How a Crooked Internet Poker SiteMight Cheat

First, let me say that I am not asserting that any internet poker site is cheating. This is a discussion of how a hypothetical crooked internet poker site might pull it off.


Assume that www.crookedPoker.com (http://www.crookedPoker.com) (I wonder if that domain name is registered) isn't satisfied with the money that they make from the rake and the interest they earn on money deposited by players, but the market doesn't allow them to simply increase the rake. They decide to put some "house players" into the game. The "house players" could be humans or computer routines, but they would probably be computer routines, because computer routines won't want a cut of the action, or blow the whistle if their cut isn't big enough.


Now, www.crookedPoker.com (http://www.crookedPoker.com) could just program their house players to play solid poker, but because they are greedy, unethical scumbags, they decide to give them an unbeatable edge. One way to do this would be to make sure that their "house players" always get the best cards. However, there is a more subtle say to give their players an advantage that would be much harder to detect. Suppose that the cards are shuffled and dealt as close to perfectly random as the best software engineers can make them. However, assume that our hypothetical "house player", before the first betting round, can see all of the players' pocket cards and all of the board cards displayed face up. Do you think this might give him an advantage? Note that the "house player" could change names as often as necessary to evade dectection by statistical analysis. If www.crookedPoker.com (http://www.crookedPoker.com) is going to get caught, it will be accountants that do it by auditing their books, not people analyzing their card distribution.

very interesting......


however, assuming this is happening, the place would ony have houseplayers winning, and eventually the customers would leave becuase they would continually loose.


And secondly, the only place this would happen would hence be a place where customers are easily replacable or plentiful. But if that the case, they should be making $$ already, you would think....

You are right. I would think that a site running player banked poker games and raking them would have the least motivation to cheat of any internet gambling site. I find it amusing that the "Paradise is crooked" crowd seems to think that every losing streak or bad beat is evidence of cheating.

"Note that the "house player" could change names as often as necessary to evade dectection by statistical analysis."


No it couldn't. A statistical analysis of players grouped by the number of hands they've played would reveal a winning bias in favor of certain players that play fewer as opposed to more hands. A competitor site or player could spot it and publish it. In over two years of tens of millions of internet poker hands no one has done this.


Any site that caused it's customers to lose more than they would at a competitor site would lose customers, for the same reason you see more weak players at 3-6 than 20-40: people don't hang out where they get killed. The cheating mechanism you propose would self-destruct.

I don't really believe that internet poker sites in general, or Paradise in particular, arec heating. I notice that Paradise is about to deal their 150,000,000 the game. Assuming this doesn't include the freebies, and they average $1.00 rake per game (just a quess, but even if I'm off by a factor of five, you get the point), could someone please explain to me why they think Paradise would want to cheat players?


I just wanted to point out that screwing around with card distribution is not the only way the hypothetical crooked site could cheat players. Curiously, all of the "Paradise is crooked crowd seems to think that there's something wrong with the dealing there, even though they can never seem to come up with any evidence to support their claim. Note that neither rigged dealing nor players betting with knowledge of all cards makes any sense at all unless some of the players are "house players". I really don't think most of the "Paradise is rigged" crowd understands how player banked poker with a rake works.