It seemed like he was giving his money away. Maybe the whole game isn't,' Witteles says.Īnd as Witteles found out, it wasn't, at least on a popular Internet site called 'Absolute Poker.' His suspicions were first aroused in a high stakes game of Texas Hold 'Em, against what he thought was an incompetent, and lucky, amateur using the screen name 'Grey Cat.'
So, you don't know if the whole thing is legitimate, even if all the players sitting with you are just as legitimate as you are. 'Not only are you not looking at your opponents, you're not looking at the cards being dealt, you're not looking at who's dealing them to you. You're just playing the cards that tumble out of the computer,' Kroft remarks. 'You're not lookin' at somebody sittin' across the table. Witteles says online poker is much different - faster, more aggressive and less personal. 'You could do it from your own living room,' he says. Todd Witteles, a former computer scientist-turned-poker pro, says you no longer have to go to Vegas to find a high stakes game. But it hasn't stopped thousands of mostly young men from making this their livelihood.
And unlike land-based casinos, there is almost no official regulation, enforcement or supervision.
