Poker: A Boom Gone Bust?

When Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem won their respective WSOP titles, online poker (I will avoid the casino sites) enjoyed a massive run of unbelievable increases in players, profits and prestige. Everyone with a few extra bucks was trying to make it to the big show online. Bonuses were plentiful, fish were everywhere and the forums were full of noobs looking for advice and rakeback deals.

Of course as with any boom the camp followers and hangers on jumped on the bandwagon and the circus began. Poker add on programs like tracker, office, spy and sidekicks with AceHud were everywhere. Multi-tabling to clear bonuses was normal and teams began to form in order to clear them even faster. Cheaters, colluders and Winholdem users began to pour into the sites chasing bonuses and rakeback with their bots playing mathematically correct poker 8-10 tables at a time. Sites caught on and eventually began taking counter measures against them. However, in the cash games, the damage was done. Most fish were capable of recognizing that the player to thier left never went to the bathroom or took a break, always chased them down and could play for 14 hours at a shot.

Cash games were ruined and the tournaments were next. Yes Bot-users had used their bots to get them through the early portions of tournaments but the cheating revelations to come were even worse. When 2 well known online tournament players were busted, banned, confiscated and humiliated for entering multiple accounts they controlled into the same tournaments sites were left reeling. At first the thought of 2 or 3 entrys into a 3000 player tournament made no difference. Once we realized that an above average player can improve his odds geometrically by dumping chips or suiciding one account to protect another online tournament participation took a noticeable drop for a while.