How PokerTracker Stops Cheating

When I tell people that I play online poker for a living, the first question I hear, almost always, is "Is that safe?" That question is often followed by “How can you be sure you’re not being cheated?” Those are questions I would worry about too if I weren’t one of the thousands of people who use Hold’em Manager, PokerTracker, Poker Office, or a whole host of other database programs. Together, those of us who use these programs are basically policing the sites in order to ensure that we are not being cheated.

The recent scandals at Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet would have been much harder to discover if it weren’t for PokerTracker users being able to determine the win rates of the cheating accounts. It’s still possible to run into collusion or some other less common form of cheating once in a while, but the really big stuff is very hard to pull off with thousands of players tracking every hand they play.

Whenever I play in a brick and mortar casino, I hear at least one player talking about how they can’t win online and how they think the bad beats are much worse on the computer. I won’t go into the many reasons people believe these things, but my answer to them is always “Buy Hold’em Manager or PokerTracker and prove it. You can bring down a corrupt multi-million dollar poker room in less than a week if the cards really aren’t falling fairly.”

Of course, no one takes me up on this offer because they know that they wouldn’t find anything, just like I don’t find anything funny when I go back over a few million hands in my own database. As it turns out, I get pocket aces exactly as often as I should and they get cracked exactly as often as they should. The turn brings a flush for my all-in opponent as frequently as the mathematics tell us it should happen and I win my share of all-ins with just the right frequency.

I’ve given up on pointing out to people that it would require a huge conspiracy at these poker rooms, including the certification companies, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, and everyone who works on the software for these sites. I’ve stopped pointing out to them that they see more hands online; therefore, they take more bad beats. I’ve even stopped trying to tell intermediate players that the games are much tougher online and that they are losing online because they are playing too high for their skill level.

Now, I just tell them to buy some tracking software and prove it. It would be easy to do. If PokerStars is really dealing "action flops" or rewarding bad players by putting up lots of small cards on the board, then you can prove it in a weekend. And since that information would totally ruin a hugely profitable business, I'm sure they would pay you ten million dollars to shut up about it… in cash. That ten million sure beats what you're going to make this week playing $20/40 in this crappy casino and limping under the gun with ace-six offsuit doesn't it?

Usually that shuts them up and I don’t have to hear about how online poker is rigged any more. At least it used to until the AP/UB scandals, which added a whole new dimension to the paranoia. Now, the superstitious loser across from me is sure that he was in one of those tournaments and that he has seen the same thing on some other sites. The worst thing is that most people who doubt the integrity of the games online are bad players who couldn't survive online or heavily superstitious fools who can’t beat any game they play in, so I really can’t leave the table. The money is too good.

So what do we do? We continue to play and we continue to track those statistics and make sure the games are legit. We continue to take money from people who lack the requisite math skills to beat us and we try to keep our sanity as the five people at the table all join in on the conversation about how online poker just isn’t quite fair and this dealer always puts an ace on the board. Good luck and may patience be with you.

More articles