People who think online is rigged...

[BarronVangorToth]

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It seems that superstition is a very common trait amongst poker players, even very skilled, very intelligent ones. It seems to have no harmful affect on your poker game at all. Maybe it's even benificial as it helps keep up self-confidence and you avoid second-guessing yourself.

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On Party Poker, I track sessions also by what character I had at which table - and while they overall average out, there is a strange trend between certain characters and certain days. Mostly, you can chalk this up to not enough of a sample size. I'm also cross-referencing with genre of movie I'm watching when I play.

I'm sure there are many math (and regular) nerds out there like me tracking all sorts of nonsense - ultimately, though, you need to remember that it's just a mental exercise that will do nothing but stave off dementia a few more years.

Barron Vangor Toth
BarronVangorToth.com

haven't read the entire thread.

and i don't think online is rigged in general or really at all.

but who's to say they can't juice the card flow a little bit for their own house players. how would any of our statistical analysis/pokertracker pick that up? very subtle and only for a few people. again, the games would be very beatable, the site though would just be grabbing a giant pot occasionally thru rigged card flow.

would anyone be extremely shocked if one of the big 4 or 5 was busted for having slightly rigged games?

OTOH, a friend of mine was in customer service and a big site and all the people who called in to complain about rigged games were seeing 60% of flops and similar type stuff.

i think neither side (myself included) has much evidence or real insight into whether this is realistic or not. it would have to be a fairly big conspiracy, but we've had them before.

The other day i flopped a mid set and the guy with TPTK pushed me all in and ended up getting runner runner for a FH. Since the villain had sucked out on several significant pots at this table he wasn't very well like and the whole table (excluding me) started berating him saying that he worked for the site. While he did only have like a 1.8% chance of winning that hand, and i have seen many hands like it, doesn't mean that the game is rigged.

many people fail to realize the importance of sample sizes of hand histories and our extremely selective memories. For example I can remember most of the extremely rare losses happening, date, time, table, opp, pot size etc. But I can't remember myself ever doing it...even though I know i've won in some of these situations too.

As far as the sample sizes go..i don't think most people realize how many hands they see online in comparison to playing live. A good dealer in a casino might deal 35hands per hour when taking into consideration shuffling, new seats, conflicts, chip exchanges etc. While playing online with 3 tables open (I usually play 6 max) I can see up to 200 hands per hour. The while the %s stay the same the chances that I see these small % hands play out is larger online because I simply play more hands online that I do in a casino. To compare this to a live tournament...just compare how many bad beats you saw at wsop main even feature tables in 04 compared to 05. I doubt you'll hear Jennifer Harman (losing FH to Str8 Flush [1 outer] on the 1st day)or Tim Phan (losing flopped trip to runner FH) saying that the wsop is trying to attract more fishies/newbies by allowing some to win and portraying that every avg. joe should invest 10K and has a shot at millions.

More on sample sizes, there is a guy who ran the numbers using 37K hands to see how random dealing really is. (http://pokersafety.blogspot.com/2005...nds-dealt.html)

Here's some results:
Paired starters dealt: 2264 (5.979%)
Paired starters expected: 2227 (5.88%)

Each pair expected: 171 (0.452%)
A's dealt: 157 (0.415%)
K's dealt: 140 (0.370%)
Q's dealt: 184 (0.486%)
J's dealt: 168 (0.444%)
T's dealt: 183 (0.483%)
9's dealt: 167 (0.441%)
8's dealt: 185 (0.489%)
7's dealt: 182 (0.481%)
6's dealt: 192 (0.507%)
5's dealt: 178 (0.470%)
4's dealt: 186 (0.491%)
3's dealt: 162 (0.428%)
2's dealt: 180 (0.475%)

All this looks pretty good, and what you'd expect. There's a lot of room within only 37,000 hands for this to vary a good amount. But the numbers are all "in the ballpark" for being dealt from a random deck. Poor Tony ran pretty dry on AA and KK, but had more than expected QQ, TT, and others. We've all gone on rushes of cards and dry spells of cards.

Several Party Poker is Rigged theorists claim that the board creates flushes too often. I plan to address these theories later, but at first glance, the data compiled contradicts such speculation


Three cards on the flop make up a:
3 straight:293 (3.43%) expected: 272 (3.18%)
2 flush:4698 (54.97%) expected: 4710 (55.1%)
3 flush:463 (5.42%) expected: 446 (05.22%)

From this you can see that expected %s are close to what he compiled over 37K hands...and i can safely bet that if he reruns these stats when he's compiled a 100K hand history that the deviation from the expected %s will even be smaller.
In addition if you go to Paradise poker and check out the algorith used to random number generation (assuming you are at least high school stats educated) you see that this leaves very little room for cheating on the company's part. Also consider that Paradise poker is part of a publicly traded company that is subject to a lot of government scrutiny by SEC's British counterparts. Furthermore, most sites to have independent companies review their random dealing techniques e.g. Paradise Poker hired PriceWaterHouseCoopers to review their dealing techniques and stats. It is worth noting that they also do business with Paradise Poker in other areas as well. For example, PWC was the advisory firm serving Paradise Poker on their sale to Sportingbet Plc. While this might present a small potential for conflict of interest. I doubt a company like PWC is going to ruin its reputation for an online cardroom while having existing contracts with huge corps. Some also argue that independent consultancies like PWC don't have the technical knowhow to ensure dealing fairness. Well I work for KPMG and I can safely say that any of the Big 4 Consultancies have experts to deal with safety software for nuclear power companies so they can definitely deal with this issue.

