Should You Worry About Rigged Poker Games?

At a certain point every player has wondered about the possibility of cheating in online poker rooms. When real money is being thrown around, people will always question what happens behind the scenes.

Poker players have assorted conspiracy theories, speculating that certain rooms influence the games as a way to cheat the players. These theories suggest that poker rooms use accomplice players or robots, or deal too many premium cards and other cards in order to create more action and ultimately more rake.

What people forget is the very high profits poker rooms are able to generate every month by playing by the rules.

Rooms like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker wouldn't dream of scamming their players because the risk/reward equation isn't favorable to them. Both rooms generate copious amounts of cash for their owners each month, and a scandal would ruin their reputations and impact the long-term profitability of the companies.

Larger online poker rooms also use reputable external auditing firms to provide more security for their players.

The "premium card" theory is a misconception. Overall the online poker room would make less money if it dealt an unusual proportion of premium cards, what with the bad beats that would result.

If this were the case, the games would become more volatile, and losing players would have fewer funds for the poker rooms to rake.

The ideal situation for an online room is actually that all the players are reasonably well-off (low volatility) so that they have the means and desire to continue to contribute to the rake.

The No. 1 reason players believe they are being cheated?

They refuse to accept the fact they may be losing players. In a normal poker room you typically have about 5% of the field that are consistent big winners, some 15% that are more or less breaking even and approximately 80% who are losing players.

It's a tough pill to swallow for many players, but once you do, you can improve your game - there is no shortage of resources to draw on in order to do so. The first step is obviously to move down to lower stakes. Then invest in the plethora of educational poker material that is out there, whether it is print or video form or online.

All this is not to say there hasn't ever been an incident of cheating in online poker rooms. In fact, there have been several well-publicized occasions where company insiders were able to take advantage of administrative access and dupe a room's loyal customers out of cash.

You should only use poker rooms that have a respected place in the industry. A good starting point is the PokerListings.com Poker Toplists, but it's also wise to keep track of current events on poker news sites and forums.

Note: In addition to games rigged by the house, online poker players worry about cheating by their opponents. This is called "collusion," and you can read about it here.