Avoiding Poker Cheats

Avoiding Poker Cheats
Sadly, there are cheaters out there. Most card sites don't discuss cheating at all because to do so would insinuate that it happens frequently on their site. So they choose to ignore the topic and leave it up to you to dig up information if you want to spend the time looking for it. Cardshark.us is a site that profiles different ways in which people cheat and how you can go about protecting yourself from potential cheaters.
In the end, you should follow a simple and easy rule of thumb. If you suspect someone in your game is cheating, LEAVE THE GAME!
The most common methods of cheating are:
1. Abuse of the all-in protection
2. Online collusion
All-in Protection Abuse
The nature of online play is such that players will, on occasion, be legitimately disconnected from their ISP in the middle of a hand. When the action gets to a player that has been disconnected is is unable to act, often the player is declared all-in for the amount of money he has already committed to the pot. Thus if a player had already bet $5 in the hand, the hand will play out as if that player had been all-in for $5 regardless of how much more money they had in chips at the time.
This feature is sometimes abused by players who have committed a substantial amount of money to a pot, and are faced with calling another larger bet that they do NOT wish to call. Instead of calling or folding, some players will disconnect from their ISP intentionally and let the hand play out, hoping that they will still win with the money they had already committed. Many sites have begun to do away with "all-in protection" at their cash tables, or they will limit the total number of all-in protections in a one week period to one or two.
If you suspect a player has abused the all-in protection feature, whether you were involved in the hand or not, please go to the site's contact section and email a complaint (with hand history number) to their fraud department. Most sites say that they track these types of complaints and will permanently remove a player's all-in protection if it appears they are abusing it in this fashion.
Online Collusion
All poker sites have strict policies against online collusion. Collusion occurs whenever more than one player is working in concert with other players at the table to gain an informational advantage.
Colluders will also sometimes sweeten pots for each other when they are dealt premium hands. Collusion is difficult to spot, but there are some signs to tip you off.
1. Look for players that leave a table en masse. If 3 or 4 players leave at the same time, it may not be cheating but it's good to make use of the player notes to mark who left. If you see this same group do this on more than one occassion, I'd be wary of playing with them.
2. Look for hands where two players are raising substantially preflop, only to have one fold on the turn or river. Again, seeing this happen once or twice does not mean anything, but if it's consistently two players that are exhibiting this behavior a little alarm should start to go off in your head.
As a general rule, if you suspect someone might be cheating and you have no evidence, it doesn't hurt to just find another table. If you have evidence, do yourself and your fellow players the service of reporting it. Everyone's online experience will be better.