Just remember...online you see more hands, thus experience more beats, and you multiply these beats in your head to make it seem like the game is rigger.

[krimson]

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but who's to say they can't juice the card flow a little bit for their own house players. how would any of our statistical analysis/pokertracker pick that up? very subtle and only for a few people. again, the games would be very beatable, the site though would just be grabbing a giant pot occasionally thru rigged card flow.

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Do you understand how much money these sites make? Why do you think a site that is making hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in rake each day has any desire to take money off you at the $1/$2 tables?

[BassMasterK]

These guys are pulling in money hand over fist from the rakes. They don't care WHO pays the rake. Think about it this way, for them to 'juice' some cards to player A, it means players B,D,E,F,G,H,I,J and K are getting screwed by the 'juice'. Does it make sense to turn off 9 players (who if they aren't in the 'lucky club' will go broke and quit)to your site in order to make one a winner? No. I've heard people say 'well, they switch it around so that some people win sometimes to keep them around, and then lose later on'. wtf? That's called poker. Sometimes people win, sometimes they lose. No big conspiracy here.

If even ONE of the big guys got caught, the financial impact for them would be catastrophic. Seeing as how they are pulling in huge money currently, there would be NO reason to risk playing some 'bait and switch' card game and EVERY reason to deal fair games.

Yes wierd stuff happens. Once at a B&M I saw a guy in seat 10 lose a big hand with QQ against a straight. Next hand he pulls in a small win with QQ again. We comment on the slim chances of hitting QQ's twice in a row and he comments he isn't going to play QQ's for the rest of the day. Next hand, you guessed it. He flips over QQ and lost a huge pot to a flush on the river. QQ's three times in a row. Even the dealer couldn't believe it. The game wasn't fixed, sometimes statistically small things happen. Sometimes you are there to witness them. Sometimes your brain then thinks it is more common than it is. Sometimes your brain is wrong.

[BarronVangorToth]

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but who's to say they can't juice the card flow a little bit for their own house players.

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They obviously could. But is it worth the potential downfall if ever found out? One of these players could blackmail Party Poker for millions ... so is that worth a few grand or whatever?

But, sure, it's possible. But I don't think probable. Plus, even if it were true, and you can't figure it out, why bother...? Certainly it's not as relevant as if you win more if you're the guy in the suit vs. that awful shirted fella.

Barron Vangor Toth
BarronVangorToth.com

[BruinEric]

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On Party Poker, I track sessions also by what character I had at which table

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LOL. I should turn those things back on (using chiplitre table mod)...

...time to do a study in correlation between Party Cartoon Icon and successful bluffs. In NL, are players more likely to fold heads-up facing your continuation bet with AK that missed the flop if you are "Pink Shirt Guy" or "Cowboy Hat Guy?"

The time is NOW for this study. You won't have to worry about all those PokerNow, Empire, Multipoker, etc. icons messing up the study.

[BarronVangorToth]

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On Party Poker, I track sessions also by what character I had at which table

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LOL. I should turn those things back on (using chiplitre table mod)...

...time to do a study in correlation between Party Cartoon Icon and successful bluffs. In NL, are players more likely to fold heads-up facing your continuation bet with AK that missed the flop if you are "Pink Shirt Guy" or "Cowboy Hat Guy?"

The time is NOW for this study. You won't have to worry about all those PokerNow, Empire, Multipoker, etc. icons messing up the study.

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I realize you read what I wrote correctly, but I want people to be 100% certain that I do not believe the character icon has any bearing whatsoever - HOWEVER, when it comes to figuring out all sorts of idiotic things, I find this type of nonsense interesting to track.

Anyone else who has, feel free to PM me with your results (or it can be a seperate thread) but absolutely no one should take it as anything other than math nerds being, well, math nerds. Or just nerds. Or just idiots.

Barron Vangor Toth
BarronVangorToth.com

[BruinEric]

To the original post: what is clear when you hears these odd "keep certain players around" theories is that it shows they know little/nothing about software.

Seriously. How freaking hard would it be to set up an algorithm that:
1) Rewards certain players deemed "best for the site"
2) Is not detectable when large groups of hand histories are studied for statistical patterns.
3) Is not a full time job for a huge group of programmers who have easy blackmail-bait on a high-profile and/or publically traded company.
4) Is not a program loaded with bugs which would screw up a noticeable amount of times.

The beauty of a proper shuffling algorithm is that it is not a huge, complex program.

[Alex/Mugaaz]

There is 1 site I played on where everything about it seems so third rate, shady, or downright bad that I really had to wonder if it was legit. I doubt anything was going on, but I didn't feel comfortable with the site so I just withdrew and went elsewhere. It wasn't that complicated.