# Borgata poker tournament suspended---someone sweeteend the pot **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [January 19, 2014, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/borgata-poker-tournament-suspended-someone-sweeteend-the-pot/679202 "2014-01-19T13:35:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2014, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/borgata-poker-tournament-suspended-someone-sweeteend-the-pot/679202/21 "2014-01-26T09:06:47Z")
I originally attempted to post the below in reply to post #14, but I was blocked at work (they have a very sensitive filter for “gambling”) - **RickJay** has since covered some of it but a lot of what I wanted to say may still be relevant. > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Um, sure. > > Anyone who knows something about not only the sweep and scale of gambling cheating, but the motivations (greed, greed and an insane desire to accumulate as much money as they can) would agree. Without a professional eye being able to observe the players, independently and collectively, you might as well throw your money on the table and leave. (Besides the fact that the casino cut completely wipes out every player in the long run.) Sure, yes, wherever there is gambling there will be cheats. My opinion is that it is not possible to systematically cheat at online poker in a way that significantly affects other players, without being caught and banned. As such, although I haven’t done so in several years, I am happy to play poker online without worrying about it. If I see something really suspicious, I’ll report it to the site. Your point about the rake hurting profit is correct for most players (I’m a losing player myself, lifetime) but is a totally separate issue. There are players good enough to turn a consistent profit even with the rake. > [@ZenBeam](#): > > Would everyone entering necessarily know this? (I wouldn’t know this, but of course, I’d never enter in the first place.) No, but you’d think even the most clueless criminals would do a little research if they were planning to cheat a highly secure establishment out of a large sum of money. Possibly they did, and found chip counts were not routine at this particular venue, hence it was chosen. But then they were caught anyway. > [@ZenBeam](#): > > What if two or more were working in collusion, one to receive the extra chips, and a second whose task was to remove the same number, and drop out? Would it have made any sense to do this? Possibly, after all it’s better to have one person make the money and the other not, even though it costs you two entry fees. > [@Quercus](#): > > I don’t think so. If they’ve got a way of removing chips from one person’s hand, and a way of sneaking chips into another person’s hand, why bother with counterfeits? Just remove real chips from one player and sneak them into the second person’s hand. > (\*\* unless the real tournament chips can be turned into cash somehow. In which case this is probably a good way of turning counterfeits into real, though you’d only be moving them into and out of one person’s hand). It’s a lot easier to have two cheaters each with a pocketful of counterfeit chips than to try and pass (real) chips between them during play - I’d say the latter is much more likely to be caught. And tournament chips can’t be cashed in - in fact, this is most of the reason you have separate tournament chips. ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2014, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/borgata-poker-tournament-suspended-someone-sweeteend-the-pot/679202/22 "2014-01-26T10:12:56Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > …Sure, yes, wherever there is gambling there will be cheats. My opinion is that it is not possible to systematically cheat at online poker in a way that significantly affects other players, without being caught and banned… There’s always the [Absolute Poke](http://freakonomics.com/2007/10/17/the-absolute-poker-cheating-scandal-blown-wide-open/)r case. And the [UltimateBet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereus_Poker_Network#2005.E2.80.932007_cheating_scandal) one. Had the Absolute Poker guy or [the UltimateBet people](http://wickedchopspoker.com/the-ultimatebet-super-user-cheating-scandal-part-ii/), not been so stupid as to cheat blatantly enough to get a winrate several SDs beyond what even pros could expect to get, no one would probably have known. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/borgata-poker-tournament-suspended-someone-sweeteend-the-pot/679202.md?page=1)