Is Online Poker a Scam?
Today I take on my newest Scam-Busters question…Is Online Poker a Scam?
I’ve recently tried online poker at Full Tilt Poker. Full Tilt was suggested to me by a “poker guy” that I know, and who I believe plays quite a bit. He told me that if I “bought” $250 of online chips at Full Tilt Poker, that I would receive “matching chips” worth $250.00 SEEMED TO ME LIKE A PRETTY GOOD DEAL!
IT WASN’T, UNFORTUNATLY FOR ME.
I dropped the $250 that I had paid for pretty quickly…probably stupid to try to learn Texas Hold Um with real money on the internet…but I felt OK about it because of my $250 “Bonus Bucks” from Full Tilt.
APPEARANTLY, I didn’t read the Full Tilt “fine print” well enough. When I tried to access the Bonus Matching Dollars on my account…there wasn’t $250 there…there was about $6.
To this day I don’t know why my matching funds were not available, but I think it had something to do with the fact that I didn’t play long enough, AKA I LOST TOO FAST!
HERE IS WHAT I LEARNED: Read the fine print, don’t lose your money very quickly and don’t waste your time trying to fine a customer service phone number for Full Tilt Poker.
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May 24th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Its not only poker, its applicable every where.
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May 25th, 2010 at 1:47 am
Brandon,
I don’t play on Full Tilt, but I’m sure it’s the same as the online sites that I play on … those matching bonuses are usually tied to something called “frequent player points” … which you earn based on how much time/at what levels you are at the tables.
Realistically though, I’d say that your biggest mistake wasn’t necessarily not reading the fine print … it was trying to “learn” Texas Hold ‘em with real money.
Here’s a hint for you … all of these poker sites have a .net version that is just play money … That is the place to learn the game. And even then, you are probably still correct in your realization that once you switch to real money, your continuing “education” will still probably cost you a few bucks.
Bottom line, online poker is not a scam. But, it is a game of sharks and fish …
And in this case, it sounds like you were the fish.
Todd
p.s. you can still earn the rest of that bonus money, if you make another deposit … it’ll just take a while. I’d suggest playing the .02/.04 or at most the .05/.10 tables while you’re still learning.
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May 26th, 2010 at 2:32 am
Man, never try to learn poker playing with that kind of money, especially online. There are many weird rules when you pay for poker and do certain things. That’s why I only play for free online and take my money to the casino, where I at least trust the dealers, if not always the players. lol
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May 26th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
Well that sucks! It shouldn’t matter how fast you lose your money, if you were promised $250 then that is what you should have, anything is a rip off fine print or not.
Pretty dumb on their part because now they lost more than one potential customer.
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May 27th, 2010 at 2:02 am
That is what you get for blowing your hard earned cash
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May 27th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Unfortunately in all forms of gambling there are people who are good at it,and people who are bad at it,poker is simply no different.
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May 30th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Good poker arthicle, it has a really good content, in my opinion the only thing it lacks of is a tranlate tool! Also see mine at http://www.bestpokernodepositbonus.blogspot.com it has some good content like this but it talks about free poker bankrolls!And leave your opinion there like I did here of flaws and good things that it has!
Keep up the hard work!
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May 31st, 2010 at 6:04 pm
I would like to setup a blog like this. Any chance you could email me the webmaster’s info?
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Pete Reply:
August 20th, 2010 at 5:32 am
They are so con-vincing that they are honest. I have played for free/real money and here is the best part, on every poker site on the net. if you make 1 cash-out they all message each other and after that you are highlited for all of them to see. Why the bonus system to suck you in, cannot do that live anywhere. If you play online play for free and if you are wanting to be a pro online is the game, So practise live for $20.00 at your local casino, the players are helpfull if you are new to the game
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June 1st, 2010 at 11:57 am
I am very wary of online casinos and poker and the like. The nature of the game is that it is slanted in favour to the house, and given half the chance to cheat with electronic shennanigans, they will do so….
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June 1st, 2010 at 1:14 pm
I don’t know. I used to go to partypoker web site and play and people always accused others of “scanning” and cheating.
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June 1st, 2010 at 2:20 pm
I have played on all the major sites and I’m pretty sure they’re rigged. I’m not an amateur and have played hold em for a few years now. At sites like interpoker, full tilt, bodog,cd poker, players always bet with crappy hands and get lucky everytime with big pots.
