punctual
Legend
Silver Level
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 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?