Online Random Card Generators

[AndyS]

Alright guys i'm new to 2+2 so if this post is in the wrong topic don't jump all over me please :)

Does anyone have any thoughts on random card gens? I know basically we see at least double the number of hands per hour as a b&m but I still seem to see odd match-ups of hole cards, extreme river beats and odd strings of wired cards etc.

I am questioning my play lately but also other factors as i'm down about $1000+ in my last 5-6 sessions playing $5-10 at www.fulltilt.com. I seem to be experiencing a number of bad beats lately. Play considerations aside does anyone have anything to conjecture about random generators?

-andy

[mosquito]

Each site has information about the RNG that they use.

[stonecoldnuts]

a 100BB swing is not terribly unusual. maybe you should review your play rather than assume that the sites are cheating for some reason.

[cardcounter0]

Yeah, like this hand I saw this weekend.

Capped preflop, lots of raising on the way, turns out the original raiser (unimproved KK) met up with the raise capper (unimproved AA), and the guy in the middle (with pocket 7s) took the pot down with his flopped set.

Pocket KK, AA, and 77 all together. Unfortunately, it happened in a live game, so no one could blame the RNG.

More proof that B&M poker is rigged.

[Rudbaeck]

I'm totally certain all large and reputable online sites have a better shuffle than the very best dealer in Vegas has. (By a factor of like 200 billion or so.)

[AndyS]

[ QUOTE ]
a 100BB swing is not terribly unusual. maybe you should review your play rather than assume that the sites are cheating for some reason.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know it's not unusual a swing and if you thoroughly read my post you'd realize i'm not 'assuming' anything. I have been looking at my play but thought maybe someone may have an intelligent thought or two regarding the RNG software. So please don't jump all over me about that as I did disclaim 'play considerations aside' ...

Is it in the realm of possibility that big hands might come up against each other more often to create action? Or that favorable turns and rivers for both hands may also come up more often for the same reason?

Let me further disclaim that I personally lean more towards the view of online card rooms being on the 'up and up'. I have been listening to other players griping about this a lot lately and have always had the response that

a) You just see so many more hands per hour that statistical abnormalities in hand matchups are bound to be more noticeable
b) random generators are much more 'random' than human shuffling
-as an addendum to this second response my question isn't about the theoretical randomness of RNGs vs. Human Shuffling. A perfect RNG would by definition randomize perfectly with absolutely no memory or bias. I am more gearing my question towards people that know the source code the RNGs would use and could venture a guess as to whether they could be written with Bias to create action or possibly have memory?

thanx for any responses in advance, Andy

[Rudbaeck]

Use the search function, someone here was bored and analyzed a few 100ks of hands from Party Poker and came to the conclusion they were all as expected.

[Beavis68]

I believe it is linked in the FAQ in the Zoo (internet forum).

[DocOfDan]

I know a little about RNG's, and from what I know it would way more hassle than its worth to engineer them to provide 'action' and yet not be obviously deficient when subjected to any statistical analysis

[B40]

[ QUOTE ]
Use the search function, someone here was bored and analyzed a few 100ks of hands from Party Poker and came to the conclusion they were all as expected.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's also this link.
http://www.pokerroom.com/main/page/games/cardStats

[PokerFink]

I think a lot of the "rigged" stories come from the fact that online play is generally tighter and better than live play, due to multi-tabling.

For example, I know that the last five times I flopped trips (pokerroom $25NL), someone else had the case card, and all five ended up being all-in hands, where I busted 4 times with a lower kicker. But I don't think this is because online is rigged, it's because the online NL players won't put lots of money in with a paired flop if they don't have trips. In a live game, if you flop trip nines on a K99 board, someone with a pair of kings is likely to pay you off decently well. Not so in an online game. Therefore, you forget about the small pots you win when you flop trips, and remember all the big ones where someone else had the case card.

Just my 2 cents.

