CHEATING RING on carbon SnG's - I was invited to join

OK. So, I thought I would mention this even though "it" happened months ago.

I used to frequent a popular poker forum where you had to do surveys to earn points to play in tournaments for real money. Many of you know exactly what forum I'm talking about. Rather than waste my time with surveys and crowdflower tasks I would spend a lot of time playing on the site's own poker game (they had a client that offered no limit hold'em cash games for points where points could be used toward buying real money tournament entries on Carbon and other sites). So I was on there all the time like 24/7 playing these games for points and doing pretty well. In the end I wound up spending my points and deciding there were better ways to spend my time so I abandoned the site.

Before deciding to abandon the site I was approached by a forum member who invited me to be part of a CHEATING RING on carbon. Somehow he got wind of my computer programming skills and questioned me about whether I could write a bot that could automatically play. At the time I just listened to what he had to say because he didn't come out and say "join my cheating ring" but he asked me a lot of questions on how I might program such a thing and seemed really interested in moving forward with me. Soon after, he started telling me about how his group cheats on carbon and he told me it was guaranteed money and that he was making a fortune had been doing it for months and felt like bots were the next step in "getting to that next level" I told him I wanted nothing to do with it yet he kept on persisting telling me how many thousands of dollars I'll make per month. Eventually I had to block him (all of our chats were through instant message).

But he did reveal exactly how he does such a thing. In fact, he showed me how it was done by letting me watch him play tourneys through join.me. At first I didn't know why he wanted me to watch him play: i thought he wanted my advice on what to do with particular hands. Then it clicked, he was showing me how to cheat in SnG's. I was hesitant to post online how these cheaters cheat because I did not want to give anyone any ideas which might result in more cheating. But now, the SnG's on carbon are anonymous so I don't know if the same scheme would still work.

Here is what he would do:

1. get together a group of 5 players plus himself from locations across the USA.
2. all play in the same 9-max SnG.
3. all players part of the cheating ring each log into 5 different webbrowsers and load up http://www.join.me so now, each player can see the other 5 players' screens.
4. players collude with each other, dump chipstacks, and at the end of the month the pool of players shares in the profits

it's that simple. He said that he had a network of about 50 players ("and growing" he would stress) who would do this all day every day swtiching up players from the 50 in order that they not get caught.

So I wonder if anyone else has been invited to join such a group before or if anyone has ever heard of anything like this.

When I started studying poker a year ago I knew that since poker is still technically gambling, there is a dark side to it. Anyone who knows me knows I would NEVER participate in any kind of cheating in poker. It is just not in my nature to feel good about winning in that way. To me its not about the prize; it's really about perfecting my skills so I can go ahead and consistently profit from poker. I'm not trying to find an easy road to the top or anything like that: i just want to become the best damned player in the world!

So I thought I would mention this because it could possibly still be going on out there. I also wanted to hear from people who maybe know of other ways that sites could be cheated. I mean, if you think about it, this method of cheating that was presented to me was so simple and the guy that was PMing me night and day claims he was making a lot of money doing it.

I wonder how this sort of thing could be prevented. It seems inescapable. One solution could be for online poker sites to create their own proprietary devices which spy on players. But who wants that?

I am not surprised. I have learned to be careful when going into an online cash game because you may not know who you are playing against or what they know about each other or their styles.Again Brm is the key.1/20of your roll. That way if you do get hustled or lose it is just a bump in the road.

I have witnessed chip dumping before in SnGs so I can't say I am completely surprised. Unfortunately it is hard to report though as someone could always have mis-clicked or just played badly etc. and you never know 100%.

However, I do find it a bit strange how people put so much effort into colluding in poker. I don't think collusion works that well long term - you might as well just put the same effort into playing the game properly.

For example, say you join this ring, you are still losing a lot of buy-ins because everyone in the ring can see your cards. Then, you have to trust this dodgy ring to pool you into a profit, which is, quite frankly, not going to happen.

