If you can’t hack the machine, you have to hack the players. To do that, you need to team up so you can share information about which cards are available for draws, who has the best possible hand, and how to get the most money from the unsuspecting players. With the advent of cheap or even free long distance phone calls, cheaters can phone a friend and get a lifeline on which cards are out there and how to approach the hand. Poker players who want to form teams of three or more need to go through instant messaging (IM) services to avoid conference call charges, but there’s always the danger that someone will type “8s 9d” in the poker software’s chat box instead of the IM client software. Oops!
