[Felix_Nietsche]

Lets look at the facts.
1. Most of these on-line poker sites are based in 2nd world and 3rd world countries.
2. These sites want to make money. And many of these sites are making TONS of money.
3. There is little regulation for many of these sites.

The million dollar question is would these sites modify their software to maximize their profits?.....

Let us assume a new Poker Site wants to create crooked s/w (software) to maximize profits. What would the optimum strategy for a crooked site to achieve this?

**IMO, the crooked s/w would want to MINIMIZE the number of BIG winners and MINIMIZE the number of BIG losers. In other words, they, idealy, would want to create an atmosphere where the money gets swapped around back-and-forth with no big winners and no big losers while the sites happily collect their rakes. WHY? Big losers, who are usually poor players, will often unfairly blame their losses of the s/w whether its TRUE-or-NOT and leave the sites forever blaming the s/w instead of their poor play.

I would argue, poor players, are the bread-and-butter of poker sites. Poor players tend to give a lot of action and ACTION attracts more players. And the more players there are, the more money these sites make. To achieve this the s/w would have to be modified, to reward poor players and punish good players to even out the playing field.

In the book, "The Worlds Greatest Blackjack Book", the author tells a story where a card counter playing in a 3rd World country plays several hours and asks(and gets relectantly) as a "comp" 4 decks of cards that was being used to deal blackjack. He goes up to his hotel room and inventories the cards and discovers some Aces and 10-point cards have been removed. *By-the-way, a deck rich in Aces and 10-point cards, favors the player so if the house removes a few of these cards they can increase their profits. In otherwords, this casino was cheating to increase their profits. The point of this story is to illustrate a basic tenet of human nature. Greed.

I play lots of poker on-line, and in the year I've been playing I'm ahead a modest $2.5K. So I KNOW money can be made on-line. I concede its possible that these sites could be modifying their s/w to keep the fish happy and to muzzle the Sharks BUT ONLY a THOROUGH mathematically analyis of millions of hands could one make a honest judement.

Your feelings are NOT enough.... The fluxuations of luck in poker can fool poor players that they are the next DOYLE BRUNSON, and can make good players question their skills.... BUT... on the other hand I am CONCERNED that there is little regulation for these sites. If casinos will cheat their customers at Blackjack then it is VERY possible these poker sites could be playing games. Hopefully, some math/computer guru, will analyze this sites for a PhD thesis, and we will know which sites are honest and which sites are cutting corners....

Meanwhile, I'll still be playing on-line...