I think the lack of consequences is the real problem. I've encountered a lot of cheating and suspected cheating in the live poker realm. What I've been able to pick up on rarely if ever even involved technology. I've encountered marked cards, collusion with players signalling each other, skimming pots, mechanics setting decks, etc.

The only cheating I've suspected in a legitimate casino that involved technology was a potentially compromised deckmate 2.

Bottom line: the regulators and casino operators aren't doing anything to really deter cheating through long prison terms or the like.

It's time for the poker community to start breaking some cheaters' kneecaps (metaphorically of course ��).

Yea I'm with you. I mean we don't need new laws or anything. It's fraud isn't it, a felony. They are defrauding people. So you just need a prosectuor to do it. And if one is lazy or not paying attention, a casino can make one call and have that happen. These guys are currently just walking away with the money.

If it’s not affecting the rake these mother****ers don’t care.

You hit some good points but I’ll tweak some

Yes, even though technology has improved you are still 100x more likely to be cheated by other means. So why are the beads of sweat and dread suddenly coming over all of these 2+2ers?

Just play and protect yourself like you should have been doing from first hand you ever played.

That said, sure I’m down for no electronics on felt, but a ban on phone use would be silly save for big events, streams etc

Actually it is time for poker community to dish out justice. Except the onus is on person who was cheated and not the general community. Ex Alex Foxen thought Ali Imsorivic cheated, it’s not the duty of a random guy from Iowa to yell at Ali or pour a milkshake over his head. It’s up to Alex and anyone in his possee.

I thought of a few!

Of course the perps should be identified and prosecuted. But it's a 2 edged sword. The bad publicity fron prosecuting a cheating syndicate would do a lot of damage to any goodwill built in the live game.

I spent a few years recently at a company that sells a Bluetooth ring, the engineering necessary to have a CPU in the ring along with sensors abd enough battery to offer a decent battery life is insane. That said things get smaller all the time.

But currently the Bluetooth radios that can fit in rings has little range so phone needs to be very close. And any camera aperture would be fairly obvious on the ring. And the wearer needs to keep the ring pointing at where ever you want to observe. So it should be very obvious when someone with a huge honking ring is constantly moving it in the same pattern as cards are dealt, or holding it down on the felt to get a better angle.

Like I said things keep getting smaller, but I think there are a lot of problems in how you’d physically use a ring or a bracelet camera that make them really hard to work.

It was never true. That the cheating situation is bad online at stakes that matter.

You folks know that a hundred years ago poker was widely known as "the cheating game," right?

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=moral+panic

Well that solves it. Let the cheating continue!

People might have expected to be cheated but they also expected a found cheater to be punished harshly. Its an entirely different proposition to expect to be cheated and have none to little recourse.

Cheaters simply face too little punishment in the modern poker environment. Paul Phua should make an example out of this guy and have him disappeared, then maybe people would start getting wary again.

plus most regs are on their phones more than recs IMO

If you are cheated dish out your own recourse

There has never been a community to save you. The games are much safer than those played at Saloon #10 or a Mississippi steamboat but at end still on players to protect themselves and police

The point is back in the day you would very unlikely get harshly punished by the police if you shot a cheater in both knee caps or worse. These days you will, so unless you have some criminal connections already set up you cant really do anything about being cheated. Risking a lengthy jail sentence just to get revenge on someone who harmed you monetarily makes little sense. The judge wont see "but he cheated me in an illegal gambling venture!" as a mitigating factor.

no phones at tables seems a plausible rule. even before factoring in cheating implications, for privacy reasons i've always hated vloggers recording POV at the table. no one's consenting to appear on your stream

but if these camera and earpiece devices can be miniaturized to be completely undetectable, what conceivable fix is there without intense TSA-level body scans?

A cheater does not need to be "constantly moving" the device. Simply positioning it to pick up cards dealt to 1 or 2 players would be sufficient to win over a few hours time with virtually 100% certainty.

It also provides effective cover that the cheater is not winning every hand.

Main point is that onus is on you to protect yourself from being cheated in first place. There’s no community to save you.

Onus is on players to avoid rigged games, and report cheaters to the community so all can do likewise.

That’s fine and good. But last year random people were supposed to yell at Ali and Jake in halls at wsop because they might have cheated Steve Chidwick online.

Like some dude from Iowa there to play $300 Gladiator event needs to do that

I don't care about online cheating because nobody in their right mind should expect a fair online game.

One participating online has everything coming to them.

I agree with this 100%

Everyone knows there's cheating online and they weigh how much they care. "They deserve it" is such a lazy premise to arrive at. If I rob you, do you deserve it because you should know the city is dangerous? The onus is on the businesses running the games to police this stuff as it arises. Security and support has long been an imaginary job in many industries because of no real threats, but at some point you have to actually do the job description even though the challenges are the first you've faced. If casinos and home games and online sites can't clean up their games, then they should be liable for losses incurred. If you allow bots (online) and live tech/cheating teams (in person) to infiltrate the games, then you're not fit to host games. It goes back to the Casino quote where DeNiro is firing his staff : "Listen, if you didn't know you were being scammed you're too ****in' dumb to keep this job, if you did know, you were in on it. Either way, YOU'RE OUT! Get out. Go on, let's go"

Casinos are pretty clearly not in on it, but it's their ****in job. They spend millions of dollars a year on surveillance and security making sure players are not cheating the house, players cheating players needs to be as stringent.

It's like me blaming the skydiving tour company for my wife dying from a fall because I found out after the fact they did not have X-Y-Z precautions in place. Maybe I should have appropriately weighed that skydiving is an inherently risky endeavor and there is only so much the proprietor can do to remove the risks, even though they may be 100% at fault.

I don't look for risky outlets to make money. it's difficult enough making money legitimately. How much easier does it have to be for scammers to rig an online game?

IRT to casinos watching over games, we all know how their bread is buttered. Also, a point I posted earlier. No customers care if a Craps crew were caught rigging a game. Everybody knows they deserve all the punishment the state can muster. But expose a syndicate of poker cheats, suddenly the casino loses business because that could have been the potential customer who was cheated.

I bet Commerce is doing their best to subdue all the cheating rumors over there. But for them it probably does not matter all that much, Baccarat is their dominant money maker.

This is one of the stupidest posts ever on 2+2. In any event this thread is about cheating in live poker so please stop this online derail.