There is an organization called eCOGRA (eCommerce and Online Gaming Regulation and Assurance) that provides participating casinos with a set of player-sensitive regulations that are checked by independent inspection and enforced by ongoing monitoring. The eCOGRA Seal is awarded to casinos verified in terms of: Efficient and timely payouts Fair gaming practices Fast dispute resolution Although this does not guarantee the sites are 100%, there is a much better chance that these are the safest sites to play on. eCOGRA has a site at: http://www.ecogra.org There is a list of sites that are certified by eCOGRA at: http://online.casinocity.com/ecogra/

The sites may be honest, but the other players are not. How do I know? Because I have personal experience working for a consulting company as a software developer. One of their contract projects was helping to build an "assistance system" to cheat online poker games. Basically the system uses sock-puppet accounts, monitoring the behavior of other players on a massive scale. It builds a database of their habits, and chooses patterns which are predictable to select it's marks. The marks are then targeted by human users, and the humans are given guidance by the computer so that they can play with full knowledge of that person's habits. Of course, this provides a significant unfair advantage to the owners of the system, who hire inexpensive helplings overseas to play their side of the game. It's a big cash cow. For the record, I refused to work on this project and made my disapproval well known. I no longer work for that consulting company.

Online poker is a fantasically profitable business for the operators of online poker sites. To cheat the the players at these sites would be extremely foolish. With the ability to diseminate information to other players via the Net, even the "hint" of inpropriety could cut deeply into a pokersites' profits. What you see is what you get. They don't have to cheat. Actually, they take a lesser amount per hand via the Rake, than most casino poker rooms, but they deal more hands with more efficiency than human dealers. That's a better deal for the players. If you consider that some sites have 50k-100k players being raked $5-$12 per hour each, you'll realize why they wouldn't dare take the chance of players complaining of cheating. They also go to extreme lengths to minimize cheating done by other players. Integrity is paramount to a profitable poker site. The more players that they can attract, the safer your money is and a good poker player will overcome the small Rake that they take from the pot. Many players make a consistent income from online poker...without cheating. Some actually earn a good living by applying their skills to the game. If you can't win at an online pokersite, you also won't win at a brick & mortar cardroom. It'll be because you don't play the game well enough.

I did laugh reading the above comments. So a poker site is honest because it has enough paying customers, so why would it cheat? What a laugh - these companies are usually the ones that cheat more!! Why? GREED! Look at the stats for the answers - not ridiculous comments like those above. The other thing that made me laugh was reference to the K Gaming Commission. Ever tried contacting them? I did recently, when I was cheated at an online poker site (and have the evidence to prove it). I sent it several times to the KGC and you know what they did? Nothing. Never even had the courtesy to reply to my Emails - so don't think you have any protection from them - even though they lisenced the site I caught stealing. Be very careful, the behaviour of most online sites is suspicious to say the least, don't put more money into one, than you can afford to lose. Good Luck.

I believe that most sites are dishonest. Money breeds greed. greed breeds dishonesty. I have encountered incredible losses on a particular poker site. Out of 1276 times being the favorite preflop, post flop, and turn, I won an incredible 18 times. I would say that this defies all odds. getting called all in by 2 7 with pocket aces or similar and having someone hit on the turn and river has happened to me too many times. Not once did I win against such cards being the favorite. I have grown very very suspicious of online cheating. Much safer to play where you can see th cards live!

Anyone doubting the honest of on line poker should read this: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/the-absolute-poker-cheating-scandal-blown-wide-open/

you people who think the poker sites are honest are nothing but a bunch of fools! first, it is against their nature to be honest, may I remind you that the owners of these sites in fact are mobsters! organised crime, THEY KILL PEOPLE FOR HEAVEN SAKE! do you really think they will think twice about stealing your money if they can??? no way, just look at Absolute Poker, the staff them self! did everything they could to rip people off, they even installed trojan horses on peoples computers so they could see their cards! and that is not the only site, many things have happend in the past, I have played poker for many years, both offline and online, and Im telling you, they can see your cards, they know what cards will come on the flop before it is even dealt, they fix action flops, so it will rise the rake (flushdraws fullhouse draws and straight draws on the same board) and how about when you get dealt pocket kings, you can be fairly sure that som other player have pocket aces, 8out of 9 times, that is mathematicly impossible, YET IT HAPPENDS! people who say that pokersites are honest cus it is so profitable for them and that they would do nothing to spoil it, ohh give me a brake!! we KNOW that the sites are cheating! and why wouldnt they?? nobody have any insight to what they are doing, NOBODY can check that it is fair play, and if somebody do, you can reast asured that they are in on it, the gaming comission is in fact their own company!! let me ask you non believers this, if you knew that you could never ever be convicted and sent to prison for stealing hundreds of millions, would you do it? of course you would, that is the nature of human, GREED! these people can do whatever they like, they can foold your pants off and there is NOTHING anyone can do about it, if you take a state of the art poker program and play you won't win much, but if you are good, you will stil win against these computer oponents, even they are programmed to play very well, if you sit down at a pokersite with full of morans you loose?? can you explain that one!

