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Back in the days of the Wild West when poker was played by the pioneers of the day in gambling houses and saloon bars, if any player was caught trying to cheat it was known as a capital offence. Punishment was often doled out swiftly and harshly across the table. No courts, judges or juries were necessary in those circumstances.

Today, if someone is caught in the act of cheating in an online poker game, they will very often get away with it without a shot being fired.

Last year, online poker players were cheated out of over $20 million by some unscrupulous people in a scandal that rocked the online gambling world to the core. The ruse was only uncovered because a group of players took it upon themselves to expose the scam using the Internet itself.

Poker burst into life to become the richest online sporting event in the world when, in the 2003 WSOP, Chris Moneymaker, then an unknown accountant, won the $2.5 million top prize. Whether it was because of the interest generated in that particular WSOP, the televising and Internet coverage of the event, or the fact that someone who was an unknown could take the top prize, that all of a sudden, every single amateur poker player thought they could be the next big winner at poker. Last year, around 7,000 entrants competed in the tournament that carried prize money in the region of $180 million.

The poker fever that has gripped the gambling world hasn't stopped there. Neither is this phenomenon confined to the casinos and gambling houses of Las Vegas, Macau, Monte Carlo and everywhere else. As the Internet provides easy access to big stakes poker games every minute of every day of the year, online poker rooms now attract in the region of half a million players worldwide at any given time. 

While this industry, worth a staggering $18 billion is still illegal in the United States, the current ban is practically impossible to enforce. This is because the Internet websites and the software that randomly deals the cards while keeping track of each player's bets are all located in other parts of the world, safely beyond U.S. law enforcement's jurisdiction.

Unlike licensed and certified land-based casinos, Internet poker rooms are only regulated by the industry's own internal regulators and overseers. This means there is often little in the way of legal recompense in the country of the player, should things go badly wrong. This hasn't stopped the thousands of players, most of whom are young men, from turning online poker into their livelihood.

Former computer scientist Todd Witteles, who is now a poker pro, discovered that all was not as it should be at least at one online poker room called Absolute Poker. He said that while you may believe that you are playing in a real poker game with real players, in reality you and the other players sitting around the virtual table are playing against a computer. That computer is dealing the cards and therefore is running the game.

His suspicions became aroused during one high stakes Texas Hold'Em game. He was playing against what he believed to be an incompetent, albeit lucky amateur, who was using "Grey Cat" as his screen name. Apparently, Grey Cat was new and seemed to be a terrible player. He should have been losing heavily because of the way he was playing, but in fact was killing every game he played in, day after day.

Other players also noticed they were losing big to apparent novices on Ultimate Bet, sister site to Absolute Poker. Some players were reportedly being fleeced to the tune of anywhere up to $250,000.  

Lawyer and poker pro Serge Ravitch, began using Poker Tracker, a statistical software program to review several thousand old hands. What he found made no sense. Certain players were winning far too much for the way they were playing. It was as if they could see everyone's cards. You could be a terrible poker player, but if you knew what cards the other player's were holding, you'll win every time. It wasn't long before the Internet forums and chat rooms were abuzz with reports of suspect players. It wasn't long before the community of online poker players set about their own investigation.

Late in 2007, the self styled poker sleuths got their lucky break. When they made a request for the hand histories belonging to a suspected cheat known as Potripper, Absolute Poker sent the details in an Excel spreadsheet. It contained data including all cards played in several thousand games involving Potripper and his opponents. By doing some cross checking of games, they soon discovered the IP address and user account belonged to the computer of an employee of Absolute Poker. They had found the culprit.

When they confronted the company, whose headquarters are based in Costa Rica, they finally acknowledged a former employee was responsible for cracking their software code, then cheating online players by viewing their cards. Unfortunately, in exchange for revealing how it was done, the company cut a deal to protect the identity of the cheat.

The company is regulated by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, who eventually fined the two websites $2 million in total as well as ordering them to pay back player's losses.

This just goes to show that when players are cheated and they get together to investigate, they can make things happen and win the day in the end.