OK, if I am both a beneficiary and a victim of these shenanigans, such that they roughly cancel each other out, then my results (over the long term) should not be much affected by them, right? Remember I am not claiming that absolutely 0 cheating occurs; merely that the amount of cheating and/or collusion is minute. I do have a narrow sample of data as a fraction of all data which is available. But I do have an amount of data on my play which I believe is statistically significant.

I know of no large, reputable site where people have their accounts confiscated for merely complaining. Certainly the support staff will become acquainted with the most vociferous and vocal conspiracy-theorists, and perhaps will not treat their concerns as seriously as they would a more rational customer; but it is not the policy of the large poker rooms to penalize players who make frivolous complaints to support. If you do have evidence of such actions being taken against yourself or other players, I recommend you start a thread in a popular poker forum so that the community can be informed of it.

That abuse is possible is not evidence that abuse is happening.

I have stated several means by which poker room operators can take action against collusion/fraud/cheating. I am not claiming that every single instance of cheating can be avoided; rather I'm claiming that the level of cheating can be substantially reduced by choosing wise policies and hiring competent game security personnel. The operators of these sites are by no means powerless in this matter. I do not think "fairness" is an all-or-nothing proposal. There can be different levels of fairness, and as I've pointed out before, a game where cheating occurs in 50% of hands is very different from a game where cheating occurs in 0.1% of hands.

Again, some scams can certainly happen due to slick marketing. But once the word spreads of their scams, other players will avoid the site in question. Good poker players form a closely-knit community and are quick to report and investigate any suspicions of shadiness. I'm not saying ALL poker sites are honest. But the overwhelming majority of them are. And such sites as are not operating fairly have their actions reported and discussed extensively.

Certainly there is luck involved. Players can look at their winrate/100 hands, standard deviation/100 hands and number of hands played in order to calculate their "real" winrate within certain confidence intervals. This allows them to estimate their level of skill. These mathematical calculations, together with other statistics can be used in an attempt to quantify and account for luck. It is true that nobody can get a 100% confidence interval for their winrate. But being 99% likely to be a winning player is pretty good, in my book.

Anyone who purchases these "quick-and-easy" quides to winning poker is deluding themselves. I agree that most of those "publications" are scams. At the very least, a potential buyer should solicit independent reviews of any such book before buying it. One of the great things about poker is the sheer number of players who believe they are awesome, but in reality are horrible players. There is a price to be paid for such self-delusion, and the good players are happy to collect it.

Yes, there is a lot of variance involved in the outcomes of these kinds of decisions, and it is very easy for someone to delude themselves into thinking they are highly skilled in the endeavor in question. One thing which speaks in favor of poker in this regard is that it is possible to play thousands of hands in a week. So our sample size is larger perhaps than the financial wizards, who only make a few dozen or perhaps hundreds of trading decisions in the same timeframe.

Game Theory is largely overused by good poker players, except perhaps in the toughest high-stakes games. Remember that a GTO strategy should only be used when you think that your judgement and skill is roughly equal to or worse than that of your opponents. In lower stakes games, a good player is better off using an exploitative strategy which capitalizes on his opponents' mistakes. Also, the GTO strategy for most forms of multiplayer poker is not known at present (although some psuedo-GTO strategies try to approximate what a GTO strategy would be). GTO strategies have been found for some simplified versions of 2-player (heads-up) poker and for some "toy games" which bear some resemblance to poker. And I'm not sure really how "card counting bots" and "bet calculators" would be of much help to a poker player. Perhaps you are thinking of blackjack? Regarding the "pop-pseudo-psychoanalysis of other players", players display tendencies which are exploitable; such as being risk-averse, or betting a certain size with bluffs, but not with legitimate hands. I don't see how you can claim that there is no such thing as a "winning strategy" in poker? If all the players were roughly equal in skill, then that would certainly be the case. But the skill level of the players varies wildly; the average player makes exploitable mistakes to such an extent that a good player can win enough to overcome the rake.

This sounds like an ad hominem to me.

That all depends on your interpretation of the various applicable laws. The FBI stating something does not necessarily make it so.

Yes, it is true there are some players who run bots, contrary to the terms & conditions of the poker sites. Such bots are usually breakeven or slight winners, and anyone running such a bot is at risk of having his funds confiscated. I have seen it happen several times that bot-operators have been investigated and had their accounts banned and funds confiscated and redistributed to other players. So there is some of that botting going on, but the sites usually make a good effort to combat them. There was one instance reported in the twoplustwo forums of PokerStars suspecting that a user was running a bot due to the high number of tables he played and the long sessions that he played without breaks. So they called the player in question and inquired if they could visit him at his home. They sent an observer to his house who watched him play, and verified that he was capable of playing such a large number of tables for many hours, so they determined that he was not a bot. So the most well-regarded and reputable sites do indeed take these things very seriously and expend a lot of time and money to defeat bot users.

There was one site from several years ago which was very strongly suspected of running "house" bots. I'm not sure if that site is still is around anymore; but their bots were horrible players and served mainly to keep games running rather than directly making a profit for the house. They did not disclose the fact that they were using bots, which was quite a dishonest business practice. But users at that site were able to put several facts together to determine that the site was in fact almost certainly using bots. Then this information was widely disseminated throughout the poker community, and anybody searching for information about that site would discover this information.

Some sites do confiscate funds from unused accounts after a certain period of inactivity. The rate at which this is done is spelled out in the site's terms & conditions. And many sites do have a minimum cashout amount. So they can make some money in that manner. But again these practices are spelled out in full in their terms & conditions or in their cashier information.

OK, Ignoramus, I think I agree with every point you made in your last comment.

