Online Poker Rigged??? We're about to find out...

[ChoicestHops]

It's admirable, but I don't see the point.

Instead of directly playing all of these hands, why not use mathematicians and just track a much larger set of hands of a period of time.

500,000 hands is not near enough data to analyze a question such as this anyway.

Ask yourself - What do they have to gain by rigging their system? PartyPoker had $65 million in the pots last night. Keeping the system legit as possible is in the best interest of the online houses, as they keep getting enourmous rake profits from legit games.

[Felix_Nietsche]

What credentials do you have?

At the minimum, I think you need a stronger background in probability and statistics because wanting to take a sample of *ONLY* 50,000 hands does not give me confidence you have a strong background in this subject...

[jtr]

If the original post is a troll then it's a rather elaborate one. In the meantime, I agree with Fyodor: we can disagree with the plan (indeed, the original poster wants us to help expose problems with the plan) without being rude to the guy.

So let me add one more voice to the chorus of people suggesting a better experimental design. First up, you need to be clear about the hypotheses you're testing. The design you sketched out appears to be based around testing the null hypothesis that you and your friends win at the same rate online and in B&M play. Rejecting that null hypothesis (e.g., finding that you and your friends make much less per 100 hands online) will be uninteresting.

Your real null hypothesis is that Party and the other big sites are using fair pseudo-random number generators at every stage of every deal. Given this, the results of your pool of ten friends are irrelevant. I think you'd be much better off getting the largest database possible, which would have to involve access to PokerTracker DBs from trusted sources. Or collecting one yourselves. Then find a way to test for the signs of random-number manipulation. For instance, some really simple things would be to look at whether flushes come in too often, or whether AA and KK are dealt concurrently too often.

I agree with a previous poster who suggested that your best bet would be talking to some poker-literate mathematicians or statisticians.

Cheers, and good luck,
--JTR.

[laja]

why do you need the auditors? Why can't you just record win/loss each yourselves.

Summarizing main problems with this experiment that I have gotten from this post and myself , ( in order of importance)

-most importantly, there are millions of hands showing that there are winning players, players who would make a fraction as much as playing in person even WHILE the online game being rigged because of 65 hands/hour vs 35, and 8 tables vs 1.

-difference in online vs B&M
i.) player skill is far from the same
ii.) reading physical tells will come into play, most likely increasing win rate

-the control group has far from enough hands

-if the poker sites are this devious they will have monitored this post and will take whatever actions

how about investigating something a little more navigatable like the "withdraw curse". Withdraw money and play 1000 hands. It probably won't work if you keep depositing and withdrawing, so maybe have money transfered and then withdrawn instead. However this experiment will have much less data as you can only play so many hands after you withdraw and withdraw so many times but it should be a lot easier to see results. If you end up with a net win you can get rid of the theory all together.

[yocalif]

In addition to trying discover if online poker may be rigged, please make an attempt to identify which sites are using bots. If your able to discover a bot please provide the player name so we know what we are playing against.
Personally in 18 months of almost daily play at 3 sites (Ultimatebet, Party Poker, Paradise), I don't think I have encountered a bot but I play low limit only.
However a knowledgeable source has revealed that some small sites may be using bots.