It’s kind of a nuanced answer to this, the games were SO profitable for a long time that it didn’t matter if a few people every couple of tables were cheating. I mean it does obviously, anytime you are being cheated automatically eats into your win rate. But you could pick your spots and still reap the benefits of the soft fields and as long as you played the correct types of hands even cheaters can’t overcome that super easily.

Now there are bots in the app scene, the rakes became absurdly high, as well as the hugely diminished player pool it’s just not worth the effort to try and overcome all of that and cheating for the most part. You have to pick your groups selectively and your games selectively and even then you have to assume you are still being cheated at least part of the time. I’m going to be completely honest I’ve shared hole cards in some app games with a friend or two of mine that we were certain there was cheating happening, if only to protect ourselves a little bit. We never did it to set up plays or squeeze people out of pots or swindle people or anything, basically just to stay out of each others way and protect our stacks from those we deduced were doing the same or even being more malicious about it. I don’t feel great about it as I’ve never cheated playing poker in any other form, but at some point you have to do what you have to do to protect yourself…or not play, which is what I do now mostly. Point blank if you are playing in app games you ARE being cheated no questions asked. You need to go in eyes open to the risks.