How many of these dishonest players are really going to keep making profits and pooling them evenly to you long term? If you are trusting people who are cheating, you will eventually be cheated.

n3rv said:

I have witnessed chip dumping before in SnGs so I can't say I am completely surprised. Unfortunately it is hard to report though as someone could always have mis-clicked or just played badly etc. and you never know 100%.

However, I do find it a bit strange how people put so much effort into colluding in poker. I don't think collusion works that well long term - you might as well just put the same effort into playing the game properly.

For example, say you join this ring, you are still losing a lot of buy-ins because everyone in the ring can see your cards. Then, you have to trust this dodgy ring to pool you into a profit, which is, quite frankly, not going to happen.

How many of these dishonest players are really going to keep making profits and pooling them evenly to you long term? If you are trusting people who are cheating, you will eventually be cheated.

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I didn't get into poker for the money really. I am a student of risk and love any kind of study that involves risk assessment. Cheating is dishonest and not something I would ever participate in no matter how much money I was promised. I couldn't feel good about something like that. I don't know how that guy Russ Hamilton lives with himself after scamming so many players out of funds via the god mode in the ultimate bet software. I mean, wasn't he already rich?

I don't know if the guy would have just used me to do his programming for him and then dump me without paying me. But clearly, if he promised people a portion of the funds and people do not get paid i could see them reporting his activities so that he would be banned. It may not seem like much but think of it this way: they play the sit and go's all day splitting the 3 "suckers'" money from each sit and go so if a SNG has a buy in of $33, then the team will split $90 6 ways (about $15 per person per SnG assuming $3 tourney fee). you do that for 10 tourneys we are talking $150 a day per person....may not be much money but its a living. So I'm not doubting that this guy was making lots of money. A part of me thinks he wanted to use bots so that he could now keep all the money to himself rather than have to include other people (if you have bots playing automatically for various accounts that are all linked to you, then you see all the hands and keep all the profits).

But it is like anything else in life. If these people decided to devote as much time to studying and playing poker as they do to finding ways to cheat at it then a lot of them could probably be great players. Cheaters will never know a good day in their lives; they'll be unhappy with their riches because they have no morals. I'd imagine its easy to throw away money you cheated people out of: easier than throwing away money you actually earned! I thought it would be good for other members of the poker community to know what kinds of schemes are out there. This is just one of probably many ways of cheating.

Hopefully the people from carbon see this. Perhaps you should also inform them if you haven't already. It's not that surprising that people are colluding like this, people can be pathetic.. It probably took this guy twice as long to get his little cheating ring up and running as it would have taken him to learn how to profitably play SNG's. However, discipline can't be learned by everyone and I assume people like this have none. I'm a mostly SNG player and I've been thinking about trying out a new poker room. I was considering Carbon. Thank you for helping me make my decision!

punctual said:

I don't know if the guy would have just used me to do his programming for him and then dump me without paying me. But clearly, if he promised people a portion of the funds and people do not get paid i could see them reporting his activities so that he would be banned. It may not seem like much but think of it this way: they play the sit and go's all day splitting the 3 "suckers'" money from each sit and go so if a SNG has a buy in of $33, then the team will split $90 6 ways (about $15 per person per SnG assuming $3 tourney fee). you do that for 10 tourneys we are talking $150 a day per person....may not be much money but its a living. So I'm not doubting that this guy was making lots of money. A part of me thinks he wanted to use bots so that he could now keep all the money to himself rather than have to include other people (if you have bots playing automatically for various accounts that are all linked to you, then you see all the hands and keep all the profits).

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He will slip up eventually, either by being banned, trusting the wrong people, or actually realising that just because you can see some of the field's hole cards, it doesn't guarantee a consistent profit. If I have a good hand, they can't see it, and I'm not going to let multiple players limp in anyway - I will most likely be heads-up with one of them.

