In ANY business segment you will find situations where people have been ripped off by others. I've heard of bad Doctors, Lawyers, Preachers, Congressmen, Auto Dealers, Car Repairmen, Roofers, etc. Please name me one business segment where there was never a bad apple in the bunch.

Also that PokerSpot example that you provided was actually SIX years ago too. Now I am not saying that all poker sites are on the up-and-up. I personally only play at PokerStars and feel very very comfortable with having some of my poker funds kept there. I've also never have had a problem getting funds out of my PokerStars account whenever I wanted it. In fact, I've been playing on PokerStars since May 2003. During the 1st two years of playing poker there when I requested monies to be cashed-out, they FedEx'd me a check! Now I using online xfer of money in and out to take advantage of their bonus offerings. My point is that I feel this site bends over backwards when handling cash-outs. I've never once had a problem.

If someone wants to chance putting their money in a new start-up poker site, I do wish them luck. I personally wouldn't do it.

I personally feel that the biggest problem is with online poker is the cheaters and team-play rather then blaming the site(s). It is my experience that whenever you have a guy that has lost a bunch of money online or has lost a big pot because of being unlucky, they always say the site is rigged. Just human nature to blame someone else instead of themselves or to realize that crap happens sometimes.

Just do the math on all of the money that PokerStars is "raking" in each and everyday. I find it hard to believe that they would chance their stature in the poker community by hosting games that are rigged.

Let's just look at the numbers at ONE weekly tournament... Every Sunday they host a $200 plus $15 buy in event. Last Sunday they had 5,265 players in this one tournament. PokerStars keeps the $15 from every participant. That's $78,975 just to have their computers host one freaking tournament. And that's just ONE tournament. They host hundreds of tournaments every week. PLUS they also offer cash games where they rake up to $3 per pot. Right now in the middle of the day they have over 50,000 players playing on 7,786 tables. Let's say 1/3 of those tables are cash games (just a guess). No let's say 1,000 of them are live cash games. They might be raking in $3 per hand on each of those 1,000 tables. That's $3,000 in live cash pots and every hand probably takes less than 60 seconds. That's $180,000 per hour. Cha ching! Then add up all of the money they rake in for all of the hundreds of tournaments that they host every week. They have no reason to cheat the players. Heck, if I were them, I'd be paying millions a dollars each year just to make sure the games were fair.

I have played with some players in live cash games at real casinos that claim be online cheaters. One year I was in Tunica playing a satellite for an WPO event and one player at my table openly bragged about having multiple computers with different IP address sitting at the same cash game table. This guy claimed to be making a ton of money. I know of other players who play with their friends and they instant message their hands to each other or conference call and discuss their holdings. It doesn't matter the level is. You will find cheaters I believe at all levels. (Also let's not forget that players can be cheated at live casinos too).

Does this keep me away... No it doesn't. I've learned so much playing poker online. Plus it's convenient for me to play online rather than driving 45 minutes and getting my name on a list and waiting an hour for my name to be called. The rake is cheaper. Not to mention that sometimes you run into online players that just don't have a clue.