What exactly is the purpose of having the chat option?
uhhh... it's SUPPOSED to be there for chatting no matter how many scumbag control freak pieces of crap hate it when people chat. i always loved chatting and joking around. it makes the time go by faster, ESPECIALLY when you're drawing dead and back in the day at
pokerstars, i'd met a lot of nice people by chatting. i also noticed that the nicest and funnest players were also the chattiest on final tables, just like those who talk the most trash in chat windows always seem to be the first to get KOed.
Not to mention-collusion.Lots of time people tend to abuse this privilege.
anyone that would do that in an open chat window would have to be stupid or have some sort of code. it WAS an issue back in the day at
poker stars with players cheating in russian. these days though, if anyone did want to cheat like that, i'm pretty sure they'd use a 3rd party chat service to either PM or create private rooms or use a cell phone. i wouldn't be surprised that it's very common, especially on higher stakes cash tables where 3 or 4 players can run a table bully style.