If Governments Refuse to Regulate the Industry, Online Poker Players Must Demand It

In the wake of another major scandal involving online poker many of us are coming to the realization that the game needs to be cleaned up. While cheating and unethical behavior are far from rampant in the online poker world, there have been enough incidents that it’s time to hold the online poker sites -and their massive profits-feet to the fire.

First off, with no regulatory agency to answer to, it’s crystal clear that it’s in any online poker site’s best interests to sweep any type of allegations under the rug -We saw this very behavior in both the Absolute Poker and UB Poker “Super-User” scandals. Yet these are our sole recourse as online poker players, basically the online poker sites act as both defendants/accomplices and judges.

There has to be an independent third-party security team in place. Why couldn’t the online poker sites send their hand histories to such an investigation team by assigning each player a random number and eliminating the stakes from the tables in their hand histories. This way the investigators would not be privy to who the players are, but could simply look for collusion amongst them: Perhaps player #4563298 always plays with player #9800456 and their HH’s reveal collusion. This would eliminate any chance of witch hunts or a focus (lack of focus) on certain games.

These third-party investigators could run the HH’s through a computer program that looks for certain red flags, and then follow up on any leads.

The second thing I would like to see cleaned up is the underage poker players. The main reason I’m against anyone under the age of 21 playing online poker is that these are the people most likely to make bad decisions, and get caught up in something that is over their head. The vast majority of teenagers don’t have the life experience to know when they have crossed the line ethically, and don’t have the moral compass to realize the long-term effects of cheating. Face it, if you approached ten 15 year-olds and tell them you’ll pay them $250/week to play online poker and collude with you, I would bet that five out of 10 saying yes is a very conservative estimate. And once they are caught up in something of this sort it will be hard for them to walk away.

Kids are also more likely to be influenced by, and copycat, things like Brian Townsend or Nick Grudzien multi-accounting. These types of players are these kids’ role models and if they do it…

Finally, I’d like to see the anonymity of online poker stripped away. I touched upon this in my poker blog piece, and I really think it’s time to have a transparent online poker game. You are not giving anything damaging away by revealing your name, or letting an online poker site keep your license/passport/ID card on file.

This will not only make the game more transparent, but will also work towards eliminating multi-accounting and underage poker players. As I said in my blog, either force players to use a screen-name that incorporates their First and Last name -[First Name “Screen-name” Last Name] or have a database with every screen-name’s true identity. I can’t see how this would be divulging too much information.

In previous articles I’ve also advocated eliminating the nosebleed stakes tables and all third-party software like Holdem Manager and Poker Tracker. I think this is the only way to provide a fair and balanced online poker experience for everyone.

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