Avoid Collusion in Crypto Poker

Heads up 1-on-1 poker

The only way to ensure there is no collusion happening at a poker table you are playing at is to only play heads up because single opponents have nobody to collude with.

Heads up is 1-on-1 poker where you play against a single opponent like in the image below.

It is a true match of wits and you play further in a lot more hands because medium-strength starting hands are more playable against 1 other starting hand than 8 others.

Prevention by the Poker Site

Poker sites might do their best to try to spot collusion in ring games (games with more than 2 players, typically 6-9) and tournaments, but VPNs can fake IP addresses and players are anonymous in crypto poker.

The poker site can only respond to colluders’ newest tricks after the sites have found out about them, which means colluders are always a step ahead.

This only leaves hand analyses which are imprecise, error-prone, and may or may not catch the collusion. Even if a site found you lost money due to collusion there is no guarantee that they would reimburse you the correct amount, if at all.

Even if you did get fully reimbursed you would still have been negatively affected; you were without those funds for however long, you lost confidence in your game and your hand history and stats analysis are all messed up.

Decentralized poker with no admin

Crypto will allow decentralized poker with no central site administrator and no rake. People are already working on such implementations and I am amazed they are spending time working on ring games.

It will be impossible to stop collusion in these games meaning most people will not want to play them.

I am very much looking forward to these decentralized poker platforms but I will only play heads up.

I also think crypto poker industry leaders like Betcoin and Nitrobetting should be doing more to stop collusion by encouraging heads-up play, an option that is often unavailable to crypto poker players.