Pete... I think you're looking at it the wrong way. The correct way to look at it would be to ask what reason you have to believe it is NOT an honest game.

No. i do not think its appropriate to give them the benefit of the doubt. The circumstances warrant being skeptical. You send money out of the country to someone you don't know, and have no legal redress if you believe they have cheated you, or don't pay you. Caution is warranted.

Pete - internet poker is a business. There is no particular reason that caution should be warranted. None of the factors you mention could possibly be in the same equation as the collapse of the business.

Consider this... if a site were proven to be running a dishonest game, ALL of the players would leave the site. Absolutely. These sites can make millions a day. Why do you suppose they'd risk this for any reason?

This is the argument that I hear all the time and yet it strikes me as exceptionally weak for these reasons.

1) The argument suggests that anyone with succuessful business would have no incentive to lie cheat or steal since that would hurt there business and they would lose the successful business. yet we see many examples of successful businesses taking short cuts and stealing in order to make more money. In the gaming field I don't have to point further than American Coin for an example.

There's a difference between lying, cheating, and stealing in the examples you cite above and lying, cheating, and stealing a public whose cost of deserting their business is essentially zero and can be done from one's home in a matter of minutes. There is no deterrent here to switching sites, so this is an entirely different situation.

2) In order for the threat of being caught cheating to be a deterent there has to be a reasonable chance that you get caught. But these sites operate with no oversite by reliable regulatory bodies. Who is going to catch them cheating. And even when someone comes along and makes a claim that they have been cheated there is no context for the investigation or fact finding. If you read online poker forums you constantly see people make allegations of cheating (people who accuse the sites of being rigged or not paying) what you see is other people immediately call them kooks liars or cheaters. Simply put a site has no realistic chance of being "caught" so the threat of losing business from being caught cheating is non-existent.

Pete... it has to come from within. All it would take is a single disgruntled employee to blow the whistle. Of course it must go much deeper than that. The software in place must allow for hand rigging or systematic cheating. If this type of software was installed at any poker site, there would be no way to hide it, hence my comment. (I don't believe that cheating on an ad hoc basis is within the realm of possibility - the software must allow it.)

Consider this too... it is virtually impossible for just ONE person at a site to know that it is run dishonestly. If more than one person knows, it wouldn't take long for the "secret" to be out.

But the secret is out. Lots of people tell you they know that online poker is crooked, or this site cheats this way or that way.

Well, that's just ridiculous. If anyone actually "knew" the site would lose all of its business instantly.

As for Mark's question about unusual hands on internet poker sites, it's a common question. Don't forget that you are seeing MANY more hands than you do in a brick & mortar site... maybe double, maybe triple the number of hands. There will therefore be double or triple the number of bad beats and unusual hands.

I agree, i am skeptical of claims people make that more bad beats happen online than in real life simply because these claims are made anecdotally and not based on actual data compiled from both.