I guess you can't technically call this cheating because they are exploiting a flaw that, in my opinion, should be addressed by Party Poker. However, I think on a moral level it isn't right and I personally consider it a form of cheating.

One exploit of the Party Poker software that I am finding increasingly annoying is when people allow themselves to disconnect when faced with calling a large bet from an opponent. This really sucks because instead of folding your hand, Party Poker will let you continue on with the hand. This allows players to consciously allow themselves to disconnect after the time to make a decision runs out. This way they do not have to put more money in the pot in order to see thru to the end of the hand.

It serves two purposes for those players that do it. 1) It helps them to win pots when they have the best hand that they might have otherwise folded when faced with actually having to call a large raise. 2) It helps them to minimize their losses when they do not have the best hand by enabling them to see the hand thru to the end without having to call the raise.

I tend to see this at least once a night now. Last night someone did it twice (which is the total number of Disconnect Protections that PP gives you) and someone at the table said they were on the phone with PP and that PP said they were monitoring the table and that they were going to lock out the offending player's account. Don't know if this is true but if PP sees this as an issue why don't they address it with an update to the software. I would think that they should be able to tell the difference between someone who actually loses network connectivity vs. someone who simply allows the time to run out before acting.

Anyone else have any insight on this issue?