Ghosting Rampant in Most Online Poker Tournaments
Ghosting occurs all the time in multi-table tournaments. An increasing problem with online poker is how many people are playing one hand? The ghosting cheating method uses another person to offer their opinion. First, the other person (ghost) is watching the player in the tournament and the player is telling the ghost what cards he has via telephone, instant messenger, or in person and offers advice as to what course of action the player should take during the hand.
Ghosting is nearly impossible to regulate or stop, and thus it is actively happening in nearly every tournament. Officially, the card room policies state that more then one player to a hand is ok because they have no way of knowing how to stop it from occurring. Ghosting is simply another way cheating and is not the way the game is intended to be played. You can imagine that ghosting can get out of hand very quickly, as players probably are already charging other players for their service to ghost them.
Ghosting is unethical and goes against the one player to a hand rule which was a founding principle of poker. As it is impossible to detect players being ghosted and using the expert ghost for analysis and decision making it becomes tougher to win tournaments.
