“The Mad Genius” Mike Caro details some of the bumps in the road in one of his self interviews about poker. The topic was on cheating. Some ten years ago, Caro decided to take it upon himself to expose the worst in the industry and to his dismay, it seemed that even when they were trying to be honest, the cheats still managed to find a way to be dishonest. Maybe they weren’t doing so intentionally, but the people he spoke with in private came up with some highly “unfounded claims, along with SOME legitimate ones,” emphasis added.
But he is optimistic saying that poker online today is probably safer than it ever has been from cheaters. Instead of being hosted in some private back room, poker online is more in the mainstream and more out in the open. With more transparency, and more business, the casinos have more to protect in regards to cheating, and the players have much more to lose.
An interesting point he makes is that the “crime” of a poker cheater is worse than the crime of a common criminal. Example given: a robber holding up a convenience store is identifiable as a robber. You know, he’s the guy holding the gun telling the cashier to put the money in the bag or however he attempts to get the money out of the store. In poker though, the cheaters, who he identifies as mainly the people who collude at the table, are much harder to identify. They look just like the other players, they don’t have any “gun” in which you can say, “Oh look, that player is a cheater.”
Proactivity in looking out for your self-interest is always better than inactivity regarding it.
