Online Integrity

This weeks blog is a very sore point with me because I am using this space to have a go at all of the forum squeelers out there who have done money in playing online poker who think that it is crooked. Come on dudes…..wake up and smell the coffee.

Many players who fail in their efforts to make money playing Internet poker blame numerous reasons for the loss of their money. The most common are that Internet card rooms cheat and that collusion is widespread. Another classic is the “cash out curse”, people claim that online sites have sophisticated software installed that rates players and then deals them a succession of losing hands immediately after cashing out. This is absolute RUBBISH! Why don’t players realise that the reason for their failure lies at their own door and no one else? Bad players who initially get lucky and cash out cannot keep it up because they have no skill.

The problem lies in the fact that these players just don’t realise this and it is highly likely that I am talking about YOU! Luck is a huge element in poker and bad players can get lucky for long periods of time. A bad player can look and feel world class when they are on a hot run. But when the luck factor starts to level out (which it will), they have no skill in which to compensate. The end result is the fact that their initial winnings have evaporated and they are left scratching their heads trying to find a reason for it.

Quite often they are under capitalised based on their earn rate (whatever it happens to be) and the limit in which they are playing without even realising it. Because very few people self analyse, they reason that the card room is crooked or they were victims of collusion. I must be exceptional because whenever anything has gone wrong in my life, I have always looked to myself first and foremost as being the most likely reason for the failure. It is why I have achieved pro status in poker because at the outset, I admitted to myself that I wasn’t as good at this game as I thought I was or needed to be…..Yet. That is a very important step to take and in my opinion, by far the most important!

Another accusation thrown at internet poker is that certain players know what cards are coming next. An example would be when a player takes a bad beat by somebody calling his bets/raises with junk and hitting seemingly miracle cards. The player is left wondering how anyone could possibly play like that unless they knew what cards were coming next. Anyone who remotely understands psychology will know why people play like that and will see examples in everyday life of just what makes individuals do stupid things on the spur of the moment, you may be surprised to discover that most people simply do not believe in their own mind that they are doing anything silly.

Of course in the early stages of Internet poker, many people lost money by being on the receiving end of shall we say “dubious practices” by certain online sites that are no longer around. But online poker has moved on with amazing speed and big sites like Party Poker,888, Ultimate Bet, Empire Poker and Full Tilt Poker are now 100% straight in terms of their own integrity, security and honesty. There is a far greater potential problem with “bricks & mortar” card room collusion than there is with any major online site. To say that online collusion never exists would be wrong but the fact is that in my experience, it is quickly detected and stamped out in nearly all cases.

The major online card rooms spend vast amounts of money in advertising to attract new players both good and bad. They earn money from raked games regardless of who wins, If they were “handicapping” winning players by taking money off them in order to redistribute it to lesser players, why would they spend millions in advertising to recruit new players, it doesn’t make sense does it! The vast majority of poker players both online and in “bricks and mortars” lose in the long run, probably over 90% truth be known. This means that there will always be large volumes of forum squealers complaining about this and that. The winners keep quiet and few people ever get to find out who they are. The bottom line is this, you are to blame for losing and you alone! So stop looking for crooked poker sites who make vast amounts of money anyway from totally legal sources and start looking at the most obvious reason first….you! So stop squeeling and scaring away the fish for people like me will you.