I get a lot of emails and see a ton of allegations that the poker rooms must be cheating, especially from folks who are taking bad beats. So, are they cheating?

Let me try to answer this with a true story that recently took place in our poker club…

To maintain his privacy, I’ll just call our poker player Dale. Dale joined our Club in January, and it wasn’t long and we started seeing a bunch of forum posts about the bad beats he was taking.

He posted hand history information, proving his case. As usual, we took this seriously and analyzed the hands and provided our feedback as a mentoring team.

The very next week, Dale posts more bad beat stories. A few days later, Dale accuses Poker Stars of being rigged. He provided a bunch of “evidence” and made numerous accusations, but we could not find enough facts to really support his point of view.

We made a special effort to spend even more 1-1 time with Dale, as we felt bad for him and his continued losses. We urged Dale to take the time to study the instructional videos on SNG and MTT tourneys.

Then the accusations and bad beat posts subsided for a few weeks. Then all of a sudden, Dale reported doing well at Poker Stars, but he was now convinced that Full Tilt must be rigged, as he was once again taking an improbable number of bad beats there.

There must have been a collective sigh from all of us who were desperately trying to help Dale improve his poker game – I know I for one was growing weary of this…

But, instead of deriding him and shewing Dale away (he’d have been blasted out of existence on any other poker forum on the planet right after his original, first post), we redoubled our efforts and started mentoring him along as best we could. He was somewhat argumentative, so this wasn’t easy.

Dale’s next post shocked us all. He said he was quiting poker – he’d had enough of the bad beats and just didn’t think he could take it any more.

Man, I’ve never seen so many people step up to help someone before in my life. It was as if Dale had fallen overboard into a raging sea full of sharks.

Everyone jumped in and offered about every form of persuasion and advice I’ve seen. In that one instance, we all pulled together to save Dale’s poker life.

As painful as it had been dealing with his continual whining, crying, bitching and moaning and accusing everyone except the real cause of his poker woes (himself and his bad decisions), none of us could bear admitting defeat and seeing him fail. It would be like someone dying and being gone that we knew so well.

And that was the turning point. From that point forward, Dale never accused another poker room of being at fault. He started listening and learning what we were teaching him. He started seeing improved results. He actually started posting positive results for a change.

About a month ago, Dale came in 2nd place in our Club’s weekly MTT tournament. A couple weeks later, he came in 2nd place again. He’s also reported a positive ROI at his Sit and Go’s for a change.

Best of all, we don’t have to defend the poker rooms anymore, since they were never at fault in the first place.

So why am I sharing this story with you? Because Dale’s is not a story of going from nearly broke to being a WSOP multi-millionaire like Chris Moneymaker. It’s not a story of increasing his bankroll by 50X like some of our other members.

Dale’s is a story of survival to fight another day, and realization that the real enemy is within when it comes to poker. We must first master our own demons, accept the responsibility for our own actions and decisions…

Then and only then, is it possible to become a winning poker player. Dale still whines a little and talks too much at times, but that’s just Dale. We’ve come to understand and respect him.

And we’re glad he’s still with us – fighting to win another pot along with everyone else at the final table.

Rick