With online poker seeing a bit of a resurgence because of the Coronavirus pandemic, this would be a good time to check in with PokerStars and see how things are going with the tables filling up.
It wasn’t all that long ago that poker websites were being besieged with complaints of cheating by rogue players. There were in fact a small number of cheaters out there on the internet using cheating methods to take money away from unsuspecting poker players. It’s not a big number of people doing the cheating, but the numbers were big enough to have had an adverse impact on the business online pokers sites were used to seeing.
To the organization’s credit, PokerStars didn’t make excuses. They investigated cheating claims, found most of the cheaters, and took steps to make sure those rogue players would have to go ply their cheating efforts somewhere else.
PokerStars has also taken steps to protect problem gamblers by offering them access to self-exclusion programs like Gamstop. If players want to avoid sites not listed or registered on Gamstop, they have that option.
What Has PokerStars Done to Stem the Tide of Cheating?
When money is put on the table, there will always be people who want to take that money unfairly. The methods pokers players were using back in the day are the same ones they are trying to use today. We are talking about multiple players colluding at a single table to take down the unsuspecting players who believe they are participating in a fair game. There is even software out there that allows rogue players to shadow the hands of other players at the table. It’s easy to win when you know what’s in the other player’s hands.
In an effort to clean up the cheating, PokerStars has invested tens of millions of dollars making sure its games stay clean. We are talking about an online poker website that claims to have dealt over 200 billion hands of poker since its inception 19 years ago. While it’s possible to argue the size of that number, there’s little doubt PokerStars is the largest online poker provider in the world. With the amount of money that crosses the company’s tables and the revenue that money generates, PokerStars has a responsibility to make sure everything is fair.
To that end, the company currently employs of 60 programmers, analysts, and ex-professional poker players whose only job responsibility is to monitor the poker playing activities that are taking place across the company’s vast network of online poker players. These experts form what PokerStars’ management refers to as its integrity team. These individuals are charged with using sophisticated algorithms and supercomputers to analyze every hand that is being played.
What they are looking for are game-playing and betting irregularities that could be indicative of foul play. These dedicated individuals are doing this year-round 24/7. When they catch someone cheating, the cheater is immediately confronted and banned from having access to the PokerStars platform. In some cases, the cheating player’s monies are confiscated. Assuming other online poker websites are using similar methods to prevent cheating, the current resurgence of poker business offers online poker providers with an opportunity to remove their black marks from the past. Today, it looks like online pokers players can play with confidence, knowing poker websites like PokerStars have their collective backs.
