It depends on how paranoid you are as to how soon you think about this element of the game. Many people wrote off the entire concept of online poker for the very reason they feel that it is open to abuse. The fact of the matter is: online cheating exists. There are those out there that feel that they should try and get every edge they can, even if it involves cheating. There have been sites out there, in the past, that have cheated and been found out. There was even a site that had its random number generator cracked so cheaters knew what cards were about to be dealt. However, the theme so far tends to be that sooner or later the cheaters will get caught, but will your bankroll fall victim before they do?

Of course, one of the fundamental problems with online poker is the questionable legal status of the game in the United States. Some states have draconian anti-gambling laws that pretty much make it illegal to toss a coin. There are even real life casinos in the US that allow people to play Blackjack just as long as the cards are displayed on a computer monitor instead of real physical cards. Of course poker is in a kind of legal limbo because it is fairly reasonable to argue that it is a game of skill. Because of all this, most well established poker sites that exist are physically located in places like Costa Rica where US gambling laws do not apply. It's much like the early days of pirate radio. This foreign and almost illicit feel to the sites does little to breed trust.

However, despite the concerns about these sites, if you are dealing with one of the mainstream sites that exist today, that have survived this long, there is probably less to worry about with regards to being cheated by big business. The fact is, online poker has exploded at an incredible rate in the past few years and any kind of smart business mind has realized that creating trust and loyal paying customers is the way to make a fortune. Sites like PartyPoker.com and PokerStars.com that have joined the World Poker Tour have far more to gain in sponsorship deals and celebrity endorsement than conning a few unsuspecting people out of a few dollars. The rake will make them all the money they need.

As people begin to realize that online poker is here to stay, a selection of quality sites emerge that thousands of players trust with thousands of dollars. The rogue sites will become few and far between and are easy to identify by the simple fact that no one is playing there. It is not unusual to find popular poker sites with over 10,000 people playing at any given time. Since people gravitate towards the sites that treat them right, the unscrupulous will wither and die.

So with the corporate and trustworthy sites taking your money the legitimate way via the rake, what do you have to fear online? The most obvious answer is collusion. I'm playing poker right now in the same room as you and my buddy is also playing in the same room. While we are playing together we are also on the phone sharing information about our hands. In games like Omaha that's eight cards from a deck of 52 we know are in play. In fact if we can see a board of five cards and we hold eight between us that's thirteen cards we can now account for. Add one more buddy on a three way conference call and we have seventeen cards accounted for. That's almost a third of all the cards in the deck we can know about. That's quite an edge. Of course games like Holdem would be more like eleven cards which is about a fifth of the cards we can know.

It is an unsettling thought to know that we might happen upon a room in which two or more players are in collusion, laughing at our every move as they happily share card information with one another.

So just how much should this kind of thinking factor into our play? Well probably not very much. One of the great things about playing online is that if you are not doing well at a virtual table you can simply move on to another virtual table. If things are not going well for you, whether you suspect online cheating or not you can move to another table or even a whole new site. Actually, this might not be bad advice for online poker generally. It is often tempting to keep playing to win back money that you have lost, but if you are losing badly then maybe you are simply outclassed. Ego makes it difficult sometimes for us to admit this, but there is a saying that in poker you should, "check your ego at the door." This is good advice. It is one thing to be good and play aggressively, but it is quite another to believe yourself to be unbeatable. Sometimes even a world champion is outclassed. If you play poker to win and you are in a game that is not going your way, do not be afraid to play another game that you can beat. There are only a handful of people in the world who will become world champions, so why not simply avoid those games that are not going your way. Take the emotion and ego out of it. Don't keep losing to a better player or potential cheats, simply move on and be graceful in defeat even if you believe there is some collusion. Just remember that online cheats are usually such bad players that the information they gain from cheating is not going to make them amazing players. They are still bad players, they just have a little bit more information, it does not make them good.

Any poker site worth playing on will have some very sophisticated tools to discover online cheating and collusion. It is in the interest of the legitimate site to eradicate this problem to help sustain the image of the site as a safe and worthwhile place to play. No real life casino would do well if it had a reputation for cheating. So although online cheating is something you should be aware of and report if you suspect it, just consider that often you may just be outplayed. But that is fine, there are hundreds of games with suckers just dying to give their money to you. The best advice is to be vigilant in where you play and with whom you play, but for the most part if the game is not going your way, move on and seek out the suckers who want to give you their money. To almost quote a popular movie, "...if you have not spotted the sucker in the first thirty minutes...then you are the sucker..."