[Poppadaddy]

I prefer playing in live cash or tourney games as opposed to online gaming; one of my reasons being this: I have heard from several people that there is software available to be bought that allows others to "see" your cards. Again, this seems somewhat unlikely to me. I would think that the various poker sites would be secure enough to prevent this, but I really don't know.

Is this just a myth or paranoia? Anyone have a comment or evidence either way?

[Nanook]

Originally Posted by Poppadaddy

I prefer playing in live cash or tourney games as opposed to online gaming; one of my reasons being this: I have heard from several people that there is software available to be bought that allows others to "see" your cards. Again, this seems somewhat unlikely to me. I would think that the various poker sites would be secure enough to prevent this, but I really don't know.

Is this just a myth or paranoia? Anyone have a comment or evidence either way?

Think about what you have said for a minute.............



Ok, here goes my logic on why this is not so. At this very moment there are 25,000 people playing poker on PokerStars alone. I have logged on many times and seen the number at easily double that. Think about how much money is at risk for these establishments. Maybe you can look up the financials for PokerStars or some of the other larger online gaming establishments, but at the very low end these places are making at least $1/hr/person. This works out to
$1/hr/person * 25,000 people at any given time * 24hrs /day * 365 days per yr. This comes out to $219 million per yr. I would guess that this number is really way way too low.

Wouldn't you guess that they could afford to pay a programmer to establish some security so this does not happen? If there was proof that this was happening they would be done as a business. I think that these online gaming establishments have a really good gig going and they would do just about anything in their power to keep it.

AB

[papazoid]

i played at several tables where someone would comment about someone else being able to "scan" cards. I would always ask if anyone actually had such a program and of course they did not , but just "heard" about it. So i called party poker and asked them about it.....they said absolutely NOT possible.....i even "google'd" to see if any cheating software program existed.....the only thing i saw was programs that help calculate the odds of your own hand....but nothing that allowed you to see your opponents cards......

[ink_junkie]

I think it's unlikely that the software works, but here's a link to the software in question: http://www.powerpokersecrets.com/ It's an interesting read and the language is pretty careful in terms of how it says what it can do. That is, lots of "up to 99%" which is basically CYA terminology for something that doesn't work very well. It's also available on Ebay from the owner/developer. I'm tempted to email someone on eBay that bought it and see what they think of it.

I think collusion and bots are a much larger issue with online gaming right now than the software above. It's always good to keep an eye out for these types of things, but I think overall there's plenty of fish out there for all the anglers.

Please note that I'm not endorsing the use or validity of the software. Just posting the link as a point of reference for the original post.

[snuix114]

While there are forms of online cheating this is one I personally don't worry about. Just follow the logic: online poker software sends a transmission to your computer via the internet on what cards have been dealt to you. Why would they want to send your opponent's cards to you before the showdown? The software doesn't send this information until it needs to. Second: along what nanook said, I believe they can afford to pay programmers and security specialists to prevent an intrusion to their servers that would allow this "software" to steal the information needed to show your opponent's cards to you.

It has been my experience that most online cheating involves collusion. Two people sitting next to eachother telling what their cards are via phone, IM, or being in the same HOUSE as eachother. There are ways the sites help defend against this as well (although they can't catch everyone). For instance the top sites (stars, UB, party, planet, and paradise) pay respected poker professionals, or columnists to review hand histories of "flagged" sessions. Read this article by Roy Cooke:

http://cardplayer.com/poker_magazine...es/?a_id=14638

Enough of my ranting, I hope some of this helps you feel more at ease.

[jojobinks]

online poker is much more profitable to companies like P* and PP than is reflected a few posts up...but that by itself is not an argument against corporate negligence.

i do find myself making that arguments to folk that hear things about online poker (which i play 5 nights a week). every time i do, though, i think about enron. why would they need to cheat? why would they not be able to figure out there were problems so that they could straighten them out? as profitable as a company like that is (or worldcom, or any other corrupt corp), why would they need to go outside of bounds or be sloppy?

whether or not it makes sense, these things happen. and online poker is still a relative baby (and thus still working out kinks in systems). i've read about some of the collusion security in place, and i'm pretty impressed. but it wouldn't shock me to find that someone somewhere had created some kind of software that helped him cheat. what WOULD shock me is if he was selling it on ebay. let's see, i could sell it for $100 per pop on ebay, and then P* would immediately fix their client to foil it, or i could play with it and keep it a secret and make 200k in a couple of weeks. what's the better choice?

[Button Potato]

I have actually seen this (or something similar) working. The cheating software was developed on the basis that all on-line poker sites use random number generation software to determine what cards go where in each hand. The cheating software is desingned to "learn" the RNG algorithm over time. Initially the software is not very accurate but with time (several thousand hands), it does become very accurate in determining the probability of the cards dealt. It will be interesting to see what the developers of the on-line gaming world do to combat this problem.

[snuix114]

Originally Posted by jojobinks

online poker is much more profitable to companies like P* and PP than is reflected a few posts up...but that by itself is not an argument against corporate negligence.

i do find myself making that arguments to folk that hear things about online poker (which i play 5 nights a week). every time i do, though, i think about enron. why would they need to cheat? why would they not be able to figure out there were problems so that they could straighten them out? as profitable as a company like that is (or worldcom, or any other corrupt corp), why would they need to go outside of bounds or be sloppy?

whether or not it makes sense, these things happen. and online poker is still a relative baby (and thus still working out kinks in systems). i've read about some of the collusion security in place, and i'm pretty impressed. but it wouldn't shock me to find that someone somewhere had created some kind of software that helped him cheat. what WOULD shock me is if he was selling it on ebay. let's see, i could sell it for $100 per pop on ebay, and then P* would immediately fix their client to foil it, or i could play with it and keep it a secret and make 200k in a couple of weeks. what's the better choice?

Very good point Jojo.

[99%evil]

It's not too much of a baby, the owners of P* are trying to sell for 2 Billion dollars

[ink_junkie]

Originally Posted by 99%evil

It's not too much of a baby, the owners of P* are trying to sell for 2 Billion dollars

Wow, that's a lot of chips! Good time for them to sell given the last three WSOP winners came from their camp, and they're certainly doing a lot more advertising than they did in the past. I guess it's working--I recently opened an account with them.