Last year I read an article that detailed the events of a particular tournament. In this tournament, it was extremely obvious, once you read what each player started out with and what came on the board after, that there was some serious cheating going on. And while I understand that on-line poker sites are filled with extremely lucky idiots, the logs clearly showed insider knowledge, for example, why would a player go all in with 7-2 off suit, pre-flop, yet fold ak suited?
The method behind it is actually very simple.
On-line poker sites use pre-dealt hands. The computer generated hands are first created, then they have to be verified that the winning hand is actually correct (it’s a bit tough for the computer to understand the concept of face cards). Then, these pre-dealt hands are entered into a database which then in turn deals to real players.
Now, FTP operators need to have access to these databases and each individual hand for the purposes of having a record in case a dispute comes in. Of course, these disputes could be in the case where 4 10’s beat a straight flush (the verification process could have missed the real winning hand).
So let’s say my good friend Bob is now a part of the operators at full tilt, I’m sitting on the button with 7-2 off suit, I tell him the hand number, he looks it up on the database, he sees that the big blind has A K off suit, but knows that two 7’s and a 2 will make their way on the board. He tells me that I have the winning hand and to bet big because the fool on the big blind is likely going to not only call, but go all-in.
Unfortunately for me, I was the fool with AK on the big blind, and the player on the button with his 7 2 was the one with the friend at FTP.
How can FTP prevent this type of abuse? Easy, deny access to hands that have not been played and put a 5 minute delay before the hands can be looked up through the database.
Of course, it is quite plausible that FTP has a room full of ‘players’ that pick up hands from bots to give it the realism of having someone actually type into the chat window, and as far as they’re concerned, they want the cheating to go on because they’re making more money by cheating anyway..
So in short, F* Full Tilt Poker.
-thrill