People who think online is rigged...

[MicroBob]

I wonder what Dr. Al (or other experts) think about those who claim that online-poker is (or might be) rigged??


I was just reading through another one of the 'online-poker sites have every incentive to set it up so that fish win more often' type threads in the internet-forum.


Naturally...these threads come up all the time. and while I don't think Dr. Al plays much online, I have to think that he has heard this conversation come up at the live-tables a few times (I know I have...and I don't play very much live).


Personally, I think there's just a lot of denial out there by those who don't want to believe that they are actually potentially not such a great player.
They'll admit it out loud..."Oh...I know I'm not like a Phil Ivey or anything" but they could add, "but I know I'm better than most (or all) of my opponents."
Naturally, if they didn't think their way was the best way to play poker, they wouldn't be playing that way in the first place.


Anyway, some guy who they perceive to be a worse player than them catches a suck-out...or they lose with KK to AA...or whatever... and they can't understand how it has happened as many times as it has.
Thus, they start to believe that the cards aren't really 'right' on a certain site (or whatever).


I find the psychology of this fascinating.


When I was in Vegas in July I was at a table where a dealer was saying that he's been in poker for 30 years...but could tell right-away in his first time playing online that the cards ran in different patterns and clearly weren't the same as a live deck.

How people can think they can identify certain patterns of cards is beyond me (after a few hands...or a few thousand hands).


On the PPM cruise there was lots of talk all over the place about how the cards on such-and-such site weren't really right...but on some other site they seemed to be pretty legit. etc etc.

I had one guy tell me that I'm just the guy the site wants to keep around. Because I'm a high-volume, full-time player and I contribute more rake than the part-time players.
I had another guy tell me that I better watch out because the site doesn't want the full-timers to win because they take the money from the fish (thus decreasing the number of players on the site).

It seems very much like these people are just inventing their own logic as they go along instead of using common-sense.


I think it's a cop-out to just say that all these people are 'stupid'.
They're clearly are not THAT stupid.
Many are college-educated...have jobs...even as doctors, lawyers, psychologists, whatever.

But on this particular issue I think they are painfully ignorant and in some weird state of denial....and as I said before I think it's kind of fascinating.