Poker is a game of limited information and the more information you have, the greater your advantage over other players at the table. Typically, these informational benefits come from knowing which strategy to use based on your gaming experience and information available to everyone at the table. This is why collusion is prohibited because sharing additional information between a limited number of players gives it an unfair advantage over the rest of the table. 

For example, if you get to the river and have Q♠T♠ on a board of J♠6♠8♥3♦2♠ and your opponent makes a massive overbet to put you all in, you'd reasonably be worried about a K high or A high flush. However, if you're colluding with two other people and they tell you they folded K♠7♦ and A♠4♥ preflop, you now know that you have the best possible flush and can easily call. 

Collusion can also be used to know whether or not you should be drawing to a certain hand. For example, if you're drawing to a flush and deciding 에볼루션게이밍 whether or not you have the right odds to call the people you're colluding with can tell you whether or not they folded any cards of your suit - giving you information that you're either more likely or less likely to make your hand if you call and enabling you to act accordingly. 

HOW DO ONLINE POKER SITES PREVENT COLLUSION? 

Online poker operators know that collusion is a big deal when it comes to player safety and actively seek out and ban colluders. 

One of the ways they do this is to limit table access for people playing under the same IP umbrella. This applies to cash games rather than tournaments, and if two players within the same IP umbrella try to sit at the same cash table the site will not allow the second person to sit. They assume that two people playing in the same household will at least be tempted to collude with each other and will not allow it to happen. 

However, this doesn't stop people from colluding in two different geographical locations or prevent people from using a different IP to their housemates. Poker 에볼루션게임 sites like Pokerstars actively monitor all accounts for botting, collusion, or other suspicious behavior. Since the collaborating parties need to be at the same table to achieve their goals, sites happen to see accounts at the same table more often than they should.

Once you've identified the accounts that you can cooperate with, you'll delve deeper into how you play. They will look at how the suspicious accounts play with each other compared to the rest of the player pool and if there are any significant differences. Players who collide with each other often play "soft" when in hand. In other words, they don't take aggressive measures to make the showdown as cheap as possible. After all, they don't care which of them wins the pot as it will be split between them, and inflating the pot means more money going to rake. 

If a poker site has enough evidence that accounts are colluding they will freeze the accounts and seize any assets that are remaining in them. Once the investigation has concluded if they're found guilty their accounts will be shut down and any assets seized will be redistributed to the players that were affected. 

SPOTTING ONLINE POKER COLLUSION

However, the onus isn't just on the poker site to catch colluders - you can spot them yourself if you know what to look out for. 

Chip Transfer

We haven't spoken about chip transferring or 'chip dumping' yet in this article, mainly because this one does not affect other players as much as regular collusion. Chip dumping in cash games is used as a way to launder money through a poker site. 

A player will deposit their 'dirty' money onto the poker site using one of the less reputable deposit methods, join a cash game 에볼루션바카라 table where their recipient is playing, and will proceed to lose on purpose to that account. The secondary account will then be able to withdraw their 'clean winnings' from the poker site and deposit it where they like. 

However, chip dumping can be used in tournaments to gain an edge for a group working together. If a team of colluders is playing and one player has a skill advantage over the rest of the players, it makes sense for the team to give as many chips as possible to that player to give them the best chance of winning. There are several methods used to get rid of flakes, depending on how prominent they are. One method is to fold the whole through the receiver while leaving a dump truck for chips the least amount in a vertical bowl with the receiver almost completely.

Another less obvious way is to make sure the receiver has the best hand and play hands gently with each other until you cash in there.

cheat player

The conspirators are free to be as aggressive as they want to harass the other players in the pot, because they don't care which of them has a hand. Here are some examples of how conspirators can pressure players and break the bet without a confrontation. 

A common preflop example is where the first colluder opens, the unsuspecting player 3bets, the second colluder 4bets, the action goes back to the first colluder who 5bets - forcing the unsuspecting player to fold unless they have a monster hand like AA/KK. Now, none of these methods are fool-proof as sometimes the unsuspecting player will have a hand that can go all in, but if the colluders keep the 4bets and 5bets small they can fold when their target goes all in and only lose the minimum. 

The same thing can happen postflop, where the first colluder bets, the target raises or just calls, then the second colluder raises over the top of them and the first colluder raises again. It's such an effective method as it requires the target to have either an extremely strong hand in a multiway pot or an extremely strong read that the players are bluffing in order to continue. 

Even though the colluders will sometimes get caught out by a target who just has the nuts, it's going to work the vast majority of the time and they can shut down as soon as their target puts any more money into the pot. If you see a lot of things happening on your desktop, check to see if the same two or three accounts are doing this and if they are complicit.

What to do in case of collusion in online poker

If you notice any of these forms of collusion or even suspect that players are complicit on your desktop, it is best to inform the site you are playing on. This can be done via live chat with one of their support team or via email.

Sites take collusion and other forms of fraud very seriously, so they carefully review the reports they receive. Many sites will contact you again to let you know the outcome of their findings in order to reassure you further and to show that your request has not been ignored. Collusion in online poker is rare, but some players are tempted by it. Luckily, poker sites have shown a positive attitude towards this, and now you know the signs that you can do something about it.