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igglez Reply:
March 21st, 2011 at 7:22 pm
no doubt about it, its not the hands where the guy actually has outs and wins, its the guy who was playing tight and theen all of a sudden calls a pot sized bet with, what you come to find at showdown, absolutely nothig. no draws no pairs, but magically hits runner, runner, then goes back to playing tight.
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June 3rd, 2010 at 4:24 am
I cannot imagine playing poker online. I certainly don’t know if Full Tilt Poker is a scam but the ability for online sites to skew the odds is just to easy and unknowable from the players perspective. It just isn’t worth the risk. – Of course that can be said of any gambling.
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June 10th, 2010 at 8:19 am
I think the desired epokar seen a very good thing. You can play from time to time and it is not bad for me.
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June 17th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Our states sell billions of dollars worth of gambling lottery tickets and scratch tickets every month while poker rides the fringes of the internet, relegated to a black market where fuck heads have finally begun to do what anyone allowed so much power would do in such a situation.
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June 23rd, 2010 at 12:58 am
You should start your poker carrier from the beginning, on tables with no real money games…
And about the “bonus”, it is like you said, read carefuly fine prints because there are many circumstances to fulfill.
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June 24th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Sounds like a hard learned lesson, and a scam – especially since you have no idea why you didn’t receive the matching “dollars”. I imagine many people have lost rather quickly as well.
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July 1st, 2010 at 6:11 am
Its just ALL the online poker sites conspire to steal my $20 to make themselves profitable…..LOL
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July 6th, 2010 at 3:13 am
What sucks about playing poker online is that if you are in a tournament the odds are not in your favor unless you are putting down a lot of money. Especialy when there are rebuys. The winners usually go all in for a coule of the first 5-10 hands trying to get a quick advantage over the rest of the field. Poker isn’t a scam, it is poker.
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peewee Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 2:22 pm
pure scam 100% fixed hands.the money just keeps going in a big circle till its all raked up by the site,
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July 8th, 2010 at 10:54 am
You definitely have to read the fine print, I experienced something similar to this, but it was actually at a real casino, turns out you could not cash out the free money they gave you =( But it was merely used as “credits”.
Till then,
Jean
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July 8th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
You should read the fine prints but if you are really good at poker you can make big money. I know people who makes 1000s playing online poker.
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July 10th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
In order to get the bonus matching money you have to play a set number of raked hands. Rake is the money that full tilt takes from each pot after a completed hand. Most of the time its 5x the amount of money you’re set to match, so 250 bucks would have required 1250 raked hands.
Shoulda learned at a limit table, if you’re dtermined you can do it though, I’ve made plenty of money whoring bonuses.
Samuel Smitherss last blog post..rnrn403 ForbiddenrnrnForbiddenrnYou don’t have permission to access /commentluvinc/remoteCL5.php?type=single&url=http://www.arkseoservices.com&encode=UTF-8rnon this server.
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August 2nd, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Damn… that’s never good!
I guess poker is never going to be a money-making scheme for most as we know the only winners are the Casio owners – virtual or in real life.
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August 12th, 2010 at 7:04 am
OnlinePokerisAJoke OnlinePokerisAJoke
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September 16th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
I agree with what you said, you have a good point
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November 13th, 2010 at 10:25 am
I have a lot of friends that play online poker a lot lately and so far their experiences have been positive. Some have never even played poker before. They make a decent amount of money too. I have been tempted to start playing too but I can’t afford to gamble now.
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peewee Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 2:24 pm
they havent even played poker before an they do good ? wow that should tell a real poker played something right there lmao.
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December 26th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
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February 9th, 2011 at 5:41 am
Here’s the lowdown about online poker…. First off I’m going to tell u that online poker is a business. With all businesses they need to attract customers in order to make money. Now, where does online poker make its money? They certainly don’t make money on the casual person who is playing for free and learning. They make money on the people who play for real money, just like the brick and mortar casinos. The difference between online and real poker is that online has the ability to control who wins and the casinos don’t. Here’s how it goes… when u first sign up at any of the online sites and start to play on the free tables for the first two weeks you will generally hit your hands no matter how good or bad you are. This is especially true in any of the free trourneys. You see the goal of the online site is to get you to think you actually know what your doing so that you deposit your hard earned money with them and play on the real money tables. That’s why if your actually an accomplished player and are playing on there free tourney tables you will notice all the donks and bad beats happening on the turn and river. There’s no difference what site your on…. the all run two different computer programs. One is for the free tables and the other is for the real money tables and guess which one that they have their own so called neutral company verify! This is just the short version of the truth, my advise is as follows. If you really want to learn how to play poker than by all means use the online free tables and read Doyles Brunson, Daniel Negrano, and Dan Harrington’s books about poker. Once you feel comfortable than take $100.00 and go to your local casino and sit down at a 1/2 or 1/3 no limit table and practice with patience what you’ve learned. Good luck….
