I recently received this email from PokerStars online poker room where I played some $20 and $30 SitNGo tournaments...

Hello,

PokerStars has become aware of two players who were working together in our Sit & Go tournaments to the detriment of other players. You were involved in at least one tournament with these players and as a result you may have been adversely affected.

The players' accounts were closed and their funds frozen pending a thorough investigation, which is now complete. Fortunately the problem was identified quickly and they had only played in a few tournaments before the accounts were closed.

In a case such as this it is our policy to confiscate the colluders' winnings or balances and to distribute them to the players affected by their actions in as fair a way as possible. To confirm your credit, log onto your PokerStars account, go to the 'Cashier' screen and click the 'History' button. Your share will be shown "Credit Purchase", followed by the amount of the credit.

I regret that we will be unable to answer questions as to how your specific credit amount was calculated. Likewise, we are not at liberty to identify the specific games or players in question. Suffice to say that they have been barred from the site and you will not encounter them again.

The integrity of the games at PokerStars is of paramount importance to us and we will not abide cheating or collusion in our games. We work hard to police our games and prevent such instances. In the rare cases where collusion has actually occurred, we make sure that any players affected are compensated appropriately.

Thank you for your continued play here on PokerStars. Please do not hesitate to let us know any time we can be of help.

Best Regards,

Dan M.
PokerStars Support Team

Poker Stars returned $114 to my account. I was quite pleased with their security team and response.

I have to admit that when I played the Sit N Gos things didn't feel quite right. The problem is that luck is a funny thing and it's nearly impossible to determine cheating in the short term because luck can be a funny thing. It's certainly possible to flop four-of-a-kind only to lose to a straight flush or to have your pocket aces all in preflop against a lower pair lose a few times in a row.

With live poker, those who are perceptive and know what to look for may observe situations where one feels that they're being bamboozeled but again, it can be difficult to discern if it's unusual/bad play and short term variance (luck) or if there really is some underlying ulterior unfairness.

There have recently been threads on poker discussion sites regarding people playing online poker with multiple accounts. They get several accounts to themselves, laptops and "air cards." These are high-speed broadband connections which allow each computer to have a unique IP address, making it much more difficult for an online site to determine it's the same person and same location.

Given my results online, the collusion at PokerStars, and the Absolute Poker hole card scandal, I'm beginning to sour on playing online. I think some sites do their best to protect the games, but I have to wonder if it's enough sometimes.
 

[Email Blogger]