Men Nguyen added another bracelet to his already impressive collection in this year’s World Series of Poker by besting the beastly 7-card stud field. This makes bracelet number seven for Men, and moves him into a sixth-place tie with Phil Ivey and Billy Baxter, and only a few back from uberlegends like Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth.

The money Men picked up was undoubtedly of lesser importance than the history-making bracelet, but Nguyen’s $394,800 take-home is still nothing to sneeze at. As the final table shrunk, the crowd began to pay more attention to the Players Champion opponents of a week previous, Vladimir Schmelev and Michael Mizrachi. But in a rare break from his table poise, Men took on a little of Scotty’s air and began riling the crowd up with some banter.

It was a clean sweep for Men, handling the final table until he sat heads up with Brandon Adams. Men had the chip stack and refused to come off a hand. The cards were on his side for much of the match, and even when they weren’t, Men approached the game fearlessly and caught a five-outer on seventh street.

Men is known as “The Master” for a reason. Whether he’s schooling amateur donkeys on best online casinos or suiting up in the WSOP to take down fellow professionals, he’s forever a hard nut to crack.

There are still dozens of events left in the WSOP, including the Main Event. Men’s running hot at the moment, and has just increased his odds in the big one. The world should be on the lookout as Men appears hungry for bracelet number eight.

It was abut 2005, and the internet poker boom was in full swing, but poker was by no means in it’s infancy even then. I was playing mainly two and three table sng’s at 888 and I was doing very well and cashing out nice and regularly.

But sometimes, like most players, I would switch to a cash game just for the heck of it. (I like cash, it’s where I came from).

So one night I was sat at a half empty 10 seat low stakes cash games and not doing so good. It was a mid week night and so you would expect that it would be a bit slow. Slow nights at slow tables tend to make the regular players a bit chatty, so there was a nice feeling at the table, with a bit of friendly chat and banter.

The players hadn’t changed much in a few hours, one dropping in or out every now and again, when suddenly two new players sat down within seconds of each other. It was habit back then, not so much now, to say hi to new players at a certain type of table, to keep the friendliness alive. So one of the seated players said ‘hi’ but got no answer.

Fair enough, not every one want s to chat, or even speaks English, so nothing unusual there.

After a few minutes, and a hand or two had passed, one of the players said ‘You ready?’ – just like that, didn’t make too much sense in the context of no conversation at the table. It does happen that a player that was multi-tabling would type into the wrong chat box by mistake. So nothing too unusual really, just a bit odd.

The the other new player said ‘OK’. That was it, nothing else. No one had spoken, so that too was out of context.

After the next few hands it became clear what was going on. These two geniuses had figured that by selecting the ‘ignore chat’ option on all the players that we wouldn’t be able to see what they were typing to each other.

And so they proceeded to tell each other what cards they were holding. In every hand.

That was some of the easiest money that I ever made at the poker table.

It happens again and again, when a new player of a certain type gets involved in the online poker world. I’m not too sure what that type is. It would not be fair to say ‘criminal’ when it is more likely the notion that there is no accountability that is the driving thought behind trying to cheat at poker.

It is probably part of the whole ‘the internet is anonymous’ thinking – thinking that leads to perfectly ordinary people behaving in a disgusting and vulgar way when on a public forum. I’m sure you know what I am talking about.

Well, anyway, when a certain type of player stumbles upon online poker, they soon start to see the angles. One of the first such angle is that they think if they had a buddy at the table then they would have a serious advantage over the other players. So, using instant messenger, or simply having another computer in their house, they set out to collude at the poker table and get rich, and quick.

Yes, it does happen, and probably every day. But the internet is not a new place any more. There are billion dollar companies operating out there on the net, and many of those billion dollar companies are online gaming companies, such as poker rooms.

These companies have a valuable product, and one big part of that product is it’s perception – that is, if it is not seen as safe and secure, it will not last very long.

So these online poker sites spend a lot of money investing in technology and skills to make sure that their product is safe and secure. That means that they are able to detect cheating in all it’s forms, and not just collusion. But certainly detecting collusion is one of their primary concerns.

And they are very good at it. When a billion-dollar product is at stake, you can bet that you either get very good at protecting it, or you go under.

So yes, it happens every day. And yes, those that try it not only get caught and banned, but they also lose whatever money they had in their poker account when they got banned. And they get blacklisted. So, good luck with that.