Playing online - for the birds???

[beernutz]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
The goons have propagated the “Conspiracy Theorist” label because it has such a derogatory connotation .

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, the sweet irony.

[beernutz]

The Big 10 plus 1
The Big 8 minus 4

There is too much math in this thread.

[Hotchile]

Tom,
I worked as a floorman for 5+ years and if ever put to the test, I couldn't prove that any one of the games that I supervised was on the straight and narrow. Yet, the same contract exists. I really have no idea what kind of "evidence" would satisfy you that the online game is not rigged. I am skeptical that any site is going to release its algorithm to anyone in order to prove its legitimacy but I think that's the only thing that would satisfy you.

I mentioned in my previous posts, a number of players on this forum pay the bills with online poker. I myself have been a winning player online for over 3 years on 5 different sites. Being from a small city in Canada, I suggest that they are not doing me the favour of letting me win. There is no motivation.

All I am suggesting is that, it is possible/probable that the feeling of online gaming appearing rigged to someone is for the reasons that I suggested in my original post.

Also, I did not use the term irrational in an attempt to be insulting or "goonish". If I spoke offensively in any way then I certainly apologize to Sucka.

HC

[hudini36]

The truth is that most the non-random crowd work for organizations like the FBI, the Dept. of Justice, the Dept of Defense, etc. The random crowd works for the online industry, or can be traced to people like Tony Spilotro.

[thwang99]

That's about accurate, but I didn't analyze a million hands, jsut the 70k hands in my database. Other PokerStat users analyzed their 20k, 100k, or more databases and found nothing out of the ordinary statistically either.

The one thing that PokerStat's randomness checking tool doesn't check for is runs (for example you can be dealt AA at the expected rate, but get all your AA's in a row). It also doesn't check for situations, like if two good hands are setup against each other more often than they should, since it's impossible to analyze this without knowing everyone's hole cards.

But something else to keep in mind, if Paradise was setting up situations, they would have to do it in a way that the dealing was still random. Like remember when it gave player X an extra AA, and take away an AA later, and not just keep track of this for AA, but for every hand it sets up.

- Tony

[mbpoker]

Releasing an algorithm or a source code would prove nothing either, because how do you know whether this is the actual source code that is being used in running the games.

However there is a way for a site to prove that the game is honest at least to some extent. When my friend complained about bad beats to PokerStars they sent him all his (over 100,000) hands and suggested that he conducts an independent review if he so wishes.

[sucka]

wow - i had no idea how popular this topic would become. All I'm saying is for all the people that say, "You people are kook's for thinking that the online sites would possibly do anything to rig the games" how can you be more sure of that than a group of people that claim that it's entirely possible that there is 'something' going on behind the scenes. Unless someone who has inside information comes forward, which I doubt will ever happen, it will remain a mystery.

However, all I'm saying is beware. I know there are people out there that win online, I don't dispute that. I mean, if a site hosed things up so bad that no one could ever win then people wouldn't play.

If a site has hundreds of thousands of hands played per day - if they can 'set up' flops and hands only a very small percentage of the time that cause several people to make huge hands only to split the pot at the end. I've seen more people tie hands and jam the pot only to split - who is the only entity that wins in that situation? That's right - the house. In my 7 or so hours of playing online (which would roughly translate into a marathon 14 hour B&amp;M session) I've seen so much weird crap going on that I can't help but think that there may be something going on.

I sent a friend of mine screen shots from an hour of my online play this afternoon. I was in maybe 60 or so hands and screenshots of 15 or so hands - some I was involved in, most I wasn't - where players are tied to boards by flops that 99% of the time would generate very little activity at all. It seems odd to me how many times this happens.

Anyway, its hard to summarize so many thoughts into a short message thread. I didn't mean to come off sounding like I'm straight out accusing site(s) of doing anything in particular. I'm just saying that it's entirely possible and we are all naive to think that an offshore unregulated company that hosted a gambling site would absolutely never think of ways, even so subtle, to make them a few extra bucks - then I have a bridge for sale if anyone's interested...

[MrGrob]

...something shady going on with the money I had in a site -- i.e. bad investments etc. I know that some sites have 100% of players money "on hand", but still. I don't think there is any weirdness going on. My losing sessions were tilt / bad card related -- that is all -- losing AA of something else to a suck out is so normal to me know that I only think, "guess he had to have something, if only faith alone, to be in the hand."

[RollaJ]

I think it is more likely that Big Bird shot JFK, than Paradise cheating and aranging flops. Why would they risk cheating when they make so much money by just playing fair. Think of how much money they make dealing to 300+ tables and even if they rake only a dollar a hand from these tables thats $300 X 50 hands an hour=$15000/h at peak times and maybe half that off peakbut still about $270000 a day 365 days a year is just under $100 million.
Why would anyone risk that much money at a chance to make even double, its just not worth the chance of walking away with nothing!

[sucka]

lol - why would WorldCom and Enron do the [censored] they did? They were making so much money....GREED!

And hell, WorldCom and Enron actually had governing agencies that they ultimately had to report to.

What about these online gambling sites? Do they have anyone to report to?

You are one niave person to think that someone wouldn't give themselves an additional percentage edge if it made them additional millions - especially when they are an unregluated, unchecked business.

If it makes you feel better when you deposit your money that there is no way you would be cheated in any way - then fine, live in your little perfect gambling utopia.