1 reply to this topic

[Canuckickstan]

Has anybody heard about the online cheat programs that let you see the other players cards ? It scares the heck out of me to know that they exist, or do they ? I would think that the online sites would know about them and do anything they could to shut them out. Or maybe they are just in it for the rake.

[Emptyeye]

I have the feeling I know what's coming--"you're paranoid", probably some jokes about a Pattern Mapper, etc.That said, a number of years ago (Back in like 1999, before the poker explosion), someone DID crack the Random Number Generator of what was, at the time, one of the bigger online poker sites, and produced a program much as you described. I'll try not to get overly technical, but they were able to do this because the site in question used a timestamp and NOTHING else to randomize the cards. Once someone figured out where the timestamp was coming from, it was a fairly simple process to determine what cards would come out when.However, this is 2005, not 1999. The randomization methods used now are far more sophisticated than just a timestamp--I believe PokerStars, for instance, uses a white noise generator as an aid in randomization--and would thus be much more difficult to crack.So really, you have little to worry about nowadays from that perspective.