If you have never played online poker, or if you have played but feel like something just isn’t right and you lose too often you might be wondering if the online poker rooms are actually a scam. In fact some people have asked me the very question “Is online poker actually a scam?” so in this poker article I will try to answer that very question. For the sake of this article I will only focus on the sites and networks where I have personally played at, this includes for an example PokerStars, FullTiltPoker and the Entraction poker network.
Why some people believe online poker is a scam:
Online poker rooms live off the rake (amount poker sites take out of pots) and some people think that the poker rooms are pulling scams that would increase the rake.
The most common ways people think online poker is rigged / how sites are cheating players:
- Dealings players too often hands that will create lot of action in order to get the maximum rake out of the pot. For an example AA vs KK preflop is almost guaranteed to give the site the biggest possible rake out of the pot.
- Setups later in the hands. For an example flush against lower flush, the idea would be the same = big port is almost certain and again the poker room gets lot of rake out of the said big pot.
- Giving new players a winning streak. People believe the site would do this in order to get loyal players instead of players who do one deposit and after they lose it never return again.
- Too many outdraws to protect the weaker players from going broke. If a person goes broke he naturally cant contribute more rake.
Why I don’t believe online poker is a scam:
All the biggest online poker rooms are regulated, pay their taxes and have to apply for licenses. This also means that they go through frequent auditing. This auditing for an example includes investigating their random number generator (RNG, in other words how the cards are shuffled) and if anything shady is found they run the risk of losing their license. If online poker room would ever lose their license it would be such as massive PR loss (the kind that BP is dealing with) that it is very doubtful that any major online poker room would ever take the risk of getting little short term gain by trying to scam their players. This is by far the biggest reason why I’m very doubtful that the online poker room themselves would ever get involved in trying to steal money from the players. Though, admittedly there have been cases in the past where very small online poker sites have simply closed down their doors and ran away with the moneys.
Also there has been the infamous super-user scandal, but that was more to do with a security leak in the Ultimatebet poker software.
Bottom line: stick to the major online poker sites and you should be relatively safe.