[kowboy]

I dont know 100% about RCG, but cards I know. I have played lots of hands live and lots online. Have never seen a royal live and seen tons on line. Have seen quads at least once during a session but have seen four or five in short periods online. What are the likelihood assumptions? They may be random but they also do things that human shuffles dont. I dont get RCG's but playing cards is still fun online for small stakes. I wouldnt invest huge sums in something I just don't know for sure. /images/graemlins/spade.gif

[HTML Samurai]

That is awesome, I, and all of my friends, play there. Thanks for the link.

[Rudbaeck]

[ QUOTE ]
They may be random but they also do things that human shuffles dont.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, they don't. Atleast not Party, as that was the one analyzed here. Just as many quads, straights, monotone flops, aces when hero held pocket kings etc etc as expected.

But if winning players choose to stay off the net, who am I to argue. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[phlup]

I agree with kowboy. From what I've seen at Party during my two months, the board cards some in sets. I've pretty much figured out that you have three basic boards you can see. The low board (2-9) the middle board (6-J) and the High board (9-A). Now I know the boards overlap, but that's not the important part. What is important is that all these make perfect strait material. The more I play, the more often I can predict the river card (no lie I was able to correctly call the card number of the river 5 times last night and only played 45 minutes).

Now this sort of thing won't show up when you try to figure out if a RNG is working or not cus all you have to do is vary when these 3 types hit. if each show up one third of the time, then you're still going to see a every card show up the correct percentage of the time.

I've never played in a B&M before so I'm probably just being paranoid, but once you start looking for this stuff, you see it almost every hand.

The upside is if I have over cards and a low or middle board hits, i just muck my cards cus i know that most of the time, i'm not going to see the Q or K hit on 4th or 5th, and even if they do, someone's probably already got a straight or flush.

Now I know everyone is going to want to point out that they see mixed boards all the time, and it's true they happen a lot. But how often do you see a mixed board where the at show down one guy has a full house and the other guy has top two pair? And of course, the full house was made on the river. I just think that the poker sites know that if the players have big hands, they'll bet more and therefore they make sure people get those big hands.

Just my thoughts.

P.S. I'm up currently so this isn't just a "bitter cus i'm broke" rant

[cardcounter0]

Could I interest you in a good patern mapper so you can predict that river card every time?
/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Wake up CALL]

[ QUOTE ]
What are the likelihood assumptions?

[/ QUOTE ]

That you have selective memory and do not understand probability. These two would would be the most likely assumptions.

[bholdr]

"I think a lot of the "rigged" stories come from the fact that online play is generally tighter and better than live play, due to multi-tabling."

In addition to that, hasn't fulltilt been pretty tough lately? i don't play there- most of the competition seems to be, on avarage, a lot tougher than other sites.

[CORed]

I play mostly online, but I have played live enough to have a pretty good feel for how live play goes, and I just don't see any significant difference. This is a strictly intuitive take. I don't have any numbers to cite for either live or online play, but, accouning for the difference in the pace of play, my feeling is that bad beats, two strong hands at a time, miracle river cards, etc. are no more common online than in live play. When you are dealing with random events, strange, low probability things happen from time to time. Bad runs happen. It's not likely that the RNG, or the dealer, is out to get you.

[phlup]

oh, another thing i forgot to ask. does anyone else notice that when they've got more than one table open at a time you tend to get very similar hole cards at each? Again, maybe just me overthinking this, but it seems like i'll be sitting there folding crap on both tables, then i'll hit a string of really good stuff at both tables. then after about 3 hands like that, i go back to crap at both. the ups and downs just match up so damn well.

/yes i do have my tinfoil hat on, thanks for asking

[CORed]

I think your brain is just engaged in it's natural activity of finding patters. The human mind is so good at finding patterns that it finds patterns that don't exist. Yes, clusters of good hands and bad hands happen frequently. So do periods of fairly even distribution. You just don't notice the periods of even distribution because this is what you see as "normal" for a random process, even though clusters are really just as "normal" as even distribution.

