Is Online Poker Safe?

The first questions any live poker players ask of the internet version of the game rightly concerns safety. This article covers the three frequently asked questions in this area, providing you information with which to make an informed decision. These concern the randomness of the deal, the risk of being cheated by bots or online collusion and security of your deposits and withdrawals.

Is Online Poker Safe? #1 – The ‘Is Online Poker Rigged’ Debate

Reading forums around the internet you might mistakenly assume that there is a major problem with random card dealing in online poker. Every day a new player who lost a couple of buy-ins to a 70% / 30% beat, yet does not clearly understand the concept of variance, will be kicking up a fuss somewhere online.

We will not even enter the debate about ‘letting new people win then doom-switching then later’ as this is a little too crazy. The argument that the rooms might make the deal non-random is also a little insane – these businesses are making millions of dollars a week in many cases, why on earth would they risk losing it all by trying to squeeze out a few more dollars??!

Evidence that the deal is fair comes in the form of the sheer number of hands played, and the massive volume (we are talking billions of hands) of data collected by both individuals via their poker tracking software and businesses who specialize in data services. The word of a teenager who is upset that someone hit a 4-outer vs billions of hands worth of data – which would you believe?

Is Online Poker Safe? #2 – Bots And Colluders

Bots refer to software programs which are designed to take money from unwary online poker players. While these have cropped up in online poker from time to time the good news is that they are very quickly detected and removed. What is more they can only actually beat the lowest limits anyway. While this remains a concern for the future, the consensus in the poker business is that these are currently very limited and – even if not immediately spotted by the poker site’s security systems – can not actually beat games above the micro-limits anyway!

Colluders are unfortunately more of a problem, these are usually enterprising individuals chatting on IM while playing rather than organized groups. Once again the sheer amount of data available makes it easy to spot particular users who play unusually against each other (chip dumping or trying to squeeze more bets with strange raising patterns). If you spot something suspicious most of the major sites will take this very seriously and investigate fully. Our opinion is that these players are usually amateur and so caught very fast and not something to be overly worried about.

Is Online Poker Safe? #3 – Deposits And Money Transfers

Depositing and withdrawing money from online poker sites is as safe as any other secure internet transaction – as long as you take the same sensible precautions. We recommend that by sticking to a well know site and ensuring you do not perform transactions on public computers there should be no problem at all. For those who prefer an additional layer of security, it is possible to use both electronic wallet services or pre-paid cards for poker deposits too. See our guide to the best poker deposit methods for more information.

Money transfers between players are often a source of problems. There are active scammers on forums and in the chat of poker sites requesting transfers, please ensure you ignore them however plausible their story sounds. Anyone asking for poker site transfers in exchange for PayPal is almost certainly a scammer – deal with them at your own risk.

Our Verdict: Online Poker is safe, as long as you take sensible precautions and stick to the best known and reputable sites. See our list of the best online poker sites for details of the top 10 known and trusted brands.

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