Poker Trick O' Treat

By Lady Luck

If you are one of those online poker players who believe that you'll make a lot of money by cheating online then you’re in for a bit of a scare. It's called the Poker Trick O' Treat where scamsters promise that they'll treat online poker players with downloadable poker cheating software, but on the contrary, they trick you out of your hard earned cash.

We've all heard these lines before: Hold 'Em, Fold 'Em, Cheat 'Em’ or 'If you can't beat them join them'. These are just some of the popular lines that fraudsters use to turn your poker game into a nightmare, even scarier than the one on Elm Street.

In another era, if a player realised what was going on he might have thrown the poker table, pulled a gun, and cleared the saloon, but in modern days, the best you can do is be aware of these scams and try to avoid them. So for those players who want to relax this Halloween in the poker room and not let their money spook-tacularly disappear, here's the lowdown:

Software cheats - "Cheat On Poker v.1.2" promised special tracking software that helps you to track the hand of every opponent at your online-poker table and some even promise that you can see your opponent's cards. The catch – it costs you money for downloading and you cannot use it on real money games. Sounds like more of a trick than a treat to me.

Bots – Computer programs that play online poker for you. Not very effective in online poker rooms as security monitors often pick up their scent, especially when they spot a player going a whole 24 hours without a bathroom break. Advanced poker rooms also have mouse tracking that helps them determine if it is a real player or not.

Collusion - several players at the same table (or one player using multiple computers), share information. It often happens that a weak-handed player helps out a strong-handed co-conspirator by staying in the game and raising to convince others to bet more.

But there's a catch. Good colluders have to be able to play their combined hands well, and they have to win enough for it to be worthwhile after dividing their money throughout the group. Poker rooms also track Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to make sure if one person is using multiple aliases.