Questions of Game Integrity - Part I

I have a big-time personal interest in the well-being of poker. My column is published in this magazine, which derives its principal revenues from ads placed by poker organizations. I represent the industry's first Internet cardroom, www.PlanetPoker.com. I've attended industry lobbying efforts to minimize the effects of government regulation on the game. I play on many sites. I met my wife and two best friends at poker tables. After my family, poker has been the biggest thing in my life. I am not an unbiased, objective observer. I care too deeply about this game to be unbiased. So, consider me disclosed, already. (P.S. I'll be running more hand columns in a few issues.)

We poker writers don't write about the integrity of the game much. The game is much more honest than most people believe, especially people who are losing and looking for something to blame it on. Also, there is a fear that if we write honestly about integrity issues, people will blow things out of proportion and presume things to be worse than they are. Third, we are by temperament and position predisposed to be cheerleaders for the industry. But, it is time for some discussion of integrity in poker.

The entire existence of public poker – whether tournaments, in cardrooms, or on the Internet – relies on the players' confidence that the game is honest.

In my pre-Vegas days on the Pacific Northwest poker circuit, I ran into lots of low-level cheaters. They were and are much more common in private games than public games. Collusion wasn't common, but it happened. The most frequent cheating was people scoring an ace with a fingernail or otherwise marking it, or player-dealers messing with the shuffle, cut, and deal, or peeking. That's one reason I have always preferred public poker, with its impartial center dealer and regular deck changes. Then, as now, most who put a lot of energy into cheating didn't put their efforts into playing good poker, and often gave up more in edge than they made up for by being dishonest.

Of course, dealers can partner with players. Cardroom management protects players by instituting shuffling and cutting procedures that make it more difficult for card mechanics to ply their filthy trade. Shift managers observe. Regulators snoop. Cameras record. If the proper procedures are followed, such as a scramble followed by shuffle, shuffle, box, shuffle or shuffle, box, shuffle, shuffle, followed by a proper one-handed cut with a release of the deck, it is extremely difficult for dealers to help out players. At higher limits, with a lot of money at stake, many players tend to be very knowledgeable and will catch a dealer not mixing the cards correctly.

Not all public poker games are created equal when it comes to integrity, however. There is less risk in tightly regulated environments such as California, Nevada, and New Jersey than there is in unregulated environments such as "ships to nowhere" or those regulated by state and local governmental agencies that are less experienced in regulating card games and have varying degrees of protection for players.

Players should be aware that the best interest of management is almost universally served by having honest games. This is even truer on the Internet than in live poker. Any poker room or Internet site that's revealed to be dishonest in running its games or allowing cheaters to stay in action would lose almost all of its business. While the rake is another thing we poker writers tend not to discuss, if you do the simple math, you will see that it's just not worth the risk to the house. The rake is much more valuable than any advantage that could be derived from any kind of cheating by any house. The house has even more interest than the players in keeping the game honest.

Hardly a day goes by that I don't hear some kind of accusation about the random number generators (RNGs) used by Internet poker sites to "shuffle and deal" the cards. There seems to be some sense that RNGs are skewed to make more flushes and put more pairs on board to create bigger pots and more action to benefit the growth of a site. Occasionally, somebody will allege that the RNGs favor "house" or prop players.

While bigger-action games might attract players to sites, the biggest variables affecting site traffic are game selection, marketing expenditures, soft players donating easy money, and the ease of transferring money into and out of the site. Because there are so many more hands per hour played, especially for those playing multiple tables, players see more big hands made. This is inherent in the differences between Internet poker and live poker.

As for prop players, many sites use them, paying either an hourly rate or refunding a portion of the rake, but the house has no interest in them. Props are just props; the house doesn't care if they win or lose. No Internet site could afford to jeopardize its rake or its license from questions of integrity that would arise from messing with its RNG. In my opinion, all Internet poker site RNGs are honest, if for no other reason than to be dishonest would be bad business.

Many jurisdictions, including Curacao, where PlanetPoker is licensed, prohibit representatives or employees of the house from having an interest in the outcome of any games. I like this policy. Some sites let owners, employees, or celebrity spokesmen play their own money on the sites (as opposed to playing the site's money and refunding any winnings in promotional events). While I think there is nothing inherently improper about this, there is the potential for the appearance of impropriety, and I think the industry would be better off if nobody did it.

