Two Plus Two Older Archives - Online Poker

Before you write something nasty about me because of the subject of this post, please hear me out and keep an open mind.

I just played a relatively short session (about 1 hour)where I played 5 hands past the flop. I lost all 5 hands and wound up losing 30BBs for the session. It wasn't fun, but it was no big deal.

The big deal was this.

I had the best hand going to the river in 4 of the 5 hands and lost to 2 outs once, 3 outs twice, and 4 outs once.

The probabilities of losing with "x" outs on the river is:

2 outs - approx. - 4%
3 outs - approx. - 6%
4 outs - approx. - 8.5%

Individually, no big deal.

However, losing this way in what was essentially 4 of 5 hands taken to the river is a mind boggling statistical oddity. It's about 1 out 100K for 4 consecutive hands. Probably a little less for 4 of 5, but not all that much if you consider that the 5th was pocket TTs that lost heads up.

Now I know you are going to say we've all been through tough beats. 1 out of 100K means it's going to happen and it just happened to happen to you. However, the problem is that this is the 3rd time it has happened to me in about 7K total hands of play.

I say that this is essentially a statistical impossibility for the typical person after just 7K hands.

I realize the counter argument has long been "what do the online sites stand to gain by rigging results. They make a fortune on rake and don't care who wins".

I accepted that as true all along because it is very logical at first glance. However, my results speak louder than my business theories and sometimes the most OBVIOUS answer IS the CORRECT ONE.

The only thing that is plausible to me is that the sites monitor how much rake action each player gives them and whether they just bonus whore or play every day regardless of their bonus status.

The reason that could be the key is because it is certainly in the interests of the online sites to keep "regular customers who are large rake contributors" happy at the expense of bonus whores who play for a few days and then disappear for a month to play at competitor sites that are giving out another reload bonus. I have been bonus whoring exclusively.

I seems obvious to me that I'm not a valuable customer. I take money out of the games almost every month because of bonuses regardless if I lose on the card playing alone or not.

If you tilt the probabilities slightly in favor of regulars, you maximize your profits.

The bonus whores keep coming because they net out to profits, but if the site takes some of their profits away from them to subsidize regulars, the regulars wind up getting it all raked away at your site instead of somewhere else where the bonus whore took it.

Of course if every site is doing the same thing, it nets out to all the sites doing only as well as if no one was bonus whoring and everything was legit, but all else is not equal.

I think other players should at least think about this carefully because I am now totally convinced that several sites are in fact mildly rigged in favor of bigger/better customers at the expense of bonus whores. I plan on altering my bonus playing strategy to try to reduce my percent subsidy to "the regulars" at the site. I am going to reduce the number of sites I play at and play without bonuses from time to time on certain sites where the games are reasonably attractive even without bonuses.