a note to you conspiracy theorists (or good news for stars)

[TheNutz]

Lorinda, they have their own special pattern mapping software that tracks all deposits, cashouts, average pot won vs average pot lost, average tournament finish, and the speed of losing the entire deposit they made on payday!

Duhhh ! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[MicroBob]

"Your conclusion for next time should be:
Fish won ?% when they shouldve won ?% "

on this particular issue i agree with lorinda.

this idea doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me??

weren't we trying to prove that the 'favored' hand supposedly doesn't hold-up as frequently as it is supposed to?
i thought those who suspected a rigged situation at stars believed this to be true because the 'better' hand going in wasn't holding up enough.




i think any efforts to try to 'prove' the legitimacy of the deal are really a moot effort because there are just too many viewpoints among those who think the deal is not properly random.

to wit:
some think it is rigged to keep the fish around longer....

others think it is rigged to keep the fish from playing too much....

while others think it is rigged simply to generate more rake at a quicker rate without regard to whether fish OR winning players stay there longer or not.


additionally - some players think the tourney all-in's specifically are messed up while others think the tourney hands are fine but it's the ring-game hands that should come under scrutiny.

[Pokeraddict]

Stars must be rigged if I can win there [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[C M Burns]

What it more or less proves is that at least allin pre flop, things are as they should be. As for the amount of hands, if there was say a .05 bias in the shuffle/system, where the worst hand won 5% more often than it should. after 175 hands you would get results that "significantly" (in a statitical sense) differ from true chance about 97% of the time. If you wanted to get this up to 99% you could get another 100 hands or so, but this seems close enough for me.

And not that i ever thought it was biased, i just though it was nice to see that things work out how they should.

So the point is this shows that it is very very unlikley (about 95% sure), that stars shuffle shows any sort of bias at least after the flop. I guess you could come up with some other way it could be biased but now the theories must be more complex and involve pattern maps.

And way to disregard something without any explanation for the oposite. And if posts had to prove something to be worth posting here I think there would be alot of empty space.

Edit: and just after i write this i bust out of a stars tourney w/ AQ against 39, i take it all back it is clearly rigged

[C M Burns]

The thing is with all of these theories there must be an overall deviation from chance and anything that shows some consistency with chance to some degree disagrees with the theory. But anyhow proof is always in the eye of the beholder, and some just will not believe and the more people who have these theories the better, since they often will be the ones thinking they are due so they will chance their draw with 1-1 odds and other such plays. hmm, maybe i will post the oposite on RGP.

[MicroBob]

"anything that shows some consistency with chance to some degree disagrees with the theory."

i agree....but some of those don't believe in the validity of the online game will likely disagree.


i admit to not knowing diddly-squat regarding math and/or probabilities....and you seem to have done your homework and believe your claim....but i simply fail to see how 175 hands can even be close to a large enough sample size to prove anything (much less with 97% certainty as you state).


i would think that in a truly random environment it would still be extremely easy for the end results to deviate by 10 or more.

i know you have more 60-40 or even 80-20 situations on the all-ins....but i'm just thinking about flipping a coin....
after 175 trials i would not expect the break-down to be terribly close to 50-50...and if it deviated by 10 or 15 i wouldn't think that would be too far out of the ordinary.

again, I'm no Daryn or Lorinda (or BruceZ or Homer) in matters such as these so it's VERY possible my assumptions are way off or even completely irrelevant.

[Gonzoman]

[ QUOTE ]
i agree with JWise.

i think it can LEAN one way without really fully PROVING anything.

although 'fully proving' may be redundant...as i'm not sure it's possible to 'partly prove' something. you either proved it or you didn't, right?? thats a different topic though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just to clear some stuff up mathematically, it is impossible to 'prove' anything using statistics. One can only show that the results achieved are highly improbable assuming the null hypothesis is true. What the orignal poster has done here is shown that assuming the deal is fair, the results are well within the range expected.

If someone wants to show that the deal is not fixed towards fish, one would have to make the null hypothesis 'the deal is fixed to allow the fish to win an extra x% of the time'. Then run an experiment with enough data to determine that the null hypothesis is highly unlikely.

[JWise]

[ QUOTE ]
"Your conclusion for next time should be:
Fish won ?% when they shouldve won ?% "

on this particular issue i agree with lorinda.

this idea doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me??

weren't we trying to prove that the 'favored' hand supposedly doesn't hold-up as frequently as it is supposed to?

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
No doubt many of you have at least considered after a couple bad beats, maybe the system is biased somehow, favoring all those fish. Well I decided finally to do a little "reseach" on this subject. What I did was keep track of a number of pre flop head up allins to see if they check out.

[/ QUOTE ]

It was suppose to be about the deal being bias towards the fish.

[Fred Duke]

I love your experiment. I see two issues that need further elaboration.

You state " Expected win probability for favorite was .66...". This .66 is the key to the whole thing and yet you make no mention of how it is derived. Did you do a Monte Carlo simulation for each of your 175 match-ups? That would clearly be the most rigorous methodology (and time-consuming). Anything less involves a measure of hocus-pocus that queers the conclusion to one degree or another. Please tell us what you did to get this .66 figure.

The second potential problem comes from sampling bias, using only some hands in a session, ignoring some that 'look odd'. It can be intentional or accidental and only the experimenter is able to judge the honesty of the sampling methodology.

As a student of statistics and experimental science I can state for those that doubt it, 175 hands here is a significant sample size upon which one can reasonably draw preliminairy conclusions, all other issues being resolved.

[Fred Duke]

One sane voice in a mob of torch-carring Phillistines.
Thank you.