The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has made it rather difficult to play a game of poker in person, which is why more and more people are taking to the internet to get their daily fix of gambling excitement. While it’s not as social, it does allow players to continue playing the game they love and even make some money along the way.
This is the future of poker playing and while some might miss the crowded casinos, the cocktail waitresses making eyes at you and you the rush of standing up when you go all in, online is a more than serviceable substitute, even for old timers.
With that being said however, playing poker online presents its own set of challenges and that includes how to determine whether someone is cheating at the game or not and yes that is a distinct possibility. It is also what Fedor Kruse is accused of doing during a high stakes cash game and it is believed that he used some kind of RTA(Real time assistance) software.
Story has it that Kruse, who was a former Call of Duty streamer and just recently transitioned into poker playing, used RTA software to help him win high stakes poker games. It is believed that he set up two computers in his room to achieve this. One was used to play the game and the other computer was equipped with a software that allowed him to access a database of GTO solved hands.
He also allegedly used two sets of computer mouses so that poker room security couldn’t pick up on any usual movements. This was all revealed by roommates of Kruse, who claim that he used this database to help climb the stakes in cash games. He was later confronted by his roommates about his behavior, but Kruse is alleged to believe that the move wasn’t unethical.
Interestingly enough, though a few of his roommates tried to take some of the earnings that Kruse accrued through his illegal play, but all reportedly claim they felt bad about the move. Although the news of Kruse’s cheating is disheartening to hear and a slap in the face to those who play the game by the rules, it also begs the question of how cheating in online gambling will be handled in the future.
“While the evidence is rather damming against Fedor (Kruse, not Holtz)” professional poker instructor, Matt Berkey said regarding the ongoing Kruse controversy” I find the real intrigue to be the scale at which this may be occurring. Like it or not, this is the way forward online. There’s no policing this strategy & money tends to win over ethics”
Not only is this a disgusting black mark on the world of online poker, it is also unfair to the players that don’t rely on such technology and play ethically. Unfortunately for these players, they are going to end up getting cheated on hand after hand by these high-tech RTA’s that a lot of poker sites can’t really keep track of now.
Now, this might change with time, especially since it is starting to grow traction in the world of online poker, but some people are going to use this to cheat their way to success before sites find a way to stop it. Furthermore, even if sites are somehow able to detect an RTA being used, the cheaters will just find even more advance ways to cheat the game and ultimately the players.
Beyond that, how are poker sites supposed to even combat the problem if the cheaters are using two different computers in order to stay inconspicuous? Sure, there might be other ways of finding out how someone used at RTA to cheat and some even presented a good case against Kruse, but how do we know there aren’t other ways to game the system?
In the end, it remains to be seen what will be done with Kruse after this scandal came to light or even what poker sites plan to do about the problem as well. What is evident however is the fact that there are some people taking advantage of online poker sites and using RTA’s to cheat their way to large sums of money.
