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community weblog
Yes, online poker has been compromised too
There's a dirty "secret" about online poker. Serious collusion issues. These collusions are done by bots. Many of these bot farms are in Russia. And in the beginning of this video is a 30 second clip of dozens of synced laptops cheating real players out of their money.
posted by anoldfriend6 on Oct 21, 2026 at 7:56 PM
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1832.
On a Mississippi steamboat, four men were playing poker, three of whom were professional gamblers, and the fourth, a hapless traveler from Natchez. Soon, the young, naïve man had lost all his money to the rigged game. Devastated, the Natchez man planned to throw himself into the river; however, an observer prevented his suicide attempt and then joined the card game with the "sharps." In the middle of a high-stakes hand, the stranger caught one of the professionals cheating and pulled a knife on the gambler, yelling, "Show your hand! If it contains more than five cards, I shall kill you!" Six cards fell to the table when he twisted the cheater's wrist. Immediately, the stranger took the $70,000 pot, returning $50,000 to the Natchez man and keeping $20,000 for his trouble. Shocked, the Natchez man stuttered, "Who the devil are you, anyway?" to which the stranger responded, "I am James Bowie."
posted by clavdivs at 8:20 PM
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This has been going on for a long time in one way or another. I remember meeting a guy who made his money being three players at a four player online poker table around 20 years ago.
posted by Very Much A Work In Progress at 8:24 PM
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Is nothing sacred?
posted by ocschwar at 8:27 PM
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nothing gold can stay....
posted by drewbage1847 at 8:29 PM
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to which the stranger responded, "I am James Bowie."
And then everyone clapped!
No need to mythologize asshole slave traders with bullshit anecdotes. The mobsters running the steamboat would have "dealt" with someone pulling a knife at a table and exposing their (adjusted for inflation) $million poker table scam.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 8:52 PM
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I found it duboius at best as his children and wife died that year, the Nacogdoches Revolt, so remeber the Alamo, Christ, what an asshole.
posted by clavdivs at 9:08 PM
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James Bowie famously never played online poker.
Davy Crockett, on the other hand...
posted by chasing at 10:01 PM
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Well, what's the solution to this specific laptop empire. A lesson from fiction?
October, 1879 at Mason City, Kansas
Bat stops on his way to Dodge City at the Carson Saloon. He runs into an old friend Ellie Winters and watches a player Ken Wills arrested for claiming a dealer in a poker game was crooked. Bat learns from Ellie and the bartender that all the games in town are crooked. The dealers are all members of a protection racket where they pay Sheriff Jeb Crater. Bat buys a dealers' license to start an honest game but when he refuses to pay up, Bat is accused of cheating himself and thrown in jail. While incarcerated he teaches Willis how to beat the dealers at their own game. Bat is banned from playing cards but he makes an agreement with Willis to watch and help him for a fifty-fifty split. Bat taps his cane on the floor when he sees cheating. Willis is so successful that the sheriff hires a man to replace Bat's real cane with one filled with blasting powder."
Right, going to see Barry Manilow.
posted by clavdivs at 11:51 PM
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Gambling is a process whereby you give your money willingly to very rich people in return for nothing at all.
posted by Grangousier at 1:11 AM
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"I am James Bowie."
The Natchez man responded "Oh, is that how you say it?"
posted by biffa at 2:35 AM
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...why would you gamble actual money online, I nearly typed in, before reflecting on the past quarter century.
posted by mittens at 2:40 AM
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I am shocked, shocked etc.
posted by Johnny Assay at 3:56 AM
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The clip of the robo-poker den reminds me how little I understand the hustle-culture, get-rich-at-all-costs bro mentality.
I mean, I understand the appeal of engineering a clever solution to a technical problem.
What I don't understand is the ability to treat it as nothing but a technical problem. To be unbothered by the fact that you're scamming people.
To decide that this is going to be your livelihood. Not contributing anything to society. Just finding and exploiting a loophole. (And they probably think they're the smart ones for doing so.)
See also: crypto, NFTs, a lot of LLM culture, etc.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 4:12 AM
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The fucked up thing about this is that poker is one of feeeew gambling games you can win in the long term. Providing that you're good at it! The other way is through advantage play. Again, provided that you're good at it. And I've heard there's a TON of competition though.
