Players on Bodog and Bovada will be able to better police their own games from today, following the implementation of a new collusion detection feature in the client. Players can now request hand histories that include the hole cards of all players at the table—whether they reach showdown or not. All hand histories are anonymous and only reveal all hole cards after a 24 hour wait period.
Players will have access to the enhanced hand histories for 31 days, but will only be allowed to request those hands in which they were dealt. Currently the requested hands are only visible in the client but Jonas Odman, VP of the Bodog Poker Network told pokerfuse that there will soon be an option to download the hand histories in text format.
As originally reported in December, the additional access is intended to mitigate the risk of collusion that was increased as a result of Bodog’s move to anonymous tables, a part of its controversial “Recreational Poker Model” initiative.
The changes caused all poker hands to be played completely anonymously including the removal of all screen names from the poker tables of all real money cash and tournament games.
Odman commented, “Collusion is a natural concern for any poker room but this new additional feature puts the player in full control.”
Originally Bodog had removed all access to hand histories, but have since reinstated the ability of players to view the hole cards of mucked hands that go to showdown. This new addition will allow players to see if there was blatant collusion at individual tables, but the larger issue of more subtle forms of cheating—requiring analysis of hand histories across multiple sessions—is still not possible.
