Online poker scam?

[DrewKaree]

From www.czabe.com:

1. Want a sobering tale about playing on-line Texas Hold

[TalkingOctopus]

And my geek said its all about alghorithims, and that some 14 year old hacker whiz could write a progRam and actually see what cards are coming next, tough to beat that guy I

[NinjaEpisode]

Hmm, six hours to clean "remote spyware as in somebody else logged in remotely"?  Um, disable the damn wireless NIC and clean the stuff. If that's the best that the Geek Squad could do, sign me up!  That's like taking candy from a baby!

While trojans, etc are very real, this guy would have had to DO something to allow the trojan to infiltrate.

[abrannan]

FUD FUD FUD FUD and more FUD.  There are so many holes in that story it's not even funny.

"anonymous" friend, name one internet hoax that doesn't have an anonymous friend.

Says it's not connected to the internet or anything but party poker?  C'mon, let's be real here. 

When you play online poker, you all connect to a single remote host, it's near impossible to discover the IP addresses of your opponents to go hack them and install a "remote spyware" program.  You get far more mileage out of running a program that tracks opponent's trends across several hundred hands (they're commonly available).  The difficulty:benefit ratio isn't there to make hacking the 8-9 other players at the table profitable.  There are enough "fish" at PartyPoker that simply playing statistically solid poker will turn you a decent profit.

As far as card prediction algorithms, if there were a site that was using that weak of a PRNG (Pseudo-random number generator) to drive its card engine, it'd be all over the net. 

My guess is that this is something someone created to "scare" people away from party poker (currently the most popular poker site) and drive them to another site, or away from online gambling altogether. 

[Samstag]

I completely agree with abrannan.

It's the kind of scare tactic that targets people who would also believe Best Buy knows anything about computers (let alone big words like algorithms).  What I want to know is where the scared people are going to play poker.  I'm always ready to help these people part with their money.

[Stingray]

It's the kind of scare tactic that targets people who would also believe Best Buy knows anything about computers (let alone big words like algorithms).

Actually Best Buy (at least around here) subcontracts their support to Geek Rescue, which does actually employ people who know their stuff more often than not.

I have no opinion about whether or not this is in fact a scam.

This thread needs more toast.

-S