Theories on how online poker is rigged?

[Rah]

There is one other possibility that I don't see mentioned; that new players start off with great cards to get addicted to the game, instead of starting their poker career by losing it all to sharks and leaving.

[WSOPWinner2005]

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There is one other possibility that I don't see mentioned; that new players start off with great cards to get addicted to the game, instead of starting their poker career by losing it all to sharks and leaving.

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This is essentially what was posted earlier, the site juiced the hands preflop - Same situation. I think the most common one I have heard, and this one goes back YEARS to the start of the "Paradise is Rigged" controversy is the simplest idea (Not that I am saying this is happening).

The site has 1-2 players at a table who win 40% of the hands with the pot being juiced up with good hands for their opponents so they stay in the hand the whole way through.

To be honest all the theories are pretty stupid for the most part but I can say this much. I have one site I feel is possible would be rigged and they have zero crediblity in my eyes. No I won't mention names but it is not a big site and 90% of the playing population here won't ever set foot there anyways as enough bad things have been said about them..

[stigmata]

" I have one site I feel is possible would be rigged and they have zero crediblity in my eyes. "

Couldd those of us not in the know have a subtle hint please? Perhaps some stats could be done there.

[Eratosthenes]

Hi Matt--

To test the PP theory you need to see an unbiased sample of starting hands. Starting hands that are shown down will not be an unbiased sample. One way to get an unbiased sample of starting hands would be to get a few of 2+2ers to query their PokerTracker databases and send you the result. Only 2+2ers who have Access of Query could do this and I don't know how many would want to play anyway.

have fun

[climber]

I think the bigger problem is you are providing no incentive for anyone to undertake this large project. What exactly would you do with any type of "results" you discover?

The only possible possible incentive would be to gather a large database--but most people won't give theirs out and its pretty easy to harvest your own.

[hackmage]

Unfortunately this goes back to what I refer to as the "muck problem", in that I won't be able to see a lot of the starting hands for the noobies. Namely the ones they don't win. Also there's the problem of knowing how long someone has been on a site, if I didn't have accounts at quite a few rooms I'd register a new account at most the sites, and run analysis on my starting hands. That's an idea I'll keep in the back of my head for the next site I start up at though.

The collusion problem would be VERY COOL to check out, because I know for a fact it's happening, not only between small groups of people but as a whole business. Just check pokermafia.com. Unfortunately, proving any hypothesis about it would be way too hard, I'd love to work on it, but there's no testable hypothesis. Hopefully the poker sites are on to this kinda cheating and are taking countermeasures. Once again thanks for all the ideas, got a lot of data to read through now.

Matt

[FlFishOn]

This is one I examine at length at Empire/Party.

The hypothesis is that underdog starting hands win more than their fair share of pots. For example AA vs KK is theoretically ~4.5 - 1 in a full board, all-in pre flop matchup yet you find that it actually run 3.7 - 1 on Empire.

Here's the expreriment: Play or observe sit n go tourneys. Every time two and only two players are in a situation where one is all-in pre flop record the starting hands and the note the winner. The board cards will not be needed. Since you will see both hands and all board cards every time there is no bias. You must be careful to record every occurance to avoid selection bias. 300 hands will get you started.

To analyze the data you will need to simulate each match-up with twodimes.com or Poker Probe or ??? to find the actual odds for each match-up. What I did was to bracket the results putting all the .7 to .75 hands together and looking at them seperately. There could easily be better techniques, ask your Prof.

My results convinced me that Empire was not dealing honest cards. I'm very curious to have this confirmed or contradicted. PM me for more ideas/details.

[moondogg]

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300 hands will get you started.


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And then the next 10K hands might actually imply something useful.

Interesting technique, but did you actually record an analyze thousands of all-in situations? Or a only a few hundred?

[Yads]

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Yea, I'd love to test the PP idea, but once again it comes down to a muck problem, I won't always be able to see starting hands. Seriously, I have NO DOUBT this will be a waste of my time, in fact I'm 99% certain I'll just show the RNGs are working right, but that's the idea of statistics. I want to see just how "right" I am. And thanks both of you for the replies.

Matt

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Why not get all of the people with PT to send you their personal hold cards in their history. I'm sure you'll easily get a million hold card histories, then you can see if some hold card combinations occur at an irregular rate.

[FlFishOn]

Tell me what you know about statistical inference and maybe I'll tell you more.