When I was asked to look at suspected blackjack cheaters I rarely bothered trying to see if they marked cards or whether their glasses were funny. All I really did was see whether their obvious deviations from basic strategy made sense given the dealers hole card and/or first card off. If that was true and he was winning, he was cheating. I didn't have to figure out what he was doing to know that.

Likewise that is the crux to catching online cheats of every stripe. Since cheater catchers online are able to see every card this should be easy to do. The difference between blackjack and poker is that the cheater need not be a winner. Because unlike blackjack he could be dumping chips to others. Furthermore the poker cheat might engage in a lot more camouflage than the blackjack cheat because his edge is greater, he might have partners who he shows off that camouflage with, and he knows he may be under serious scrutiny.

Any smart superuser, besides having confederates to dump chips to and help with camouflage, would follow a few rules if he thought he might be being watched.

1. Be very aware of what his reasonable plays would be if he saw no cards.

2. Stick with the reasonable play unless he substantially increases his EV by doing otherwise

3. Never choose an absurd play even if there is a big EV gain.

This strategy is almost undectectable. The problem with this strategy is that it doesn't win very fast. Since most cheats are greedy they will probably push the envelope. At that point a good analyst will probably catch them.

I'm sure that much of what I just wrote is nothing new to many of you. Which is why Cake should consider hiring some of you. In fact I myself have permission from Mason to offer my services (at an exhorbitant price) and if they accepted I would take on some of you as assistants.

Awesome post david, I agree

I haven't been following the Cake scandal closely, but them paying you exorbitant fees seems incredibly stupid because if you find something it is horrible for them and if you don't nobody will care because smart superusers are too hard to find based on HH anyway. And after the AP/UB thing anybody with superuser capability would have found somebody competent to run the poker aspect of it. Or atleast thats what everybody will think.

I have a lot of free time and would be happy to help in said situation

You could say that about their decision to hire anybody who the public knows is honest and competant. But there might be a few extra upsides in some people's mind if it was me. Many have already been clamoring for Mason burt he is not interested.

I'd imagine he's far too busy amirite?

I agree w/ everything you say David, but catching a superuser would be much harder than catching a blackjack cheater. Most lines poker players take can be justified by some kind of logic, so it would be hard to prove unless he took a bunch of absurd lines and was crushing the game. If the superuser is 1/2 smart w/ some poker knowledge, he should be very successful without being caught imo. The good news is most superusers, well the ones that were caught, are either not so smart or lack poker knowledge.

some day a site will see the upside to going the extra distance instead of the shortest distance on an issue like this.

and I see Lirv has already shown up before my obligatory "let LirvA sort it all out".

meh, id agree in general that someone good would be pretty much undetectable but not everyone is good at poker or has enough common sense to get someone that is. also due to high stakes action being scarce there if there was one or more they could have gotten greedy and been sloppy w/ how they won the money. its def worth a look but its also possible that there was 1 or more that were in the hands of capable ppl and they flew under the radar.

Your site david has helped keep online poker 'clean" for the most part. Many users here are the "sheriffs" of the online poker world.

Even if the superuser stuck to alternatives that are completley justifiable it would start to become noticeable if, when he had more than one reasonable alternative, he always picked the one that was clearly better, (given the other's hole cards).

Meanwhile I think it is fair to say that even if cheaters were especially careful the last two weeks, they would almost certainly have been at least a bit more sloppy the previous eighteen months.

you should definitely hire Mookman5 that dude is dedicated

It's a matter of making sure the people looking know what they should be looking for and frame the hunt with that in mind.

I think Noah said it in the other thread, the people looking should be suspicious of what they may find. Curious may be another word that works there.

Fundamental theorem of online poker:

"Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents' cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, you're cheating. Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their hands the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose."

j/k obv and a 2+2 committee given access and authority to investigate cheating would be amazing.