Okay I came across this site yesterday offering to give me $50 dollars on a poker site, and as far as I can tell they get some kind of money from the poker site from me playing, and that is the reason for the $50 given. I call bullshit, but for some free money I figure its worth a look into.
They want personal information from me in order to do the deal, with this sent in the e-mail:
“The following information needs to be visible: your name, address (if available), the issuing authority, ID or passport number and your date of birth.” This is to be in the form of a scanned/faxed ID.
The website is pokerstrategy.com and looks to be a heavily trafficked site, the reason they want information is to stop THEM from getting scammed by people registering multiple times. What do you guys think, or do you know anything about it? I dont trust random sites with my ID.
I play internet poker for play money on Full Tilt. Security considerations aside, do you reall want to play for cash with a couple of roomates playing different accounts on different computers at the same table while they compare hands over some beers?
I can’t comment on pokerstrategy.com specifically, but kickback bonus programs are pretty common. They’re also not as easy to cash in on as the affiliate or poker sites would have you believe. You will almost certainly have to:
Make some minimum deposit at the poker room and
Play a large number of hands in order to get the bonus credited to you, usually within some time limit like 6 months. If you want to play at a low level, it might be a ridiculously large number, so it encourages you to play higher stakes.
adhay’s paranoia is a bit misplaced. Some collusion happens, but people who engage in it regularly are easily detected by the poker sites. That depends on a poker site having a good security team, though, so you might want to consider that in where you play. Also I don’t know where you’re from or if you noticed, but the pokerstrategy.com offer is not valid for U.S. players.
Well, funny thing. I was visiting my son several years ago when he came across the poker site and we both signed on and did just that. It was “play” money in individual “accounts” so of course there was no way to share our ill-gotten gains. Real cash is another thing.
As a matter of interest, assuming the colluders (say 3 or 4) were using separate internet accounts and avoided obvious poor betting practices, how would they be detected?
There’s lots of info out there on collusion detection and much relies on betting patterns, but if nothing else you can detect players who tend to play at the same table a lot.
I have no direct knowledge of the site you mentioned but there are legit sites that give you money to play on certain poker sites. There will be requirements that you play a certain number of hands. Best source for good information is the forum twoplustwo.com.
Collusion and other forms of cheating do exist. If you are a good player you will quickly learn to spot it and move to another table … report the cheats, the major sites do a pretty good job of getting rid of them and even returning the money to those who were victimized. Since there is an exact record of every hand played, two (or more) players who keep choosing the same table out of the thousands that are available and who always play as if they have knowledge of each other’s hole cards are very easy to spot.
Getting away with colluding once in a play money game is different than trying to run an ongoing scam for real money. I won’t comment on the moral or ethical standards of those who casually choose to cheat.
All the major sites have play money games. If you can’t beat them badly you will have no chance in even the tiny real money games. Most big sites also run free tournaments in which you can win small amounts of real money; some beginners build a bankroll that way. Former WSOP winner Chris Ferguson, just for the fun of it, started on the free tournaments on a site and built up to $10,000.
I started playing online poker in January of 1998 when PlanetPoker first began. In those days there were about 200 players on a busy day; now there are sites that have 200,000 players online. I deposited $200, played $2/$4 and lost it within a few hours. I got the hand histories and studied the other players, deposited another $300 … haven’t had a job since … and yes, I file a tax return as a professional gambler.