If I had just played large tourneys, I'd be cash positive.
How do you know?
Mainly the fact people at work say 3-4 of them get together and play in collusion. Plus the whole fraternity phenom.
You mean your co-workers collude, or they assert or suspect that 3 or 4 players that they don't know collude? I don't get this 'fraternity' concept.
On a bigger site like Fulltilt or Pokerstars I really wouldn't be concerned about it (& if you do spot collusion the sites are prompt to take action).
I too, would probably be less concerned on a big site, especially if playing NLHE, cuz they get tons of traffic. On a smallish site, like Carbon, playing cash Omaha H/L, who knows how many Romanians will walk in? Maybe that's what the OP meant by 'fraternity'.
But honestly, I've noticed that while the
freerolls are heavily populated by the Eastern Bloc, the cash games are not.
Now, I have no idea the extent of collusion anywhere. But I'd think it would easy to do. Anyone can set up a venue that a
poker site cannot trace. Yahoo chat, Skype, phone. And while they would be able to confirm incidences of the same players frequenting the same table,
you probably won't spot collusion if it's
done right (no chatting at the tables, no 'wtf' showdowns). Again, one can only guess the extent of it, but I'll bet far more goes on than they will ever catch or even notice.