How do online poker sites determine cards?

[M.B.E.]

Refer to this post in the Beginners Questions forum.

[magiluke]

Warning: somewhat heavy programming jargon.
I'm not exactly sure how they do it online, but one time, just to try it out, I made a program that used a deck. I made a deck of 52 cards that were initialized in a specific order. Then I just randomized them once, and kept a pointer to the "top" card of the deck. As the cards were dealt, the program would return the card that the pointer was poining at, and push it down to the next card. Once I was done using the deck, I would randomize the deck again, and move the pointer to the top to zeroth element of the deck array. I'd imagine that they do something along those lines. Perhaps they use a stack to hold the cards, maybe a queue. I found, though, that using one "deck", which you kept randomizing, kept the deck extra random, instead of instanciating a new deck each time. I'd imagine that they can technically use one deck for each table, and randomize that each hand. Or perhaps they would use one deck for the whole site, and keep randomizing that over and over again, and copying the results into a stack (or queue, or whatever... It doesn't really matter) for each particular table. I've acually thought about how they do it, in to a little bit of detail, at least...

[D.H.]

Here are some more details about the Random Number Generator used by PartyPoker:

http://www.partypoker.com/about_us/rng.html


[ QUOTE ]
Does the computer then burn a card before the flop, turn, river? etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Implementation details like this are really not interesting. As long as there is a randomly shuffled deck they may just as well pick card number 4, 16 and 47 for flop cards. It doesn't matter.

[NLSoldier]

Holy crap i was hoping he was being sarcastic too...

[twankerr]

The cards are also not generated all at once. Each card is randomly selected before it is given to a player. Think of it as a constant shuffle and when the pokerroom wants a card, it grabs the one that happens to be on top.

I really dislike this because there is no "fate" in online poker since clicking at a differnet instant would cause the entire hand to change.

[burningyen]

Well, the alternative would allow hackers to know the next card.

[laja]

Start each hand by having a spectrum of hands in which each opponent could have, which will start out very large, and then by the way the play you will continue to narrow this spectrum. The plays you make should be based off of what will do the best versus the biggest portion of the spectrum.

After a good amount of experience you will do this even just naturally withouth trying and you will develop a certain instinct which sometimes you just know what hand they have.

ps. poker tracker can help greatly in reading players as it can provide a plethora of stats on them

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
The cards are also not generated all at once. Each card is randomly selected before it is given to a player. Think of it as a constant shuffle and when the pokerroom wants a card, it grabs the one that happens to be on top.

I really dislike this because there is no "fate" in online poker since clicking at a differnet instant would cause the entire hand to change.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not all sites do this.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, the alternative would allow hackers to know the next card.

[/ QUOTE ]

Only if they managed to hack in. There are much easier ways for hackers to steal thousands of dollars then to hack into an online poker site. Hacking into a poker site just to look at the cards would be a nightmare. As a hacker, you want to get in, and get out as quickly as possible. Keeping a constant connection open like this would be like leaving a map to your house at a bank you just robbed.

[LethalRose]

it kinda bothers me they use the term random..no computer or algorithm can produce a truely random number. however they do a very good job of it.