Calls for regulation amongst online gambling is on the increase as the online gamblers fall victim to cheating in a variety of sectors. An online poker company has had to pay millions to players, sports betting has been in the headlines throughout the year as various sport professionals take bribes to fix games and bingo while not the victim of cheats is full of rogue operators with unfair constraints on player’s accounts or the lack of information relating to the number of tickets sold for a game.

Typically land based gambling operators are regulated and licensed which protects players. Information on game statistics have to be provided and players can make informed choices. Local authorities can walk into a venue and close them down or give them hefty fines. Online gambling is far less constrained even when laws exist. Look how long it took the US government to enforce its long established laws on online gambling. Even now some of the smaller online sites accept bets from US gamblers. Gambling at land based sites also offers other forms security. Generally in many forms of gambling, participants can see fellow gamblers, number of sales as well as the winners. However this is not the case in online gambling and in addition to game fixing, online gambling operators or cheats have pretty much had a free for all at the expense of the innocent gamblers.

Sports Betting

While cheating in sports has long been a problem there are renewed calls for an independent Government body to monitor and investigate. Australians are looking into options such as the creation of a Gambling Commission would carry out forensic investigations into betting

Executive Director of the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports, Malcolm Speed said recent controversies, including the police investigation into suspect betting on the recent NRL match between the Canterbury Bulldogs and the North Queensland Cowboys, and the no-ball scandal in the recent Pakistan/England cricket Test, were "the sort of things we're looking at".

David O'Reilly at Betfair commented: "If the sport is perceived as honest, straight and fair that is good for betting firms because people will spend money betting with confidence," he says.

"If you take the Pakistan allegations, although unrelated to the UK regulated betting industry... it is not really a positive story for betting in the UK.

"That is because the perception is that 'cricket is now something we may have to be careful about'."

Another sport that has attracted a lot of attention recently for match fixing is snooker. John Higgins was cleared of match-fixing allegations but has been banned for 6 months in recent weeks for failing to report the illegal approach for him to throw frames. Two other allegations of match fixing related to snooker which are not related to Higgins are still being investigated.

Bingo

While cheating in bingo is rarely a topic due to the sophisticated equipment in use there are regular reports of bingo players ‘feeling’ that they have been cheated especially in bingo forums. Land based bingo clubs in the UK are regulated by the Gambling Commission and as such operators must adhere to a strict code of conduct. Online bingo operators based outside the UK are not subject to such regulations and many operators take advantage of this position to profit from bingo fans. A typical example is the withdrawal constraints at many online bingo sites. Players are offered attractive deposit bonuses and then unable to withdrawal money out of their account or winnings even when they have made significant deposits. At some sites players need to wager 20+ times the sum of their deposit and bonus. So a player that deposits £100 and receives a £100 bonus would need to wager over £4,000 on bingo before they were able to make a withdrawal. Having carried out reviews we found that at many sites the ‘small print’ with such terms and conditions on was ‘extremely hard to find’ and in some case ‘not available’ Other online operators misinform bingo players with advertising such as a 900% bonus which in reality is a 300% bonus on the first 3 deposits. One of the biggest problems with online bingo operators is that they ‘withhold’ information regarding ticket sales so that players cannot work out either the odds of winning or the amount of money that the bingo operator is taking out of the players stakes.

Bingo clubs in the UK have an obligation to ‘clearly’ display to ‘all’ bingo players the number of tickets in play, the price to play and the prize money available for that game. As such bingo players can calculate the chances of winning in any particular game and how much money is being taken by the operator. If you have a win in a bingo club you are given the prize money without a constraint of having to spend more money.

Poker

The BBC last week reported how Pokerstars has refunded $2.1m (£1.63m) to 25,000 poker players who have unwittingly gone up against poker "bots" - automatic card-playing software programmes or groups of players based in China that colluded by "going easy" with each other in high-stakes games.

“By being less aggressive when other members of their ring were at risk of being expelled from the game, they were able to collectively stay in tournaments longer and win more cash from rival players who were oblivious to the fact they were being cheated” the BBC reported.

The problem faced by gaming companies is that it is nearly impossible to prevent collusion as players can share information about cards or bets through the use of a telephone or instant messenger without being traced. Where problems are detected this is normally after the games when experts establish regular patterns of behaviour involving the same players. Unfortunately gamblers they are unlikely to get a refund unless they raise the issue themselves and many times this is unlikely to be discovered by the operator or ‘not made public’ making it hard for players to prove they have been cheated.

A former Pokerstars employee commented: "We had a hard job keeping up, just because of the volume of complaints from players [about suspected cheating],"

"Not that all of the complaints were legitimate - 95% were just bitter [customers] because they lost, and there was no collusion. But Pokerstars still pledged to investigate them all."

He further added that the company failed to use the software that would provide some protection. He claims that during his time working for Pokerstars, staff switched off the automatic alerts that flagged up possible cases of collusion because they were so overwhelmed by the number of alerts popping up.

It is unlikely that poker operators can rule out cheating or even know which game the cheats operate. In fact given the fact that the report states the Pokerstar failed to inform Chinese authorities of the matter and they chose not to even use the software at times are Poker companies really that interested in identifying those cheating? After all with the exception of the times they have to make refunds it is not really the online poker companies that loss out – it is the other poker players.

UK Gambling Commission

The UK Gambling Commission claims to have received 400 inquiries relating to gambling sites licensed overseas in the past 12 months.

"We only regulate gambling operators based in Great Britain," a statement from the commission said. "When we receive an inquiry relating to an operator regulated in an offshore jurisdiction the consumer is advised to directly contact the operator concerned."