Could other players cheat playing online poker?
As with other forms of online gambling, many critics question whether the operators of such games – especially those located in jurisdictions separate from most of their players – might be engaging in fraud themselves. Internet discussion forums are rife with unproven allegations of non-random card dealing, possibly to favour house-employed players or “bots” (poker playing software disguised as a human opponent), or to give multiple players good hands thus increasing the bets and the rake, or simply to prevent new players from losing so quickly that they become discouraged. However, there is little more than anecdotal evidence to support such claims, and others argue that the rake is sufficiently large that such abuses would be unnecessary and foolish. Many claim to see lots of “bad beats” with large hands pitted against others all too often at a rate that seems to be a lot more common than in live games. But this theory might be refuted by the fact that online cardrooms deal more hand