can you prove to me that the pokersites are honest? noo you cant! yet many things has happend in the past, that shows the oposit is more likely to be true doesnt it? if you have any money in one of these sites, withdraw it before you loose it, and dont believe those players who say they win, they have a big ego and they refuse to let anyone know they are infact loosing, I know for a fact Phil Ivey, played online before, and not even he can win! and he is the best poker player in the world, if he cant win in online poker, then nobody can

Sory guys if your looking for someone to say yes poker sites are honest,not your man,before you play your next game(no limit)go to table look who is winning and next chip and punch the names into find player,do this on several tables say 10s 20b sadly you will find most of the players are all at the same table?this is the reason you can never win,you will find some names playing as many as 16 tables?and others connected to then,so when you get say 10 10 thy him have several hands to win the 10s sory guys the only way to win at poker is to play live.

There are few I would trust frankly - I only use William Hill, a UK site which has a history and reputation a hundred years long. That's William Hill - check them out.

I know that the online poker sites are not honest. he partypoker and empirepoker sites both hire people to run cheating programs and pay them for it. Americans can't play for real money so they play the fake chip tables and have to buy their chips. The sites hire people to play and they resell the chips back to the honest players. Give me a break. How sorry can you get but to cheat an honest person for fake chips!!

I think one of the previous responders said that you can't prove that online poker sites are honest. Well, you can't prove that responder was honest either. Or the person asking the question. Or me. It's a tough question and one I've answered on my own website many times http://www.billrini.com Now first off, you need to make a distinction between the site being honest and the other players being honest. Cheating in poker happens regardless of whether you play it online, your weekly home game, or at the WSOP (yes, there are plenty of accusations about chip dumping every year). The online poker site cheating is an entirely different question. I have worked for two of the largest sites in fairly responsible positions (program manager in charge of software projects and one and the poker room manager at another). I can say without hesitation that I don't believe either of those sites cheat the players. Heck, I helped design parts of the software so I have a pretty good understanding of what they do and don't do. And I also know what efforts they go to in order to audit the quality of the random number generation (the part that shuffles the cards). Now, since I can only speak about the places I've worked I can only speculate about the others. I think if you're playing at one of the top 10 rooms the risk of cheating by the poker room is fairly small. Since I can't play on sites where I work and I still enjoy playing poker it should serve be noted that I play on most of the top poker rooms and have never felt cheated. I'm not saying that 11th - ?? are rigged but I know less of the people involved with the smaller sites and can't necessarily vouch for their integrity. Or to put it another way, I have more faith in an online poker room making $100 million a year with 500 employees than a two man operation making $50,000 a year. The thing most people who accuse sites of being rigged fail to realize is that there is more incentive to deal a fair game than a rigged one. Yes, I know all the arguments about greed and such but the bottom line is that most of the ways that people say the games are rigged would actually make the room less money! For instance, the old "action flops" theory states that rooms rig flops that will generate action. But if you know anything about the business of poker you know that the room makes more money by getting hands over quickly because once a hand as reached the rake cap the room is no longer making any more money. Let's say that a room has a rake cap at $3. Three bucks is all it can make on that hand no matter how much money goes into the pot. The room could easily deal 3 - 4 hands in the time it takes an action-flop hand to go to the river when you factor in all of the betting, streets, and time for each player to think about their move. So the room could make $1 - $2 on 3 - 4 hands or make $3 on one hand. Do the math. There are dozens of other examples like this - that I regularly refute - where it's obvious that the accuser has no real experience behind the scenes in online poker. Going back to the original premise of whether or not you can prove that an online poker room is honest, let's reverse it a bit and ask whether or not you can prove the games are rigged. It should be fairly easy to prove a game is rigged. Many players have hundreds of thousands of hands of hand histories they've collected on their own play. No abnormalities have ever been brought to attention. Sites like Shark Scope collect millions of stats on SnG games and no statistical abnormalities have been noted. So what are we left with? We are left with someone who simply states that online poker is rigged (or dishonest). For what reason? Usually to make themselves feel better about not being very good at playing online poker (which has a different aggression factor, speed, and dynamic than live poker). They can always claim that they had their aces cracked 50000 times in a row but when you ask them for proof they usually either resort to more baseless claims, name calling, and ad hominem attacks or slink off.

kanawaukee gaming commission is crooked are so are the major poker sites its been exposed on national tv lately on several news shows.

no it dose not matter how good a player you are if the computer decides it not your turn to win you will not win they might let you win a few weeks but then no matter what hand you get you loose with it the odd ten pounds here and there dose not matter but add it up at the end of the month an see how much you have lost then do the same after 3 months and tell me who is the winner you or the poker site

