More Paradise Poker Paranoia

Norton Anti-Virus (and I'm sure the other major ones too) have a LiveUpdate feature that will every few days retrive the newest virus definitions so you will have up to date protection against viruses. You should run a virus scanner even if you don't play poker!


About firewalls, there's some good ones like ZoneAlarm, and Norton Internet Security. ZoneAlarm has a free version.


- Tony

uhh, yes, but it would also erase everything else...

Right, but like Mike said, unless you are infected with the appropriate virus, your windows machine is safe from these probes.

Make sure you disable the "file and print sharing" option. This seems to be the most popular attack.

Small fry, re your comments below, I agree 100% with every word. I am continuing to compile data, and will post something more than just "anecdotal" info., but so far it appears blatantly obvious that this is occurring at PP.


As to a good player expectation, I agree that it affects everyone somewhat equally, when it comes to who gets the giant flops. I would say the very tight agreesive players may see a disadvantage though, when they come in with hands like A,K flop a K, and then get cracked at higher than random rates by the runner runner flushes, runner runner Q,Q, to help the Q,10, etc. The flops are so obviuously juiced sometimes, that it is laughable.


Yesterday I saw a flop come KKK, 3 times in 5 hands. Very bizarre. In all three cases, more coordinated cards came with that flop on turn/river. My wife happened to be watching at the time, and though not normally a serious poker player, she remarked ahead of me that something was seriously amiss with Paradise.


It must be working in my favor more than against, as I went from $68 in my account a few weeks ago, to $2K plus now. Nonetheless, I would much prefer a "straight" game, to this "giant hand" version of poker that PP deals.


>>>As far as my online experience has gone so far, I am up (but not enough hours played yet to really tell anything). I have witnessed the "irregularities" at paradise firsthand. I have seen the ridiculous suckouts and the peculiar flops. It seems to me like players are flopping good hands too often. I seems like the number of good hands being made/dealt are non-random. I have seen more sets turned and rivered than I have ever seen in the casino. The game seems skewed against the raisers. The guy raising with AK flops an ace and has his heads-up preflop opponent with 22 flops a set. Obviously PP would benefit from "massaging" the shuffle to generate more action. This type of phenomenon seems randomly distributed, that is to say, everyone gains/loses equally, only the pots are bigger. I don't think it would really affect a good player's expectation much. JMHO. <<<<

If you use a firewall such as zonealarm and are aware of ALL programs that access the internet, there is not much to worry about.


A trojan virus would attempt to disguise itself as a useful program..Particulary a program that you are afraid to delete or block access to.


I currently have 2 programs on my computer that keep attempting to access the internet: Distributed Com Services and Run A DLL as an APP. I have no idea, what in the hell their purpose is or where they are located on my hard drive so I simply block their access to the internet thru zonealarm.

Last night while waiting for a 5/10 seat, I watched some 20/40 at paradise. This is the FIRST hand played while I was watching:


Everyone folded to button who raised. SB three bet, BB called, button capped. All called.


Flop 9 high. SB bet, BB raise, button reraise, SB call, BB cap (!?). All call.


Turn is low again. Bet raise, reraise...you know the story.


When the river was done and the hands were turned over, button had KK, SB had JJ, and BB had QQ. Board stayed 9 high all the way. Button drags a 1K pot.


The players at the table flooded the chat box with "this happens every time", "rigged", "fixed" etc. etc.


Now I know this hand means nothing by itself, but when you see this happen enough times, it just seems too strange to be a coincidence. The winner of the hand was interestingly the notorious ZXLMXZS (or whatever), the 18K guy who had this forum buzzing in a previous thread.


Now I undertand any deck fixing by PP would be pointless in 20/40 because the rake is maxed out all the time anyway. But at games like 1/2 to 5/10 (where PP makes the bulk of their profit), deck fixing would be very profitable for them.


Last night in a two hour session I saw a pretty unusual flop 3 times. Three players were dealt big aces (A9-AK) and the case A flopped with rags. Of course the action went through the roof on the flop and turn.


I will be interested to see what you find out with your data analysis. I imagine it would be pretty straightforward to do it. The odds for flopping pairs/sets/flushes etc. are well established, so any significant deviations should be obvious with a decent hand sampling. Good luck.

<Paradise Poker> hmm, we need some way to increase rake, I know, how about KKK appearing three boards out of five? That kind of flop really puts the action through the roof, and it won't appear suspicious at all!


Not only do you never provide any hand histories, but your story is not even consistent.


Go away.


Chris

I have seen three high pairs in live poker more times than I can possibly remember. I have seen 3 pairs all hit trips on the flop too - I was the victim with top set on that one. So what??


If we all posted all the unusual hands we saw on Paradise each day among the tens of thousands witnessed I'm sure it would start to look very convincing to some. But why don't we post all the thousands of mundane hands while we're at it?

As I said in my post, this hand (or a day's or week's worth of hands) doesn't mean much. I have played lots of live poker and it just seems to me that people are flopping/hitting more than they should be at Paradise. I may be just witnessing a random streak, but other people have noticed it too.


Now I'll concede that I didn't really trust online poker when I started, so I may be going out of my way to look for abnormalities. Whatever, JMHO.