How Secure is Online Texas Holdem Poker

With the rapid growth of online poker sites over the last decade, many more people are being attracted to the fast action money game that you can play with complete strangers from all over the world, right in the comfort of your own home. When a newcomer decided to join the fray and have a go at online Texas Holdem Poker for the first time, he is usually subject to several concerns about the safety aspect. After all, it is their own hard earned money that is at risk once they deposit it to the poker site.

The first obvious concern that players have is the obvious one of the safety of the credit card transaction. This is virtually always a false worry. Many millions of credit card transactions occur all over the world, and some of them are indeed fraudulent. Very few of these will have happened online, and the poker sites have security in place which is equal to, and possibly even greater than, most online retailers. This is because they know that will be a very attractive target for any criminal hacker, and because in the hugely competitive world of online Texas Holdem Poker, each site knows that the slightest whiff of lax security will have its players scurrying elsewhere.

A more valid concern is that other players may be able to cheat by viewing the hole cards of each player. This rumor is no doubt fuelled by the ebook being sold which claims you can hack into poker sites and make easy money by viewing everybody's hole card. This book is a total con, and a total waste of money. There is no possibility of any player seeing another player's hole cards, without being able to hack into the server of the online poker site. It isn't going to happen.

The shuffling of the deck is another valid concern, as obviously there are no physical cards to shuffle. The electronic shuffle of the online poker sites has been meticulously scrutinised, and been found to be more reliably random than a normal physical shuffle. Again, a valid concern, but an unwarranted one.

The main real concern that potential online poker players have is collusion cheating. What is to stop two players joining the same table, and communicating, for example by telephone, in order to gain an unfair advantage over the other players? In theory, nothing.

At any one time this kind of cheating could indeed be happening. However, the online poker sites are well aware of this, and do everything they can to stop it. With sophisticated software, they can detect when two players tend to play at the same time, and they can easily detect unnatural play, such as the folding of good cards when the other player just happened to have a better hand. Although the game of Texas Hold 'Em Poker can never be 100% free of collusion cheating, it is extremely rare, because it simply cannot stay undetected for long. Paradoxically, players who indulge in this kind of cheating are often weak players, and will not win against good players even with their deception. In summary, the security risks in playing online Texas Holdem Poker are extremely minimal.