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February 10th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Great. This is very usefull post. I will remember it.
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February 12th, 2011 at 9:56 am
I started with 1,500 chips on Full Tilt 6 months ago. Knew the basics, but not strategy. Now I have over 126,000 chips (I wish they were dollars). These are sit-n-go with 9 player tournaments, not cash games.
I dicovered some facts about the software. I was a software developer for over 20 years, so I knew there is no perfect software that can emulate a real deck shuffle and deal of hands. It’s all based on a random number generator that has to be “seeded” to start the ball rolling to generate random numbers.
The games are as realistic as you can get, except for the following:
1. There’s no way in God’s green earth you can have a quad (4 of a kind) twice within three hands. The odds are astronomical, yet I’ve seen it too often. One time I was dealt a straight flush on a flop, and when I slow played it, everyone folded. Where is the justice?
2. Whenever I start winning pots, I start getting better and better pocket cards and flops.
3. My strategy is to wait for the newbies to knock each other out, and when there are only 3-4 players left, I get in on the action.
4. When I see someone win, I know their next pocket cards are good, so I only call with better than average pocket cards.
5. My strategy allows me to win (come in 3rd, 2nd or 1st)about 80% of the time. Even 3rd place gives you chips.
The major issue with free games is the players have nothing to loose and often go all in pre-flop. If they get knocked out, so what? They lost nothing.
When you bet with play money, your betting strategy is almost non-esistant because there’s nothing to loose. If you get wiped out, all you do is get 1,500 more chips and continue playing.
Best to practice with real money and only money you can afford to loose, then go to your local casino to play for serious money.
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peewee Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 2:32 pm
i floped quads aces my mouth was watering. had a guy wanting to raise i about fell out of my chair.1/2 nl.well to make a long story short i lost a 400 dollor pot. guy runners a royal flush.
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February 20th, 2011 at 10:01 pm
All on line sites use an algorithm to speed up games and maximize rake for the site. The only time you probably will not see this would be the high exposure games. Bottom line the only true game is a live game , all this online stuff is basically BS . Playing online is fantastic if you are learning the game just don’t expect to win in the long run. The one exception would be the WPT online site – they do not take a rake and have no reason to use a programming algorithm. This is the only legal site in the USA because you pay a monthly membership fee to play. The main draw back – other than winning a 10 k seat to a WPT tourney or a Boot Camp there is little money to win.
The first deposit bonus that these sites use are useless unless you play tens of thousands of hands within the bonus period to get the maximum bonus. I played stars frequently for 6 months and only picked up $100 out of a possible $600.
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peewee Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 2:35 pm
dont fool yourself there not paying out all that money every month. try finding the guy thats won the big tourments there. ya theres a winner every month the site.
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February 23rd, 2011 at 9:44 pm
Pokersites are defenatly rigged
See these link and find 100dreds more yourself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yae2NJz8VSQ&feature=fvsr
http://www.fuckpokerstars.com/
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February 28th, 2011 at 7:53 am
The problem here is not just the ability of some to cheat online but also the ability of the website to cheat almost everyone.The validity of online poker is predicated on the notion that the hands dealt are as random as if it were a real deck being used. That’s a lie at face value. Why? Because there is no such thing a random computer PROGRAM. Hence the word “PROGRAM”. A random program would be free thinking and thus it would be considered artificial intelligence which only exists in movies.That same premise was proven long ago with regards to slot machines which were once touted by casinos as being random chance.However, the first big time slot cheats were mechanical and mathematics professionals who figured the algorithms of certain slot machines and took them hard.Online poker is not much different.Enough analysis and you could probably calculate the odds of winning on the river, amongst other possibilities during a hand, on certain hands fairly accurately.I got beat by a straight flush on the river just 5 mins ago.I even called it to a friend. “Watch, the 8 of diamonds will hit on the river”.LOL.Sure enough.That’s the second straight flush on the river to which I’ve lost in the last 3 times I’ve played.Furthermore, almost everytime I lose my last dollar it’s on a bad river beat.It never fails, lol. Random?The number of K/7 hands I’ve received on FullTilt is astronomical.Why?I actually considered it my lucky hand and probably played it frequently just after registering with FullTilt.So?Now the “random program” deals me that hand for the purpose of enticing me to play the hand and, of course, lose more often than win.It’s a scam guys.Those of you who win are the “random” lucky ones.
