Bodog releases software update to prevent collusion

Bodog Poker

One of the biggest fears when Bodog first announced it would be making all of its online poker tables “anonymous” was how the site would be able to catch colluders and prevent people from using poker bots – considering there is no way to track players over a large number of hands since they are assigned a random number every time they play at Bodog.

Anonymous tables have been a hotly debated issue in the poker world over the past few years, with players coming down on both sides of the issue. On the one hand, Anonymous Tables protect casual poker players from professional players who use any number of third-party software to track a player’s skill and tendencies. On the other hand, Anonymous Tables seem like an invitation for collusion and poker bots, and it’s this last argument that Bodog sought to address with their latest software upgrade.

Earlier this year Bodog tried to alleviate these concerns by announcing that they would make all hand histories available to players with EVERY hole card shown -which wouldn’t be a problem for the same reasons that players were concerned about collusion in the first place. On Thursday Bodog announced that their new software update (which is now available) would include the Hand History function, which makes all hand histories, with hole-cards, available 24-hours after the hand was played.

In a press release, Jonas Odman, VP of the Bodog Poker Network, stated: “The fact that we can now offer players this information is another advantage of our anonymous tables and something nobody else can offer. Collusion is a natural concern for any poker room but this new additional feature puts the player in full control. This makes the Bodog Poker Network the fairest place to play poker online in the world.”

Bodog has been staunchly defending their Recreational Poker Model, which focuses on bringing in new, casual, poker players instead of rewarding high-volume, high-stakes, poker players; a segment of the poker world that most other online poker rooms currently cater to.

So far Bodog’s business plan seems to be paying off. Despite Black Friday and recent legal issues involving Bodog founder Calvin Ayre the site has seen traffic steadily rise, although it’s hard to get a fair read on the site’s actual traffic numbers because of the new anonymous tables.