If you're a casino Poker player, you probably already know the different ways a cheater "works" casino ring games. Snaring extra chips, shorting the pot, rubbernecking, marking cards and avoiding casino fees are the most common. Most are caught because they're clumsy or the other players are sharp and observant. Angling, strictly speaking, isn't cheating unless it's repeated. Bending the rules once may not get your hand killed. Repeating the same angle will.

"Softplaying", or folding a strong hand, can be a legitimate tactic when it is to your financial advantage. However, softplaying to show "respect" to another player is cheating and should be reported to the tournament director. That's usually enough to end it, since it's not financially good for the players doing it.

Really good cheaters, working as a team, are the most serious threat to either casino or online Poker. Given that cheaters don't usually make the best partners, it's rare in either type of game, online or offline, for a pair to make a good job of it.

Online games are harder to cheat effectively, simply because elaborate schemes are harder to execute and cardrooms have the actual hand histories available to them to analyze and detect patterns of cheating. So-called "self-collusion" can be detected, even if the double-identity player has two computers, two ISP's and two identities. Unless he plays his separate identities on separate tables most of the time, a pattern that the cardroom computers will detect will give him away.

Small-time cheaters who exchange info over IM or the phone (but don't have a common bankroll) are still cheaters, but not a real threat. You'll be able to "flag" this type of cheating, even if you have no proof, and the machines will do the rest of the figuring. Like the case above, if these minor cheaters are at the same table at the same time, they'll get caught.

There's really no need for you to use your own software to detect cheaters. You can bet the cardrooms have much more sophisticated machinery to do that. Any reasonably good firewall and anti-virus program will stop attacks on your computer to "peek" at your hole cards.

Before I go, a word about paranoid conspiracy theories: laugh at them. Okay, that's three words.

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