When people play poker they're playing against other people and not the house. The house does take a "rake", but the rake can be beaten because it's usually just a small percentage of the pot. I've never trusted online poker, and always played live. But people (including two friends of mine) were paying their rents playing online poker in their living rooms until the poker Black Friday came. One of those friends actually moved to Canada for a few years to continue his career.
A wild one was certain American players from Two Plus Two sending random people money in the Philippines via Western Union so they could continue playing online poker after Black Friday.
posted by anoldfriend6 at 4:48 AM
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Oh, and here's a book recommendation if you want to read more about gambling in the 1800s. 40 Years A Gambler on the Mississippi
Hopefully the people in that book did not involve slave traders....
posted by anoldfriend6 at 4:57 AM
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"Show your hand! If it contains more than five cards, I shall kill you!"
Did that guy even know how to play poker?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:38 AM
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Gambling is a process whereby you give your money willingly to very rich people in return for nothing at all.
See also: the more recent gambling industry we call "the stock market."
I've made the comment before that people would be better off taking their 401k money to casinos instead of "investing it" with non-fiduciary brokers. At least casinos have laws that restrict how much lying and cheating they can do, they operate in an organized and methodical manner, and are mandated to return a specific amount of money.
posted by furiouscupcake at 6:22 AM
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> See also: the more recent gambling industry we call "the stock market."
I wish people would stop saying this. Yes, people can and do gamble on the stock market like they would in a casino and some apps even encourage this, but the markets themselves are run along very different lines for very different purposes than casinos.
I'm not claiming that there aren't risks in investing but conflating that with casino games is not useful.
posted by AndrewStephens at 7:14 AM
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Maybe you could explain how Musk and the S&P recent shenanigans with the SpaceX IPO - reducing the time and share issue percentages before SpaceX shares were automatically added to stock indexes and thus subject to immediate purchase by index ETFs and pension funds are anything different from a shady house rigging a casino?
posted by tracksetter at 7:26 AM
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Oh, don't get me started on that but it's happening out in the open. Musk is throwing his weight around but individuals can avoid Tesla shenanigans if they want to.
Outright fraud, which is what this article is taking about, is rare in the stock market. The big scandals are famous because they are uncommon.
posted by AndrewStephens at 7:35 AM
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Maybe you could explain how Musk and the S&P recent shenanigans with the SpaceX IPO
Well the easiest answer is that never happened. S& P500 being the adult in the room, declined Musks invitation to fast track inclusion.
posted by pwnguin at 8:15 AM
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I worked at the world's largest online casino at the beginning of the 2000s. The poker games, where people played other people, were the only ones I can say were actually trustworthy. I guess that's no longer the case.
posted by jordantwodelta at 8:39 AM
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"A wild one was certain American players from Two Plus Two sending random people money in the Philippines via Western Union so they could continue playing online poker after Black Friday."
We were based in Antigua, and had one of the sketchiest Western Union schemes you can imagine setup to accomplish exactly this. Well before Black Friday, however.
posted by jordantwodelta at 8:43 AM
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very different purposes than casinos
Fair point about the markets. In theory. In practice, the people selling them to regular folks didn't get the memo. Robinhood is a good example. It paid the SEC $65 million for misleading customers, and now it's tangled up in lawsuits over whether its sports "event contracts" are investments or just sports betting with a brokerage logo. Meanwhile, its prediction market revenue is up more than 10x in a year. That's a fantastic return... for Robinhood. Its financial customers are doing about as well as their day trader customers, 97% of whom lost money if they kept at it for a year.
It's all the same gambling. The house just has different doors for collecting the cash.
posted by furiouscupcake at 9:06 AM
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When it just started up, me and friends would game online poker by getting two of us on the same table.
Short term stock trading is totally gambling. Options, short selling, etc as well.
Long term stock ownership is not.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:24 AM
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Short term stock trading is totally gambling
No. When you or your pension manager decide it's time to cash in some of your long term stocks, the counterpart for your sale will be a short term trader. And he will then resell the stocks to yet another long term stock owner, make a small margin from the two transactions. It's a service, just as running a bureau de change at the airport or train station is a service.
posted by ocschwar at 3:59 PM
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My great grandfather lost nearly $800,000 in 1929. If he cashed out early and invested it at 5% yearly return....90 million+
Holy fuck i coulda been rich.
posted by clavdivs at 7:38 PM
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