What I take exception to are your previous comments indicating or stating that online gambling is inherently crooked and rife with fraud and cheating, and that there is nothing reasonable which can be done to reduce the incidence of cheating or provide a secure playing environment. I've been a winning online poker player for 5 years now, and I am reasonably certain that the sites at which I play provide a very secure and fair gambling service. If they were rigged or rife with collusion, it would seem that I was unwittingly chosen to benefit from such unfairness, for what purpose I know not.

Certainly, as in any unregulated market, there are some shady operators and scams. But by doing research and reading about the experiences of other users at the sites at which one plays, one can avoid the majority of these disreputable sites.

Also, this:

"I assume you are not a US citizen or resident then or else you've just asked for the US "justice" department to have a "word" with you ... something about online gambling being utterly illegal in the US, severe criminal penalties and other some such trifles."

Is kinda loltastic. Far from "online gambling being utterly illegal in the US", the laws on this subject are very convoluted and subject to multiple interpretations. And in any case, the applicable Federal laws criminalize financial institutions and gambling operators, rather than players. There is no "severe criminal penalty" at the Federal level for PLAYING online poker. The different states have their own laws, and I believe Washington State has made it illegal to play online poker.

OK, IgnoramusMaximus, I think I had better stop commenting here, because this discussion is going nowhere. I can't even understand what you are trying to say.

Well, all (or almost all) poker clients allow players to chat with each other in a chatbox. Players often comment on the hand saying such things as "Wow 4-of-a-kind. nh!" or "you moron, how could you call with just a pair of 88?" or "You luckbox...winning 4 pots in a row" If the program was showing different things to different players, then the players would be chatting about different occurrences and would quickly realize that something was amiss. Or the program would have to simulate chat from the different players, which is no trivial feat. Additionally, there is a vibrant and thriving community of poker forums such as twoplustwo and poketfives. Many players post their hands in order to solicit feedback from others. Sometimes someone else who was in the same hand sees the post and adds their commentary on the hand. If the sites were showing different things to different players, this would quickly be discovered on the forums.

Yes, random chance can produce the exact same patterns which are detected. It could be random chance that a player has folded pocket kings to a preflop raise 5 times out of 2000 times in which he was dealt pocket kings. And each of those 5 times has been against the raise of 1 specific opponent. And each time, that opponent had pocket aces. And these 2 players in question have just happened to both be seated at the same table for ~80% of each of their total hands played. And they both happen to be from the same state. And there have been several interaccount transfers of funds between the two accounts, while they have not transferred funds to any other accounts. It could be just random chance. But there is I would estimate a 99.9%+ chance that the two players are colluding and should be stopped. Obviously this is an extreme and contrived example. Most colluders are slightly more clever than to display such obvious hallmarks of collusion. And there is the very slight possibility that such a player is innocent of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, there are patterns of play and "red flags" which can be used by competent personnel to determine instances in which it is virtually certain that cheating is going on.

Any site doing such would be quickly shunned by savvy poker players. Why would a site randomly redistribute money? There would be no gain for them. It would be conceivable that a site would randomly confiscate money without redistributing it; it is clear what their incentive would be in that case. And indeed there have been several sites which have stolen a lot of money from unsuspecting players. But the majority of sites do not engage in such behavior; rather they confiscate and redistribute funds of players who are determined after an exhaustive analysis to be cheating in some way. And far from the money being redistributed to those who whine the loudest; there are countless examples of people receiving a reimbursement without even knowing that cheating was going on at their tables. Contrariwise, twoplustwo is filled with posts of players who allege collusion and cheating with very scanty evidence, and their allegations are investigated and quickly dismissed by the staff of the appropriate poker sites.

Well, I suppose you are looking for 100% absolute "fairness" and anything else is unacceptable. In which case, the US Justice system, election procedures, legislative bodies, regulatory agencies and newspapers are not "fair" either and should be abolished.

I happen to think there is a difference, and quite a major difference at that, between a game or casino or table in which cheating is occurring in 50% of hands and one in which cheating occurs in 0.1% of hands. And, as someone who derives his income from playing online poker, I am glad that the fraud detection and security departments of the major online poker sites are doing their best to reduce and disincentivize all forms of cheating at the poker tables. It would be nice, in any field of endeavor, to completely eliminate cheating and unfairness. But realistically, such a high standard of perfection is unattainable in almost any field of human enterprise, including online or live gambling.

It is NOT completely impossible to ensure a fair game once Internet is involved. In fact there are certain tools available to online gambling providers which would be impossible/impractical in a live setting. Poker sites keep a record of the history (including hole cards) of every hand dealt at their tables. If there is any suspicion of collusion among any group of players, they can go through EVERY SINGLE HAND which those players have played against each other and look for unusual patterns of play. Many sites frequently confiscate the funds of players who have been discovered to have cheated and reimburse the victims of the cheating by splitting those funds among people who have lost money to the cheaters. Something like this would be impossible to achieve in a B & M casino. Clearly, it is impossible to eliminate 100% of cheating, either in a live or online setting. But the incidence of cheating can be, and often is, reduced substantially by the game security departments of the leading online poker rooms. And such cheating as does occur can often be detected in the future and appropriate measures taken.

OK, except that they haven't tended to become fraud engines. The poker community is very active in investigating any allegations of fraud or collusion both among the proprietors of sites and among other players. There have been several revelations of wrongdoing which have been revealed by poker players and communicated to the poker-playing community. Certainly there has been some fraud and deception throughout the history of online gambling. But with resources such as casinomeister and the twoplustwo forums is it relatively easy to see which sites are playing fairly and which are just scams.