Jason Koon has called for serious repercussions for players caught cheating at online poker. He claims it is in the best interests of the community that more is done as a deterrent for those considering unethical behaviour at the tables.
Koon suggests that major live tournament operators should share a blacklist of the worst offenders and potentially cut them out of the most prestigious festivals.
There need to be higher-stakes repercussions for people who are continually caught cheating at online poker; It is in the best interest of the entire poker community. In my opinion, the major live-tournament stops should share a blacklist of online poker's worst cheaters.
— Jason Koon (@JasonKoon) March 5, 2022
Could it Really Work?
Doug Polk was quick to point out that this all sounds great, in theory, but how would it work in practice?“In theory I like it, in practice how does it work? If the Lodge got a list of names from PokerStars of banned players, we should automatically ban those players? Feel like we would need to evaluate each case, and now we need staff to review online poker bans Is that realistic?”Another poster pointed out that the threshold for evidence is low, with each individual site acting on its own policies. Are higher evidence standards needed if more harsh penalties are to be introduced?
Rob Yong wrote that he agrees 100% but all parties must coordinate together.
Koon added:
“I certainly don’t have the answer for this, but poker is filled with intelligent people who all want safer places to play. Form groups of people from different orgs to get together and examine cases and vote. There would need to be different degrees of penalties per offense.”Another issue brought up was data protection laws. It’s not straightforward for poker sites and tour operators to openly share what they know about each player.
It’s great that there is agreement that more could be done to protect game integrity, now all we need is for somebody to take a leading role.
Fedor Holz recently posted a video where he talks about cheating in high-stakes games and agreed with Jason Koon that punishments need to be harder. He also mentions that sites such as PokerStars and GGPoker are stepping up their game and catching more players cheating than ever before.