The BBC recently ran an online article entitled Can the World of Online Poker Chase Out the Cheats? which highlighted the case of 25,000 players falling prey to a Chinese collusion at one of the world’s most prominent online poker sites, Poker Stars. The scam was reported in July this year and Poker Stars refunded over $2.1 million to the thousands of players who were affected by the collusion.
The article, written by Adrian Goldberg, says that this was not an isolated case and that previously, Poker Stars refunded $80,000 to players who unwittingly went up against poker bots.
The author says that while Poker Stars have promised to beef up its security, “the problem for the authorities and the gaming companies is that it is virtually impossible to prevent collusion like this, because players can share information about their hands via the phone or internet messenger without being detected.”
According to the article, cheating is usually only discovered by the online poker groups when their security systems pick up regular patterns of behaviour that involve the same players.
“While most online poker games are safe, the scope for fraud is considerable, and the rapid growth of the online poker industry has left some companies struggling to keep on top of security issues,” writes Goldberg.
According to an anonymous former Poker Stars employee, who is quoted in the article, the group has a hard time keeping up with security issues due to its rapid expansion. He said that 95% of complaints received were just “bitter customers because they lost, and there was no collusion.” However, he said that Poker Stars pledged to investigate all complaints nonetheless.
In an industry worth $5 billion annual, PokerStars brings in over one fifth of that sum – $1.4 billion, “making it a key player.”
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