[edpsu92]

I think the most obvious reason people INCORRECTLY become suspect of online card generators if the simple fact that many more hands are played per hour and if you factor in multi-tabling, the amount of hands over brick and mortar per hour is HUGE. The same "bad beats" and "odd cards" as the poster says occur in B and M too. Most people just arent at a B and M table to see 1000 hands in a session like I do each night in just a few hours.

[Rudbaeck]

Actually take notes and you'll see that the ups and downs don't match up more than chance dictates. The human brain is hardwired to find patterns, if none exist it makes some up.

Finding patterns is a great benefit to survival. It's crap at dealing with totally random series.

[kowboy]

Wake up I understand probablility and randomness, but given the fact that online play and live play seem different when played equal amount of hand I feel that there may be something to say about differences in the two. I don't have a limited memory and I can differentiate between live and online play. Black and White sometimes makes Grey. /images/graemlins/spade.gif

[benfranklin]

[ QUOTE ]


Does anyone have any thoughts on random card gens? I know basically we see at least double the number of hands per hour as a b&m but I still seem to see odd match-ups of hole cards, extreme river beats and odd strings of wired cards etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Time to once again dust off this old RGP post by Paul Phillips:

[ QUOTE ]
Some of you know that in a past life I was a programmer and a manager
thereof. In mid-1997 our company acquired an online game site called
playsite that had a decent population of people playing classic games,
one of which was backgammon. The codebase was something of a mess though,
so we undertook a complete rewrite and released it in early 1998.


After we released the new code, we began receiving email from people
and hearing chat online that there were unusually many doubles being
rolled in the backgammon games. That sounded unlikely but I took a
look into the code, and it was as straightforward as could be, no room
for a wacky error. The server picked two random numbers from 1 to 6
in the normal java fashion.


The java random call is a simple wrapper around the C library function.
We were seeding it in the normal ways. Everything was fine. But the
complaints were unrelenting, so we took increasingly extreme measures
trying to figure out what was going on. First we incorporated a java
RNG to avoid the C library. When this didn't "help", we started
logging all the die throws and did statistical analysis on tens of
thousands of logged rolls.


What we found was that doubles were being rolled at precisely the rate
one would expect. There was absolutely nothing surprising in the stats.
We communicated this to the complaining players, but it still didn't do
any good. You could go into a backgammon lobby anytime and you'd
rarely have to wait more than a couple minutes before chat would emerge
that "everyone knew" that too many doubles were being rolled. It had
entered the realm of known facts, and there was no getting around it.


We closed the dozens of filed bug reports involving our loaded dice and
moved on with our lives, but I've never forgotten the certainty with which
people asserted that our dice were not rolling right. And the point, of
course, is how similarly that certainty is echoed here when people talk
about online poker being rigged for this or that result.


I see three major factors contributing to this misplaced certainty.
The three are the same whether we're looking at original vs. rewritten
playsite, or B&M poker vs. online poker. Much of this has been
written before by myself and others, but I include it here to help
illustrate how similar the backgammon and online poker situations are.


1) SPEED. We build an unconscious model of how often noticeable events
take place, but it's largely rooted in time, not in number of events.
When the number of events per unit time increases (the rewritten playsite
was of course faster, just as online poker is faster than B&M) then we
are surprised to observe more noticeable events.


2) SELECTION BIAS. We notice quads. We notice doubles. We feel like
we know how often they happen because we know that we notice them, but we
do not know how often unnoticeable events take place. We therefore lack
the necessary data to do analysis, but we have so much faith in our brains
as pattern recognition machines, we try it anyway.


3) MEMETICS. This is in some ways the biggest one. When you're
surrounded by people who have become convinced that something is true,
it's difficult not to start believing it's true yourself. Online chat
environments make it very easy for people to share their feelings about
the injustice of the randomness, and it's such a seductive idea anyway,
it's not hard for it to gain followers. Read "The Tipping Point" for more.


In closing, here is one quote I found in my old email. I wish I had
the whole file so you could see how widespread the certainty was.


Message: your dice are throwing doubles again---CALIBRATE THEM! get
your act together

A message to online poker sites: Your decks are dealing bad beats
again. CALIBRATE THEM!



[/ QUOTE ]