I am pretty sure that most poker fans would have spotted the large publicity surrounding recent scams in the poker world relating to cheating and such forth.  The players involved in some of the recent online scams have all received lifetime bans from the particular sites that they scammed, the actions taken by the sites has sparked significant debate.The players obviously broke the rules of the online sites, but the main factor in question is whether or not the distributed punishment was too harsh or if it was suitable.

There are a number of existing arguments both in favour and going against the application of a lifetime online poker for the players concerned. One proposed argument supporting the view that a lifetime ban is unfair is that when the players are older, for example say in ten years, are they likely to have learnt their lesson and not reoffend? This is a significant question, as many people do make mistakes at some point in their lives, and are then often accepted back by society after it is realised that they truly regret what they have done even for such severe crimes as murder etc.

This could signal that it would be wrong to ban the players concerned from playing online for the rest of their lives. On the other hand a general rule within both society and the law, especially with circumstances like this is that it is necessary to make an example out of offenders in order to act as a possible deterrent to potential future cheats. If some cheats take a chance and attempt to scam a poker site and get caught in the act, but are then let off with a light punishment, then what could possibly put cheats off trying a scam if the likely rewards of their actions outweigh the possible punishment they may get?

Overall, the situation is one that has proved to be quite controversial among players. With matters such as this it appears that it is simply down to personal opinion on what you as an individual believe is the ‘right’ thing to do to the cheats. Whatever all you poker fans out there believe yourself, I am pretty sure that the feeling is mutual in terms of thinking that the poker world certainly does not need n increase in immoral behaviour such as this. The impact of such an increase in cheating and scams could prove very consequential to the online poker world, pushing player’s offline, in turn taking away a huge amount of revenue from the industry.