It has been my experience that they do. They all protect their preferred clients. You are a preferred client if you have just opened an account, made a deposit to your account or are a hopelessly weak player. This is absolutely true of Party Gammon (the subsidiary of Party Poker) and if they are cheating at Gammon, it is no large step to also cheat at poker.
Other sites let you win for a while and then scoop all your cash. They then prompt you to make another deposit.
Then there are the sites that simply don't send you your winnings and wait for you to get tired of complaining.
One site told me, after I tried to cash out $200 that the minimum cashout was $1,000!
I'm sure there are other horror stories.

StarGames does not cheat. I would say Betfair doesn't cheat as well but the "dark room" they have kind of makes me not to believe in that.

Btw you could check out review that I have linked and decide yourself. I do agree the online backgammon world doesn't look very good, but still there is atl east one good place out that there that is worth it.

[QUOTE=Vladd222;36660216
One site told me, after I tried to cash out $200 that the minimum cashout was $1,000!
[/QUOTE]


Which site ?

Tiger Poker

Never heard of them. Can you PM me their site. These seem to be some serious crooks like BackgammonMasters.

I have purged their link from my computer. To reach them, google Tiger gaming.

is PRIMEbackgammon a good site?

Not at all. It was a sister site of Play65 that closed (along with GammonEmpire).

If you want to know more about what happened around Play65 (as well as GammonEmpire & PrimeBackgammon) check out this news post: http://www.onlinebackgammonmoney.com...eal-money-play

Thanks for the info bud

Several people have asked me "Why would an on-line gaming site cheat? They make their money from the vigorish on each and every game."
Well consider this: If you had spent say two million $ to create and promote a gaming site and attracted 10,000 players of which 30% were god-awful and played every move wrong while 10% were good players who would win despite the house rake.
What would happen? Well the god-awful players would attract more players who would sign on after seeing their awful play. But the god-awful players would not last more than a week or two and would not be replaced by equal numbers of 'fish'. So after a few weeks you would be left with about 8,000 players with fewer of the 'fish'. And each week you would lose more of the bottom of your players until only the 'sharks' remained who would look at one another and say "What are we doing here feeding the house rake? We're wasting our time!" And so they too would soon be gone.
And so you would have spent $2 million for a gaming site with very few players and no prospect of recovery.
Anyone who has run a home game - whether backgammon or poker - knows that if you lose your one or two main 'fish' the others will not come. Well internet gaming sites are the same only on a larger scale. To survive you have to protect your drawing cards - the 'fish'.
And that is why all internet gaming sites cheat. The ones who are gone now recovered their money by scooping the cash in the accounts. The ones that still operate do so because they protect their 'fish'. They also protect their new clients - those who have newly opened an account. However, if the new player starts winning, he soon finds himself losing games that are normally won in a live game.
In live poker games, the scam is called getting 'cold decked'. In on-line games, you can get 'cold decked' according to the programming of the 'random cards' deal. You can be dealt appropriate losing cards which at first sight seem like sure winners! In backgammon you can double where you know you are a 70% favorite but then you lose 90% of the time - welcome to Party Gammon!

I would stay well clear of Tiger Poker from what I have heard...

Party Gammon's still at it! They just can't help themselves. Like most cheats I've encountered (only a handful in 40 years) they must cheat on every move! Once their automated program targets you to lose, you're dead meat!
Not as bad in the poker side. You can occasionally put in a big bluff bet and steal the pot!

Take of your tin foil hat, plug back in the microwave, turn back on your cell phone and move this to bbv or it's rigged tread??

Backgammon sites don't cheat by manipulating dice rolls. The huge rake guarantees good profits over time. You just had a run of bad luck. Happens to everybody.

Bad luck, my ass! I know when I'm being cheated! You can prove me wrong by playing my account and I'll match what you win but you pay double what you lose.

I'd be happy to take you up on the wager, but as an American, I can't download the Party Gammon software.

Hope your luck improves.

Vladd222

I would very much like to contribute to this thread. Much of what you have stated is very thought provoking. Bill Robertie's message appears to be guarded status quo, internet BG site community, support. My comments are more along the possibility that BG sites may have a quality of fair play issue. If you are still available Vladd, I would very much like to hear further on your thoughts and interject my thoughts as well.

EddieLegs

16 checkers might be an option.

This ofcourse to exclude the possibility of bot misuse, presuming that it will take a lot of effort for programmers to adapt bot play to the extra checker.

For dice manipulation in the end game, they could use a different complicated formula for every game, which will be displayed, to generate the dicenumbers on basis of the previous dicenumbers, so that after the match one would be able to check whether there is no cheating.

Yogi,

This thread is important if you assess the experts viewpoint of random dice on the internet as well as the possibility that internet dice are not random. Experts (?) and pro players viewpoints are whiners, case closed- random, hogwash, and the Robertie approach that the thread does not change and has been tested to see that the thread is fixed and unalterable. Well, I have to ask "Show me the trials, the tests, who paid for them and how and what they tested, how they were conducted and the results." I have not seen one test. Experts and Pro Backgammon players say "They have been tested." Show me! Guess what! They cannot and they are afraid to. They do not have an independent unbiased test, testing for the right criteria. Vladd222 may have a very valid point. Please re-read his posts.

First the pro players status quo statement of you are a whiner they have been tested, case closed - does not leave any room for the skeptic. Humans cheat. Humans are greedy-ego or money . People cheat at Backgammon.

Second, the internet is artificial, programmable by human interference, easily manipulated and hidden from scrutiny.

Open For Discussion

Eddie Legs

When you say this, does it mean that you are open to being wrong? If so, what would it take for you to believe you're wrong? And if not, what does it mean to you when you say "open for discussion"?

Edit: I don't claim that it's somehow impossible for online sites to cheat. I grant it's a possibility. But there's a gap between making the argument that it's possible to making the argument that it happens (which is the actual claim in contention). I am interested in something more than just a speculation.

Eddieleg,
See poker. Same old story, same old song.

Except that it's known that cheating has happened in online poker. But in that situation, there was actual evidence beyond personal anecdote and speculation.

Yes, but most big names have been collaborating. Ethics get quite a stretch when money is involved.

I agree with Aaron that there is a world of difference between speculation and substantiated fact. It is speculation, for instance, that no one has ever investigated the dice at an online backgammon site. The fact is that Michael Petch made an extensive investigation of the dice at SafeHarborGames several years ago. Claiming that experts, "Cannot [show you that online dice have been tested], and they are afraid to [test them]," is an odd statement, to say the least.

That said, I also understand that cheating at money games is as old gaming itself. The more money involved, the more likely it is that someone, be it player or house, will be lured by the temptation to cheat.

In the case of backgammon, I would say that you are more likely to be cheated online by an opponent who gets help from a bot than you are by the house. Poker players take heed. Now that PokerSnowie is available, it won't be long before someone figures out how to use it to cheat at online poker.

Mike