Great points. Now you’ve made me curious about the whole “automatic card shufflers” thing. I hear a lot of older players complain about them. I wonder if we’ll ever hear the story from Gabe?

GREAT POINT!! Gabe, explain your theory about automatic shuffle machines in poker and how they are designed to beat the better players. While your at it, any 911 theorys??

and i think you are right. i don’t know how accurate it is to say that full tilt or any of the other sites are actively head-hunting some of the better players when they already make SO much money just hosting the dang poker games.

of course there are conspiracies about everything, and conclusions are drawn from grains of truth.

your insight HAS helped. i feel a lot better about the state of all things poker. undoubtedly i will be online for years to come. maybe someday i will make enough money and i will know the truth for myself.

Thanks for your comment and questions. You raised some interesting points.

You mentioned that “reality is disheartening”, but what is the reality here? Gabe claims that he was made a target and couldn’t win at any stakes. This is what he believes, but is it the truth?

Perhaps he suffered a terrible run of cards, which led him to investigate further. Upon investigating he found conspiracy theorists who believe that online poker is rigged. This concreted the idea in his mind, but to me it’s far from logical.

I learned Texas Hold’em by playing online. I’ve made thousands playing online. I love poker (online and live) so much that I started a business to build poker websites. I now work with online poker sites to give my visitors special bonus and promotions.

I consider myself an honest person. If for one second I believed that these major online poker sites were fixing games, I wouldn’t hesitate to report it and quit promoting them.

Your point about high-stakes millionaires is a good one. These guys would have all gone bust-o a long time ago if poker sites were targeting them.

The fact that computers are exploitable does make cheating by individuals a SLIGHT problem. The reason I’m not overly concerned with cheating, is because most people do it poorly. There are hundreds of thousands of online poker players and maybe 10% are trying to cheat to win. In any case, there’s still a lot of money to be won by playing online poker.

“what about your opinions on poker trackers and stuff like that”

I don’t consider statistical programs like Poker Tracker cheating. I have it myself. Programs like this help players analyze their own play, and the play of their opponents. I believe to become a good player nowadays, programs like this are a necessity.

I think Gabe and I are both trying to be helpful and honest from our own points of view. Ultimately, you will have to make the best decision you can based on the available information.

To sum up my own point of view; there is NO hard evidence that online poker sites are fixing games to bust certain players. And there is little evidence of cheaters posing a tremendous threat to online poker anytime soon.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to post them.

i’m a fairly new poker player, and this as well as other news gleaned from the internet has come as quite a shock to me.

initially, i was a bit paranoid about killer bots and cheat programs.

but what about players like tom dwan (durrr), di dang hac dang as well as some of the other high-stakes millionares? are they flukes, or just not yet on their downward spiral? i saw a hand where tom dwang’s opponent flopped quad tens and dwan still won with a straight flush. what is going on there?

what about your opinions on poker trackers and stuff like that.

i love poker so much, and to see all this… reality is disheartening, i’m only 20 and i wouldn’t prefer to be jaded so young.

http://www.pokerpages.com/players/profiles/64060/gene-dudek.htm

I was at the table next to you that day when Claudia came to get the car keys to go to the Beau.I heard something about a PLO game…In fact…Bill was at yout table also. I am sure you’ll will be around the circuit event in New Orleans…I will introduce myself.

Kev…The Welcome back Kotter stuff was actually Bill’s stuff. He is “Witty” like that sometimes
Peace
GeneD

I definately understand your position, Its very difficult to believe. If not for all the research into how the industry works & the data on millions of hands Ive played then I would find it hard to believe as well. As far as bots, What I really worry about are house bots that could be programmed to receive timely hands. I would find it difficult to believe that bots could be programmed by players to beat real pro players. I think the players could exploit them after they realized what was going on. Maybe one day there will be some real regulation in the industry, however when there is that much money at stake there will always be chance for corruption. I use to be a financial advisor & daytrader, Unfortunately there is still corruption in financial markets as well after numerous attempts to regulate it. Anyway in the meantime we can agree to disagree, Good luck to you