But as for him not paying his ring... what exactly are they going to report him for? "Uh... yeah... I was colluding with this guy, and it didn't go as planned, and he didn't give me the money he said he would. Can you ban him but keep me please? Okay, cool". It's down to honest players to report them.

ask phil ivy if cheating and being a good player increases your bankroll more than just being a good player

all u can do is report what u hear and what u see to the site, it happens in every site, usually with 2 or 3 players playing s&g skpying, they soon get found out and banned by the site, but they move on to other sites. theres dark in every kind off gambling

most of the top sites are supposed to have sophisticated software so they can see certain betting patterens and when several people seem to play the same game alot

Hopefully you reported them to merge, and if not, they will get caught eventually. Some regs really pay attention to playing patterns, and who they are playing so it would just be a matter of time for a stupid plan like this to fold up.

I have heard of 5 people sitting in the same room playing sng double or nothing, thing is it does not always work for them, if you are a good and patient player, I must admit though it is harder. Why it is better to play mtt, or multi table sng with 90 players or more. When you play long enough you observe the same names always playing on the same tables, avoid those tables and join other.

well, you asked what can be done about things like this? A start would be doing exactly what carbon did, which is make the player names hidden until the tourney starts. Then a "ring" of cheaters cannot tell which table they are joining...

:stickyman

missjacki said:

well, you asked what can be done about things like this? A start would be doing exactly what carbon did, which is make the player names hidden until the tourney starts. Then a "ring" of cheaters cannot tell which table they are joining...

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:stickyman :listen:
I really do not think that helps much, if you look in tourn lobby there is a tourn number and let´s say I was registered under lobby number 234, then I would inform the other fools that they need to register under lobby 234, it is not a fool opps I mean full proof solution not showing players name´s:dontknow:

missjacki said:

well, you asked what can be done about things like this? A start would be doing exactly what carbon did, which is make the player names hidden until the tourney starts. Then a "ring" of cheaters cannot tell which table they are joining...

Click to expand...

Or just have an anti collision squad, catching these guys upon review and stripping account seems pretty easy, it's what happens on stars

Report them to the site, you never know they might reward you.



.

Yes, I do sincerely hope you gave all relevant data to carbon!
This is bad for the game in so many ways .

This is the reason why pokerstars didnt allowed same players from a certain country to play in a same table.
You can call it collusion.

Can't say Im surprised at all but appreciate the info. It makes me confirm my suspicions in certain spots where Ive gotten 3 callers with nothing. I guess the only defense is really good bankroll management - people who cheat ultimately have an emotional deficiency that can be exploited if your bankroll can sustain itself through the times they steal tourney prizes from you.

Hope you reported this individual to Carbon.

A cheating ring of 5 seems like -EV, especially if any of them are not very good. First they need to take at least 1st & 3rd every time to beat the rake and break even (approximately). Second - the split between 5 people gives them a worse ROI than any of them could get by learning the game and playing it well. Third, as many have pointed out - what kind of a cheater thinks his fellow cheaters are honest enough not to cheat him? Finally - when they are inevitably caught they stand to lose all their bankrolls.

Is this a surprise to anyone? Hell, why go thru all the trouble of using web-based portals to communicate - why not a conference call on cell phones?

It can be very obvious or not so much. How can you possibly know? Even worse, how long does it take a site to investigate the one or two claims that are truly collusion in the face of 100's of false claims insisting something is up (truly because they just cannot play well)? Past experience suggests it's not until several people complain that it is looked into. Even then.....

In the old days of live only poker, collusion would come from guys signaling each other. Sharp eyes could catch on. Online however, it's like a live game where you are blind. Who knows who is talking to who and or how? What's to stop several a-holes from getting on their cells and colluding? Sure they all get caught - eventually. One other thing to consider - you got 3 guys at a 5-6 handed table talking to each other, they can eliminate a lot of hands the others might be holding. If they bluff a certain hand the cheaters know they don't have...

Lets face it - there are guys who would sell their mothers for a nickel, so cheating online will always be tried, is always being tried, and will always be. The only defense is good solid play on your part. I truly believe this, as Doyle Brunson has certainly sat at tables with colluders who lost all their chips to him because short of actually seeing his hand, they just cannot get enough of an edge over a truly good player by colluding.

Thank goodness, right?