Independent audit of poker site card dealing

[scarr]

Has anybody done an analysis of the cards dealt on the online sites? I constantly hear people claiming these sites are rigged, and have seen the sites certify the use good shuffle algorithms, but has anybody analyed the cards from the standpoint of the player?

With a good database of hand histories this could be analyzed and a conclusion made one way or the other. You can design tests for each of the methods people claim the poker sites use to cheat people.

1) Bigger stack wins showdowns more often then they should.
2) Bad beats on river.
3) Action flops.

How many hands would be needed to produce convincing numbers?

1) and 2) are easy to analyze, but 3) takes a little more work. For 3) you could do a card histogram for the flop (ie. count how many times a card showed up on a flop.) If people tend to play A or face cards, then you see a higher occurance of face cards. You could also count how many times 2 cards of the same suit flopped or a coordinated flop showed up. Comparing these numbers to the number of times expected would be quite easy.

Anybody know of a study, or can think of other situations to analyze?

-scarr

[kenberman]

Yes.
No problem was found.