A Discussion regarding Online Poker is Rigged (long)

[CORed]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
With such a majority of players unwilling to accept the possibility of rigging, the "burden of proof" is quite
high;

[/ QUOTE ] This majority you speak of, in reality is actually an overwhelming minority. This post is extremely long and after that gibberish I stoped reading.

[/ QUOTE ]

Based on what I see in chat while playing, a lot of fish think Party is rigged, and play anyway. I have even had people accuse me of colluding, and continue to play. All of which proves that fish are stupid. But we knew that anyway.

I still think that a poker site has little to gain and much to lose by rigging the deal. They make their money from the rake. An online casino has games that are already rigged (in that they have a built-in house advantage), but it's certainly possible that they might want to increase their edge by running a non-random game, or dealing a blackjack game from a shoe with fewer aces and faces than advertised, etc. It seems to me that a casino with house-banked games has a lot more to gain by running a game that is more rigged than the customers know.

It is possible that a poker site somewhere is rigged. It would be stupid, but greed sometimes causes people to do stupid things. However, I would be very surprised if any of the major sites are not dealing honestly. Most of the people who think poker sites are rigged to help the bad players just don't want to admit that they are bad players themselves, so it's easier to blame the site than to try to improve their games.

If you're paranoid, and think the games you're playing might not be on the up-and-up, here are the things to worry about, and my SWAG (sientific wild-ass guess) of the probability that it will actually happen to you.

Player collusion (98%): There is no question that this happens. All the sites claim to watch out for it, and they probably do a fairly good job. Also, many people who collude do so because they are not good enough to beat the game honestly, and in fact, they are not good enough to beat the game even if they collude. However, collusion is something you should watch for, and if you believe players are colluding, report it to the site and get out of that game (unless, of course, the colluders are so bad that they are helping you). My guess, is that if you play any significant amount, you have at some point been colluded against. It is somewhat less likely that the colluders took a significant amount of money from you.

Spyware on your computer (0.5%): Somebody gets sypware on your computer that sends your hole cards to another player. It would be much simpler to put a keylogger on your machine that steals your poker site password and then clean out your account, but, conceivably, spyware could be built that would send hole cards to a cheater. Proper network security, etc. should minimize this risk, but it's not an absolute guarantee.

Insider cheating (0.1%): I think this is a long shot, but it is conceivable that a current or former technical employee -- system administrator or programmer -- could sneak a back door into a poker server system that allows them to see your hole cards.

The site is rigged (0.01%).