No, I do not mean bombarding them with sub-standard T-shirts, but the far more sinister act of collusion, and I mean Big-Time collusion. Rumours of corruption have been rife with poker players, who tackle the higher stakes "double or nothing" Sit n Go tournaments for some time now. It would appear that genuine poker player's doubts have been proven correct, as PokerStars, the safest poker site in the world has allegedly found evidence of massive corruption involving the Chinese poker community.

Poker is a game of immense skill, and there are so many solid players grinding out a living in double or nothing games (DoN's), the return on investment can make it hardly worth the effort. However, not if you are playing with up to half the field colluding, because in DoN's fifty percent of the players win and double their money. The other fifty percent is left with nothing, and it would appear the ones left with nothing recently have been playing with the odds staked deeply against them.

Allegations of collusion are certainly not a new thing in poker, but these new revelations have added fuel to the fire of honest player suspicions. It is alleged that PokerStars has closed the accounts of up to, and possibly more than twenty players from China, who have all had their account balances frozen. Twenty players do not sound like many admittedly, but the sums of money involved are truly astonishing. In a six month period, these players had racked up winnings over $550,000, and with the vast amount of the money having already been withdrawn it is corruption of the highest order.

The most shocking news is that PokerStars is, by far and away the most security conscious of all online poker rooms. So, quite what the fraudsters have made in total across many other sites is anyone's guess. My guess is the corruption could and most likely runs into the millions, if not tens of millions. The majority of the games involved range from $5 to $104 buy-in Don's. A list of the alleged players colluding is published below, and it is startling how often these players would all turn up on the same table together according to a renowned poker tracker software.

The most common forms of collusion online are soft play, failing to bet or raise in a situation that you normally would because of your opponent; whipsawing, where partners at opposite ends of the table raise and reraise each other to trap players in between; and dumping chips, or deliberately losing. A more alarming cheat is the use of Spy-bots (which are computers than can play on their own) which can be remotely operated from another IP address, making it very difflicult to track. Which have allegedly taken place with in most of the cases listed. One poker forum member admitted to losing over 90k in these types of SnG's alone this year, I wonder if he was running that bad, or did he not stand a chance?

Here’s the list of colluders, which has been published on a well known poker forum:

renhe88                  
Xiah.G
wzhongz                 
MNBQWE12        
wzem618800
147222
chijianli
xiawenju
guiliang
Leaders668
Psnyls
yutian
golovorez777
hslj001
maomao1832
wenpk15888
coroinpu
pakerster
yutian
linyin
yangguangze
rara999
cjwqq
DCBM288
phy188002
liuli888
jinse888
wudiyg
ellena054
Xuanyu.L
chenxr
flypretty
nayouyi
hzlsl
Gucci53
Jessica318
Lazzzzzzy
Aladin888
strong arm A
Degreexia
suckfirst
skystory
microsoft25
wenpk15888
freetime1955
xxwpk168