Online poker can be great fun, and with a little expertise, it can bring in big money, and lead to trips to Vegas, Poker Cruises and Championships with fame and celebrity attached.

With poker championships now broadcast worldwide on TV, poker is becoming a hugely recognised game of skill and chance, and unlike snooker or many other financially lucrative games, with Poker, you can start at home in your bedroom on your own computer. The stakes have never been so high!

Unfortunately, when there is so much money to be made, some people will always try to find loopholes in the system, and naturally the underworld takes notice. Thus the online poker industry fights a daily battle against cheaters, hackers and con men.
Many hardcore players simply play several games at one time, which is completely acceptable, but others fall into temptation of multiple accounts, ghosting and account flipping.

First and Foremost, online security takes precedence for all major online poker sites, and cash wise, transactions are secured with 128 bit encryption provided by the major credit companies worldwide. While the accounts are secure, the games themselves need to be secure too; while some poker sites use real dealers online within a place of employment, others use secure artificial intelligence, that is accredited and tested by the appropriate regulating bodies to ensure that performance is truly random.

Pacific Poker uses the trusted MD5 RNG, which provides absolutely random results. The system has been rigorously tested by running millions of rounds and examining results. The system is also systematically tested and accredited by regulating government bodies in each country the games are played.

However, certain loopholes have been exploited by completely legal and credible companies, offering “Software Companions” or “Poker Buddies” which can offer statistical analysis of a poker game, some even reading your cards, offering advice and detailed analysis of the opponent’s actions.

The poker industry is aware of this; many poker sites have been cracking down on these programs that try to read cards, using programs to detect this software, and henceforth, not paying the customers who won money using them.  They also change there online poker software frequently which can cause the programs to crash.

Ghosting however, is similar in a way where in a game of online poker, a player has other experienced players sitting in the same room with him, or has contact with other online players via MSN Messenger, or Team speak. In this way a player has a wealth of experience at his disposal, and will inevitably be a formidable force to recon with. In the same way, using software that does not directly interact with the Poker Software used in the game could be used to get a statistical analysis of the game, this could even be run on a separate computer to avoid detection.

Tomorrow we will look at multiple accounts, account “flipping” and see what motivates people to take such dangerous and nefarious risks.