A Discussion regarding Online Poker is Rigged (long)

[CORed]

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With such a majority of players unwilling to accept the possibility of rigging, the "burden of proof" is quite
high;

[/ QUOTE ] This majority you speak of, in reality is actually an overwhelming minority. This post is extremely long and after that gibberish I stoped reading.

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Based on what I see in chat while playing, a lot of fish think Party is rigged, and play anyway. I have even had people accuse me of colluding, and continue to play. All of which proves that fish are stupid. But we knew that anyway.

I still think that a poker site has little to gain and much to lose by rigging the deal. They make their money from the rake. An online casino has games that are already rigged (in that they have a built-in house advantage), but it's certainly possible that they might want to increase their edge by running a non-random game, or dealing a blackjack game from a shoe with fewer aces and faces than advertised, etc. It seems to me that a casino with house-banked games has a lot more to gain by running a game that is more rigged than the customers know.

It is possible that a poker site somewhere is rigged. It would be stupid, but greed sometimes causes people to do stupid things. However, I would be very surprised if any of the major sites are not dealing honestly. Most of the people who think poker sites are rigged to help the bad players just don't want to admit that they are bad players themselves, so it's easier to blame the site than to try to improve their games.

If you're paranoid, and think the games you're playing might not be on the up-and-up, here are the things to worry about, and my SWAG (sientific wild-ass guess) of the probability that it will actually happen to you.

Player collusion (98%): There is no question that this happens. All the sites claim to watch out for it, and they probably do a fairly good job. Also, many people who collude do so because they are not good enough to beat the game honestly, and in fact, they are not good enough to beat the game even if they collude. However, collusion is something you should watch for, and if you believe players are colluding, report it to the site and get out of that game (unless, of course, the colluders are so bad that they are helping you). My guess, is that if you play any significant amount, you have at some point been colluded against. It is somewhat less likely that the colluders took a significant amount of money from you.

Spyware on your computer (0.5%): Somebody gets sypware on your computer that sends your hole cards to another player. It would be much simpler to put a keylogger on your machine that steals your poker site password and then clean out your account, but, conceivably, spyware could be built that would send hole cards to a cheater. Proper network security, etc. should minimize this risk, but it's not an absolute guarantee.

Insider cheating (0.1%): I think this is a long shot, but it is conceivable that a current or former technical employee -- system administrator or programmer -- could sneak a back door into a poker server system that allows them to see your hole cards.

The site is rigged (0.01%).

[CORed]

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nevermind some scam that involves letting AT LEAST a dozen or so coders and employees in on you highly illegal practices.

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This is the achilles heel of any scheme to rig an online poker room. Plenty of people will know what you're doing, and the chance that somebody will rat you out, or blackmail you, is high. Of course, if you make it clear that anybody who does so will end up at the bottom of the ocean, you have a slightly better chance of pulling it off.

[FlFishOn]

Wow. A collection of my previous ideas all in one post!

Stunning.

On the data collection project consider this one valuable statistical idea: The more the deal is buggered the less data you need to 'confirm' this. Note you will never really confirm anything with data collection but you can solidify your suspicions.

I really believe that Party's code regarding the deal of the cards might be the work of one man, a principal, Anurag Dikshit. It's possible no one else has see or altered this critical piece of code.

Also important, you can beat a crooked game. Winning long term is no validation of the game's honesty.

I could go on but...

[KingOtter]

I've read your entire post.

It seems to me like a bunch of conjecture and speculation, without anything real compelling to back it up. Kind of like listening to 'Coast-to-Coast' and looking at the web-site will all the 'ghost' pictures that look to me like somebody was smoking while taking pictures.

"It may BE just smoke, but what if it isn't??!?" It's a fun game, but not realistic.

If you ask me, the argument about rigging comes down to one issue. People remember their bad beats better than their good beats.... that's all. And the human brain is wonderful at coming up with complicated theories about how it could be done, when the simpler explanation is just 'variance'.

Oh, okay, two issues. The 80% of people that lose want to explain away their lack of poker skill. "It can't be MY fault!"

KO