Complaints about online poker and recordkeeping

[JoshuaMayes]

I have read a fair number of posts from players complaining that internet poker is rigged and/or different from B&M poker. The theme of these posts is often "I am a consistent winner at the B&M, but I can't seem to win online because the play is too bad, I take too many bad beats online etc." The responses to the posts usually give two explanations for the complainers experience. Some believe that the complainers are just experiencing the normal increase in unlikely events that should naturally accompany the greater volume of hands dealt online. Others point out that play generally is better on the internet at a certain limit than is play at the same limit in a B&M cardroom. It occurred to me recently that their might be another explanation. I surmise that many of the complainers are actually just all-around losing players who do not keep records, but who are forced to confront their online losses because they must redeposit to keep playing and/or make withdrawals to realize their winnings. When these players go to the B&M, they pull $100 from their wallet, and conveniently remember only the times that they put $150 or $200 back in at the end of the night. And if they don't keep records, who is to say that they aren't actually lon-term winners at the B&M? The much more cumbersome transactions necessary to fund and withdraw from online poker accounts makes it much more difficult to conveniently forget how much one has deposited and withdrawn. To top it off, most online poker sites keep a tansaction history, which even the most self-delusional player would have difficulty ignoring. Most of the players in my home game believe that they break even or win over the long run, but most of them are, in fact, substantial losers relative to the stakes we play. If these same players played online, they would not be able to fool themselves so easily, and might resort to the sort of conspiracy theories that abound on poker forums. After all, it is much easier to blame online poker for one's losses than it is to admit that one is a losing player in general. In short, I suspect that online poker gets a bad rap, not because of increased hand volume and the concomitant increase in statistically ulikely events, but because the nature of the monetary transactions that accompany online play force losing players to confront and/or admit their losses, if only to themselves. The increase in hand volume probably contributes, because these losing players lose faster as the number of hands dealt per hour increases, but I suspect that the forced quasi-recordkeeping has more to do with it than anything else. Any thoughts?