Poker is a game of strategy, psychology, and skill, whose integrity is preserved in part by the fairness of each individual player playing it.
Over the years, dishonest players have found many ways to cheat at the game, and ghosting in poker is one of the most modern ways of skewing the odds in one’s favor.
The practice of poker ghosting arose with the spread of online poker, as players realized they could get help from more skillful players in key parts of the game to gain an edge.
In this article, we look deeper into the practice of ghosting in poker, the effects it has, and the reasons you should stay away from ghosting in all its forms.
What Is Ghosting in Poker?
Ghosting in poker refers to the act of getting help from another player during a poker game. Whether you get help with just one hand or you have someone play instead of you over an extended period of time, you are engaging in ghosting.
On the most basic level, poker ghosting can come down to a friend watching you play and suggesting what you should do. While this used to be the norm back in the day, the poker community has learned to frown upon it in more recent years.
The reason is quite simple. Your opponents are playing against you and gathering information on how you play by observing you. If another player makes a decision for you, that decision might not line up with how you would have played the hand otherwise.
What’s even more, ghosting often involves a more experienced or more skillful player stepping in to help a less experienced player, making the game tougher for the other players.
While ghosting is possible in both live and online poker, the practice is much more common in online games, where players can engage in ghosting in multiple ways.
A few of the most common scenarios include:
- Providing live coaching: A player consults another player on how they should play hands in real-time, thus directly impacting their decisions.
- Shared decision-making process: Two or more players work together on deciding what the best play might be in real time, sometimes using third-party software.
- Complete takeover: A player takes over for another player at a key stage of a poker tournament, often completely changing the playing style of the account in question.
While getting a minor tip or advice from an average-skilled player while playing may not be as egregious as it sounds, online poker platforms have banned the practice of ghosting altogether. In order to ensure only one player plays on each account, poker sites do their best to ban any players engaging in ghosting.
How Poker Ghosting Became a Real Problem
Ghosting in poker isn’t entirely new, but the problem has become a lot more problematic with the rise of online poker, and even more so in recent years with high-speed internet and various real-time assistance tools coming into the picture.
While it’s very hard to impact the decisions of another player in live poker games, online poker makes it easy, allowing players to ghost you in person or via an online platform.
A few of the most common methods used to ghost players are:
- Sharing the screen via the internet
- Instant communication via text or voice messages
- Account transfer across devices
As online tournaments grew in size and prize pools reached millions, the incentive to cheat increased.
High-stakes events became particularly vulnerable, where even a small edge could translate into massive financial gains.
One of the biggest turning points was the rise of poker solvers and advanced analytical tools. These programs can calculate optimal strategies, giving players near-perfect guidance in certain situations.
While using such tools for study is widely accepted, using them during live play is considered cheating and often overlaps with ghosting.
Additionally, the growth of staking arrangements contributed to the issue. In staking, investors back players financially in exchange for a share of profits. While legitimate, some staking setups blur ethical lines, with backers sometimes influencing decisions during play.
High-profile scandals and accusations in the poker community have also brought ghosting into the spotlight.
Professional players have publicly called out suspicious performances, and investigations have revealed instances where players received unauthorized help deep in major tournaments.
All of this has turned ghosting from a fringe concern into a central issue for online poker integrity.
How Online Poker Sites Deal with Ghosting
Online poker sites these days take ghosting in poker very seriously, and have introduced specific rules against it, as well as tools and methods to detect and fight it.
The different anti-ghosting rules and detection tools can be divided into a few distinct categories:
- Terms of Service: Major online poker sites have terms of service that clearly prohibit all forms of ghosting, real-time assistance, account sharing, and advice-taking during live play.
- Behavioral Analysis: The operators analyze player behavior with automatic tools and manually. Sudden changes in playing style, unusual timing patterns, and other small changes can get your account flagged for potential ghosting.
- Location and Device Monitoring: One of the biggest signs of ghosting is a player logging off from one location and logging in at another. The operators track IP addresses and geolocations to determine where the player is playing from at all times.
- Hand History Reviews: If your account gets flagged for ghosting, the security team may conduct a detailed review of your hand histories in search of inconsistencies.
- Real-Time Security Measures: Some of the biggest poker sites have implemented automatic and AI-powered security tools that search for potential ghosting and other types of cheating across the platform.
- Player Reporting: Finally, operators rely on reporting and “whistle-blowing” to catch cheaters. If you get reported for ghosting, the operator may investigate your account before letting you know.
How to Detect Ghosting and Why You Should Avoid It
If you play online poker a lot, you should be aware that some of your opponents may engage in cheating from time to time, including poker ghosting.
To prevent this from happening, it’s important to stay vigilant and look out for signs of such activities.
Uncharacteristic changes in player strategy, timing inconsistencies, and sudden bouts of aggression in late-game play may indicate a player has allowed someone else to take over for them.
However, it’s also important to realize that good players also shift gears in various stages of tournament play, which means none of these indicators alone is enough to prove ghosting.
If you notice someone potentially cheating through ghosting, report them to the operator. With enough reports, the account will get investigated and eventually likely banned.
Why You Should Always Avoid Ghosting
Ghosting in poker may seem like a good idea, as it can potentially give you an edge by applying a more skillful player’s understanding of poker at the most important stages of play.
However, if you get caught ghosting or being ghosted, your account will get banned, your name will get flagged by the operators, and your reputation will be in danger.
The online poker community is relatively small, and players who got caught cheating in high-stakes games, such as Ali Imsirovic, never recovered from the impact of the accusations made against them.
If you want to win at poker, do everything you can to master the game, use poker training sites, play a lot, and make sure that every decision at the tables is actually your own.
Poker Ghosting in a Nutshell
Ghosting is one of the most common forms of cheating in online poker these days, usually related to “poker stables,” with experienced players taking over for novices in key stages of poker tournaments.
If you play online poker, make sure to stay vigilant of players who are potentially getting ghosted, report them to the operators, and stay away from the practice yourself.
Poker ghosting will get you banned from online poker sites and destroy your reputation in the poker community, so make sure to play fairly and make your poker decisions yourself.
