When discussing on-line poker with poker players who have never played on-line poker before it seems the most common reason, or objection they give for not playing is that they fear the game is unfair in someway. The most common activities mentioned, that are included 'unfair', are 'The poker room can rig the deck', 'Players will work in teams in order to gain an edge (known as 'collusion'), and/or 'A player or the poker room can see my cards'. These types of ideas, which can be summed up with the word 'cheating', are something to be fearful of, because nobody wants to be cheated out of money. But, just because they are something to be concerned with, is the concern justified in regards to on-line poker? This first article aims to not only show that the poker rooms do not cheat, but actually, even if for self-serving reasons, have an incentive to not cheat and to prevent others from cheating.

All card rooms, whether land based or on-line make money from the rake. The rake is the amount of money collected as a fee from each pot or paid directly by the players on a temporal basis (All on-line poker rooms use the former method). The standard maximum rake per hand on-line is $3. For purposes here it will be assumed that the average taken per hand at most poker rooms is $1.50. On-line poker software is much faster than a live dealer and one table can play, on average, 60 hands an hour. This means that from one table the card room will make $96 an hour in gross profit. Using reports distributed by various on-line groups, the average amount of active tables at the medium to larger poker sites is anywhere between 200-1000 (real money only included). To make our point clearer, we can assume 200-300 tables per average.

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