A big part of my experience in Internet poker has been catching those involved in collusion. There has always been some degree of collusion in poker, whether in a private game, a public game, or on the Internet. Back in the old lowball days, a group led by an ex-CIA cryptographer had a 12-page code book of hand signals and phrases that each team member had to memorize. I have seen cardroom situations in which two or three "friends" played shorthanded while waiting for a stranger to sit down. I have heard of a team of about 40 out of Toronto "working" one Internet site, and another group of 12 out of Vegas working another. It happens.

But, it's not the problem most players think it is. Effective collusion is almost nonexistent in low-limit games, and when it does exist there, the cheaters generally are crude and play lousy poker. They don't take much if anything from small games. Collusion is more common at the higher limits, where the money involved seems worth the risk. In these cases, however, the opposition tends to be knowledgeable and aware. It sometimes happens in tourneys, but it's hard to set up. Even when it doesn't happen in tournaments, there are credibility issues in cases in which players competing against each other own a piece of each other. But the remarkable thing is that while cheating exists, and always will (as it always will in all aspects of life in general), any significant value to the cheaters and harm to others is less than you would think.

It is management's obligation to protect the game from collusion. Private games do not have the staff or technology to protect the games adequately. The dealers (if they have dealers) don't get training and are not subject to background checks. There is substantially more risk of being cheated in private games than in public games.

Internet poker presents new possibilities for collusion. There's potential for one person with multiple IPs to cheat a game, and more opportunity for two or more people to get together. But, the industry knows this and fights back, banning cheaters from sites like casinos ban card counters.

The good news for poker is that by applying technology and staff to the problem of cheating, it's easy to catch the cheaters. As is the case with live games, management has a real interest in keeping the games honest. Even if a game is honest but players believe it's not, it will cost a site business. Also, cheaters tend to target and bust out the less knowledgeable players, who serve as bait for the sharks of the poker food chain, further hurting a site. Every site is best served by bending over backward to maintain high standards of integrity, and especially the appearance of integrity.

At PlanetPoker, each accusation of potential collusion made by a player during the past five years has been referred to me – and so has every suspicious play flagged by the program. Each collusion investigation involves reviewing hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of hands. I've done thousands of investigations, and have barred hundreds of players in my five years of anti-collusion efforts. Most reputable sites have somebody like me doing the same job.

It is easier to cheat on the Internet and easier to catch the cheaters. The net effect is that when management invests in the technology and personnel to protect players, Internet games are well-protected.

Each program upgrade includes more sophisticated methodology for identifying cheaters. Software flagging is a big part of anti-collusion efforts, and you'll forgive me for not itemizing exactly how PlanetPoker does that, or how our competitors do it. Suffice it to say that it's not difficult to write a routine that identifies situations that may involve cheating and then flags them. In addition to flagging anomalous plays that might indicate collusion, most sites match credit cards, surnames, banks, addresses, ISPs, IP addresses, e-mails, zip codes, deposit and withdrawal patterns, and more.

One of my favorite defenses is sniffers. There are lots of different types of sniffers, and they sniff out lots of different things. One kind is an itty-bitty program on your client base that determines whether you're running instant messaging software. It matches what you're running to what other players at your table are running. A match moves you up the flagging list. With such computer technology, it is possible to be proactive, ferreting out the cheaters and bouncing their butts from the site.

Integrity has been a problem in poker games since the early days of Mississippi riverboats. Cheating stories are legendary, the stuff of myth and movies. I know there are people who cheat (in other aspects in life as well as in poker). And there are entire websites that read like poker versions of the National Enquirer, with theories about how much cheating goes on, mostly in the big-money situations. There are more paranoid conspiracy theories about poker cheating on the Web than there are at a Kennedy assassination convention. But the poker industry cares. It tries to keep the game honest. It makes it tough for cheaters, and protects against cheaters. All that said, the issue of integrity goes beyond what I've discussed here, and it has much, much bigger implications for the poker world, which I'll discuss in my next column.

Roy Cooke played winning professional poker for more than 16 years. He is a successful real estate broker/salesperson in Las Vegas. If you would like to ask Roy poker-related questions, you may do so online at www.UnitedPokerForum.com. His longtime collaborator, John Bond, is a free-lance writer in South Florida.