I've been playing online poker for 3 years and have won a great deal. Yes, you take some horrible beats sometimes and sometimes those beats seem to happen quite often. However, a winning player knows how to manage his losses, as well as his wins and in the end the variance will tilt in your favor. Their are several reasons why people convince themselves that a site is cheating. First, as the gentlemen above states: they need to reason away thier bad play. Secondly, they don't deposit enough money and play in games outside their bankroll, which is one of the biggest mistakes people make. Doing this eliminates ones ability to accurately account for their actual variance and prevents them from properly managing their games. Thirdly, you see so many more hands in a given hour and are guareenteed to see more bad beats in a day than you might see in a week at a live casino. The fact is, people think they are better than they are and are unwilling to accept that there are levels of poker thinking/playing that are so far beyond what the simple ABC approach offers. To that point is the final reason; people are not honest with themselves about their ability. It's a game that requires an individual who is able to take full and absolute accountability for their own choices and most people are unwilling to do that at the level required to win consistently. It is a fact that some sites have been caught for cheating in the past, but they were quickly put out of buisness. However, their are cheats in every buisness and you can't responsibly accuse a site of cheating unless you first are able to account for your own game, which 99% of the players are not willing to do. Another reason that derives from the second reason I mentioned is that they play in such small games with micro buy-ins that are full of individuals who either don't mind losing 5 dollars or have little to no skill at all. This type of environment neutralizes skill to a certain degree and because of that the people who have some micro skill still lose because they have yet to learn how to manage their games or they fall into the style presented to them at that level. You have to be realitic; if you are to win at that level, then you must be happy with a 1-3 dollar win rate per session and be willing to step away from a table that you are losing at least 30% of that expected win. Unfortunately, most do not have that skill. I started with 50 dollars and have made over 100 grand in three years by doing just that. I started at the 2/5 cent tables and grinded my way up to the 3-6/4-8 tables. If you can apply the same leveled approach and have the work ethic to open yourself to new levels of thinking, you'll do well. Otherwise, you will either lose your money and continue to lose your money, or you'll just accuse others of cheating. Good Luck at the tables

Are Poker Sites honest? I am afraid not. When I first started playing poker I had a fairly basic knowledge of the game yet I won and built a decent bank roll before hitting a losing run that wiped it out in 2 days. Only 10% of my losses were down to tilt. I tried again and built an even bigger bank roll over a few weeks. Then same again. Lost it in a fraction of the time it took to win. I began studying poker seriously and steadily got better. I got rid of many of the typical weaknesses that cost chips. I built another bank roll up to $6400, (over 30 times my buy-in of $200) over a few more weeks. Guess what. The same thing happened again. A losing run where I just couldn't win a hand. It began to appear like a systematic pattern that had nothing to do with my ability or decision making. Poker odds which I had by now studied and learnt very well just didn't apply. I should have stopped their when I had just a few suspicions that things may not be totally honest on these pokers sites. But I continued for another 3 years playing between 10 to 16 hours a day and without trying to sound arrogant I am confident that I now know the game as well as most professional players and probably better than many. Being totally confident in my ability to maximise my big hands and minimise my losses in marginal hands allows me to make a critical assessment of online poker. I have yet to find a site which I believe has totally honest and fair games. I know for a fact that I am playing poker in a way that should be profitable. My strategy is sound. Yet I am continually beaten over and over again by 2 and 4 outers and often when they call or raise with no hand on the flop. There are different ways of cheating either by the poker sites or by players. There is programming of hands, super Users and collusion. By far the most damaging to genuine players is programmed outcomes and Super Users who can see everyone’s cards and also the next 5 cards before they are dealt. For those of you out there who just can't wait to reply to these posts claiming that losing players need someone or something to blame rather than face the fact that they are not very good. That may be true for a percentage of players who do not trust online sites but it cannot and does not explain why good, sound players cannot win online.

Not all. I make my living playing online poker though so I can tell you that they are basically honest. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to do that. The fact is that only 5% of poker players are profitable. And would be online or offline. It doesn't matter. The ones who whine or say there is always cheating going on, just simply aren't advanced enough. And, they don't realize the huge variances of luck involved. Skill does always win out but you have to be consistent and you have to have an incredible amount of patience. You can play a whole year before luck finally evens out and you see how much you have won.

It is mathematically impossible lose 90% of your hands on seventh street. That is what was happening to me. My son who is a math professor watched me play and just laughed at the way I was being beat. It got to the point where we were both calling the last card, which was the winning the winning hand for the “other player”. I was playing heads up games so I could isolate the cheating patterns. When I wrote the site and said my son, the math professor, said it was impossible to lose on the last card so often, they sent a long reply back ignoring the fact and just stating how honest the site was. The funny thing is the last card losing stopped after I wrote. I won for a while, and then I started losing, the other players on the heads up games started winning by getting two pair every time. It’s like the site thinks you are so stupid you do notice the way you are losing. These sites are not happy making an honest living. They are too greedy and they know people like me are addictive. Break your addiction from these internet thieves, as I did, play at a brick casino, I never feel raped playing cards at a brick casino. If you study the way the internet poker sites work, you will come to realize the game is pre-determined. Win or lose it is predetermined and you will eventually lose it all.