ONLINE POKER IS 100% RIGGED

[faustusmedea]

Here's the thing.

When someone posts such as the thread starter, they might just as well be planted by someone seeking to hide impropriety because the responses are pretty easily predicted.

The problem is; most big time financial folks understand the concept of shearing sheep as well as the power of large numbers of small transactions. Once big money comes along in any endeavor, there will be computer simulations put together to determine methods for increasing the numbers.

I recall a story about vegas casinos a while back. The idea was to create viable defenses against card counters. One study was prepared that suggested if multiple decks were put into the shoe at the beginning of the day with the cards configured AthruK KthruA AthruK KthruA, the resulting clumping of big card/small card groups would persist through many shuffles. Now, I don't know if its true, but I do know that that is how a standard deck of Kem cards comes now. I also know that the casinos no longer pay out 5 card charlies which theoretically would not be more prevalent in a multiple deck situation.

For the online poker rooms, I am certain with the data they have, they can easily determine the percentages of winners/losers at each level. Further, they can easily shape the data to determine if weak players are being chased too quickly.

So, my question is: Why wouldn't an online cardroom find algorithms that throw exceedingly small disadvantages at better players from time to time in order to prolong both their play as well as the fish in the tank.

For my part, I am up significantly online. Most of this has come from a number of large tourney cashes. In the 15/30 Party game, I am up slightly after 50k hands. Recently in vegas, I was playing with math guy; Paul Magriel and he scoffed at the notion of 25k hands not being enough to determine whether you are a winning player, yet all you need to do is troll the High limit forum and you see horror stories galore of 3-400BB downswings with variance being the biggest challenge to long term success.

The additional component to this is the pro player typically runs a minimum of 3 tables and a lot of folks are doing many more than that. This creates an effect where a lot of raked hands are generated, but it absolutely HAS to put real pressure on the fishing. With the current upsurge in popularity, there is obviously a greater influx and an evergrowing pool of players, but it isn't infinite and somebody looking to; say take a gaming site public would want to grow numbers incrementally and keep them growing quarter over quarter.

Now, to dispute the above, you might say look at the hand histories. And sure enough, over 50k hands I have a near perfect distribution of starting hands. But imagine a sophisticated shuffle that could distribute premium holdings with a slightly unfavorable position. Again, don't think "All AA would be given to the player UTG". Think more that AA is dealt on average the same amount in any position, then you skew the shuffle slightly to MP and early position over a small number of these hands. A computer simulation could easily show the winning percentage changes based on such movement. And because we aren't talking big changes, it probably would not look suspicious unless you could compare multiple player databases; something not likely to occur ;-) Remember, this is all taking place on essentially large database software so creating such models would be trivially easy. There is an interesting thread in the high limit forum about a guy with what are essentially losing player stats, yet he has crushed the game over a huge number of hands. Is he the one in a million?

In reality, Rake back programs may simply be the wink from the company to professional player as to what is occurring. They don't really want to kill the pro, they simply want to manage the resource much as your local Fish and Game department does.

Bottom line; things are seldom as they appear on this planet and if there is an extra dollar to be raked, online poker sites, drug and oil companies or nations will find a way to do so. I have also posted about more sophisticated collusion issues that also fight the general consensus.

Time to go make up some new tinfoil hats for the rest of the week's play. Good luck.