News: Explained: Why using a VPN in poker is cheating

Following a very costly use of a Virtual Private Network, we explain why you should not use them when you play online poker.

We have a lot of new players at PokerStrategy.com and we have to therefore remember that a lot of the conversations that experienced players take for granted will sometimes go over their head. So when stories in the poker world come up that only make sense to experienced poker players, I am going to spell out what we are talking about for the newbies.

Last week we had quite a dramatic story where Gordon Vayo was countersued by PokerStars for forging evidence in his suit against them. Vayo had almost $700k of winnings seized by PokerStars for a tournament he won playing on a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in the United States (while claiming he was playing in Canada).

Nobody would question whether forging documents was unethical, but why is playing poker on a VPN considered a form of cheating?

The main PokerStars site is not available to US players and if American players want to get around this, they have to travel to a country where they can. A VPN allows players to pose as if they are online in a different location to where they are and in this case it allowed a player to play in the US on a site that was prohibited there.

Using a VPN in itself is not unethical, people use them for a number of work and privacy reasons (I, for example, sometimes use a Gibraltar VPN to access PokerStrategy internal staff resources). However, VPNs are also sometimes used to access things banned in the country you are in.

Still cheating, just not ‘in-game’

Gordon Vayo SCOOP — He didn't have an unfair advantage, but he shouldn't have been there

Vayo’s win, within the confines of the rules of poker, was in no way cheating. He won the tournament fair and square and didn’t have access to any extra information. He wasn’t playing on another account either, so his opponent’s knew it was him. So in this respect, the only people being cheated were PokerStars. Given how hard it is for US players to play online, a lot of poker players have expressed sympathy with Vayo.

This is still a problem for a number of reasons, mainly that it was putting PokerStars in a position where they were unwittingly breaking the law. This would likely cost PokerStars a lot of money in legal costs if it continued, so of course they have to take action to prevent it.

This is also not good news for the prospects of online poker in the US and at the very least using a VPN is bad optics for the game. Black market activity hurts the image of the game every time something like this happens, which is particularly bad when it's in a country where the game is fighting to exist in the first place.

Then if you want to be purely results based about it, while he won the tournament by playing well, he still technically denied money from the prize pool to everyone else who were playing in the event legally (including US players who travelled to play it).

Very short sighted

Not only was the forgery part of the equation stupid, but not bothering to travel for a high buy-in online tournament is very short sighted.

Just as the winner of a major sporting event is likely to be subject to more scrutiny where it comes to drugs testing, anyone who wins a major online MTT for six-figures is going to be on the radar of an online poker room’s security team.

It’s important to understand why VPN-ing is prohibited in online poker, especially if you currently think it’s harmless and find yourself wanting to fire up a few tables while you are away on holiday. Don’t do it, it’s not as bad as some other forms of cheating, but it’s still cheating.

What poker rules or concepts do you not understand? Let us know in the comments:

Still cheating, just not ‘in-game’

Very short sighted

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