OE/PSI – Private Strategies for the Internet

By: Tyler James Ellison
In today's world it seems like everywhere you turn there's scammers trying to find their next unsuspecting victim. Well, this is no different than poker. Even online poker has it's fair share of people waiting for someone to fall into their trap.

Poker is a huge trust game and it's best not to trust anyone especially when playing online and escpecially when the goal of the game is to take other player's money. I'll share some of the most common online poker scams going around today so you can try to spot them and avoid them should they ever come your way.

There's one scam going around called the side-bet scam in which a player hovers around different tables trying to make private deals with other players. They'll hop from table to table and they will bet players for $100 that they'll win and if the player loses the scammer gets $100 and in the other case if the player wins, the scammer just acts like it never occured.

While that is just an example and not every side-bet scammer bets $100, it's common enough in games and a lot of people will fall for this especially new players. Another common scam is referred to as the all in on the first hand scam. This one is easy to avoid by using common sense. In this particular event a player would suggest to his opponent that he and his opponent both go all in the very first hand. While sometimes his opponent would usually just ignore him or argue with him, sometimes he would agree and put all his chips in and if the scammer didn't have a great playing hand, he'd continue playing like normal. This isn't as much as a scam as a trust issue and basic common sense can be used to avoid this.

The next one is a pretty rough one that's been seen around a lot and a lot of money is lost by this scheme. When a scammer asks you to pay $10 in hopes of being payed back $20 the next day, you are most likely being lured into thePonzi scheme. In this scheme, the scammer will build your trust by asking for money and will actually pay you back and continue to pay you back raising the limit on the amount he's asking for higher and higher each time. Once he has earned your sincere trust and attention because hey.. you payed him before and he payed back, he'll continue to pay you back right? This is not merely the case and once he has you in his grip he goes in for big money and runs.

These people are usually the friendliest posters and some times one of the biggest contributors and most active of people. In today's world, especially in online poker it is best to think ahead and never to trust a random player offering to return you money or make a private deal with you, as this will save you a lot of money in the future and headache.