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February 28th, 2011 at 7:59 am
The nature of the professional players and men and women who founded all these sites is to take people’s money. It’s a scam and a half. Nobody can say that real card hands play out anything like online hands with any kind of similar or common frequency.
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April 9th, 2011 at 12:00 am
read this, it says enough.. I also noticed alot of scam when i switched from fun to real…
http://www.complaintsboard.com/?search=online+poker&everything=Everything
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April 16th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
I love the way your write! Will come back again
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April 17th, 2011 at 5:08 pm
All our problems are solved by the forever nanny US Goverment. They locked down Poker Star, Full Tilt Poker and many other play for money sites this weekend 4/15/2011.
The free play is still alive so you can get your poker fix tthere until the Government decides to release them.
I agree with the bad beats Eric experienced. I had the same problem: got an A high flush on the river, and guess what the other player had? Right! A straight flush with the same river card!! What are the odds?? Million to one!
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April 27th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
I put 100 dollars in Full Tilt. I played for a year befoe i went broke. I thought it was cheap entertainment My hundred is gone but I had a hell of a good time. I hope the powers that be will let poker start up again, maybe I’ll blow another 100.
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June 2nd, 2011 at 5:54 am
I know the problem, you didn’t get your full $250 because you lost too early, i have being playing poker online for a while. You should always practice poker free, before going playing on the high stake tables. It helps you to know the rules of the game and how to gain your confidence.
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June 11th, 2011 at 9:08 am
I play online ( fake and real money).I just started playing real money online 2 days ago.I am playing the penny tables and i played a s&go tourney the other day. I placed 8th in the tourney (out of 18).I really want to become a better player. Any tips? Any books to read? Any general recommendations for a beginning poker player?Thanks everyone for the feedback, i am sure it will help me out.
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June 11th, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Like anything else in life, practice is the only way to learn. Like sex, you can read all about it, but until you do it, you’ll never know how its going to turn out.
I read many poker books and haven’t learned much because I was never in the situations they described.
Forget on line playing even for pennies because it’s never the same as real live poker. Once you get into the habit of on-line poker and then play live, you will find all the skill you have will not work. Find a club, casino or a group of buddies where you use a real deck.
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June 23rd, 2011 at 3:54 pm
So ive been playing poker for quite some time now, on my phone at live hold’em, side games with friends and so on, i want to get online line and put some money on the line, and ive noticed that you can no longer play with real money on full tilt what are some of the better sites to play with real money?
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July 26th, 2011 at 6:04 am
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August 15th, 2011 at 10:36 pm
not, online poker is not scam.
As with all types of businesses there are good companies and bad companies.
There’s always people who want to take advantage of business and end up hurting a market that generates billions of dollars in negocios.Existem serious people and sites responsible
PokerStars and Party Poker are great examples of sites completely reliable.
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August 24th, 2011 at 3:36 pm
I live in South Africa several poker sites are paying us $8.5
ph to KEEP tables open and up the rake.Huge business here!!
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August 25th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
I would not agree that poker is scam. It depends on the online casino sites if the sites is scam then you can say poker is scam.
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October 18th, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Cake Poker is as rigged as they come. I won a tournament on there with my first deposit ( made 800 bucks) it was awsome, but over the next 3 nights while playing on only 2 tables for no more then 4 hours each night. I was dealt 73,17 out draws(straight/flush draws)out of 73 (60%favorites) I only hit 3 flushes, but I lost all 3 times to a bigger flush,lol. that was awsome. POINT IS, right after I won a tourny, I was dealt 73, 17 out draws, I hit 3 for 73, and those 3 still got beat… Now even better then that, I was 2-9 with Aces, 1-14 with KK,0-12 with QQ, and 1-16 with trips. Now if that doesnt spell a site that sucks back your winnings so you cant cash out, then you cant ffing read.
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October 18th, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Oh and as for your rakeback, it works, you do get some of your rake back… but as soon as i did, I bought in thinking i could make a run again. i was wrong, I was rivered each of the 5 hands I played and my rake back was gone…
Cake Poker again not wanting you to benefit from there programs, or cash out… It is rigged folks, just like slot machines. some win, but most lose, online poker is 99% Luck i would say… while playing in the casinos is more around 50%.
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