I forgot to tell you about this...

Okay, I know that some poker sites have been shady in the past. In fact, today, some sites are not ran well...but it is a TREMENDOUS risk for any site to do some of the things that player contend that they do. I'll get to that in a second...

Anyhow, I'm sitting at the table with a guy that by all accounts seems like your everyday average poker player. Then he starts talking conspiracy...

He says that while playing on Stars, he can tell when someone has a special piece of software that changes the river card to their advantage. Evidently, this software can tell what cards the other players have, and if the river card is NOT in their hands, it can change it. I've actually heard of this, on sale, for something like 39.95 somewhere. In fact, he mentioned that he saw it for sale somewhere himself.

I laughed a little, but he didn't see. I thought maybe he was joking, but he was dead serious. He said, "When I see that bullshit happening, I just get off. You have to watch Stars man."

Wow.

Anyhow, someone asked him what limit he was playing, and he was playing a lower limit. I didn't say anything because you can't say anything to brainwashed people, but let's just look at the logic here.

1st, how? How do you write a piece of software that will hack into a multi-million (if not more) dollar company's servers without being detected, and change information? The Pokerstars client that we run on our PC is basically like a picture viewer that receives pictures every few moments. Their servers send us pictures of the actions of the others. It then waits for us to make an action....and we can only do specific actions...the servers at Stars WON'T ACCEPT A .EXE FILE as one of your options!!! Anyhow, I think it's possible someone could write such a program because there are some VERY intelligent people out there....BUT...

Why would they play lower limits? If I were smart enough to even write this program, I'm not even sure I would even mess with something as piddly as an online poker site. But, IF I DID, I would make sure I was winning on very high levels. Period. And, don't tell me that it would be easier to detect on higher levels because they monitor those more....they monitor EVERYTHING. It's their servers, and their livelihood, nothing goes unmonitored.

Plus, you wouldn't sell the freaking program to ANYONE for a small price (if you sold it at all). There just is no logic behind this type of thinking. And, it's painful because it chases away the fish that I like to collect from on Stars. If they think people are changing the river cards, they won't play there.

Lastly, sites do not juice their action by changing cards, or giving one player better cards than others. They make SO MUCH money, and people keep SO MANY statistics on their hands that they KNOW they would be jeopardizing a billion dollar operation to make a few extra bucks.