Player cheating – all-in abuse and collusion

There are two kinds of player cheating you should look for.

All-in abuse. First, some players intentionally abuse the disconnect all-in protection. If you see a player time out at a time when it would be very advantageous to be all-in, you may have witnessed this form of cheating. Send an email to the poker site's support staff that includes the hand number and your suspicions. Historically, Poker Stars has the best reputation for investigating and responding to these reports. Here are some examples of poker site responses:

• Poker Stars response posted by Dave L, Feb 2004.
• Party Poker response posted by BadVoodoo, Apr 2004.
• Party Poker enforcement posted by Paul Sikorski, Jan 2004, in which Party stripped a player of a cruise package after determining he abused all-in privileges in a tournament.

Recently, the top sites have introduced no-all-in tables and tournaments for players who prefer that the dealer fold all disconnected hands. As the average internet connection quality improves, this will probably become the norm and this type of cheating will fade away.

Collusion is the second kind of cheating you need to keep an eye open for. Unfortunately, it can be hard for you to spot if the colluding players are experts. While it may look to you like one player raised his friend and squeezed you in the middle, he might have just thought the first player was bluffing or betting a draw. Conversely, you may not notice anything at all when one player folds AQ preflop because his friend has AK. The poker site, who knows what everybody's cards are, can do a better job. In fact, because of the complete hand history database, collusion detection is easier online than in the real world. But this is balanced by how simple it is for players to collude in the first place. So the poker site's collusion detection department takes a two-pronged approach. First, they run continual analyses of hand histories in search of signs of collusion, which they follow up with manual review. Second, they rely on player reports of suspicious activity, which they also follow up manually. Some sites have better reputations than other for being diligent in this responsibility. Poker Stars has the best reputation for collusion detection. Here is an example of one of their investigations:

• Poker Stars investigation of collusion, posted by Grip 'n Rip, Mar 2004.