Well, I can't think of any conditions that wouldn't be detectable. For example, say PS decided that the deal is unaffected 9/10 hands, and 1/10 hands, he gets the best hand dealt. The selection of which hand he gets the good deal on is random, not cyclical. I could detect this, no problem.

If you can't see how, start with the question, how do you detect when a series of pre-flop hands deviates from normal? Under this rule, TwoMoos would get too many good hands. I'd have to do some simulation myself to see what the magnitude of the affect is, but I have no doubt I could detect it. Likewise, with the opposite (always giving the worst hand dealt)

The less times the deal is messed with, the more samples you'd need to detect it, however, the less times the deal is messed with, the less effect it could have. Presumably, they would be rigging things for a reason (pick your poison, there are plenty in this thread), but the less often they rig a hand, the less of that benefit they get.

Anyway, before anyone can say anything concretely about a rigging hypothesis, you have to state clearly what kind of rigging you think wouldn't be detectable. You're getting closer, you've stated a mechanism. Now, come up with an actual rigging rule using this methodology (such as the one I suggested, but, pick your own if you like). I'm a programmer by profession, I would be happy to help you with simulating this. If we restrict things to preflop it's particularly easy and fast to simulate, I wouldn't need to generate whole hand histories, just preflop hand distributions. I have a lot of experience with such simulations, and a programming platform that lets you do some work with them. If you're moderately skilled with programming I could probably even get you started on doing this kind of stuff yourself.

It would have been detected simply because if this was happening then someone behind it would have come out by now and said so.

Rusty will help you it seems, but I am not sure he has quite the experience with riggies to know what he is in for as you are not likely asking for a study done purely for the math theoretical aspects of it, and perhaps as you ask your 100th "what if superbots" variety of question he will give up as many before have.

You will always be able to conceive of "impossible to detect" rigging theories. Superbots and Lizard People do that just fine already as do all variations of the"boogie man"

No offense but you will not be the first to come up with a viable rigging theory that -

- makes the site money (ie: makes sense from a financial point of view)

- cannot be caught

- is kept a total secret for every site for years


Rusty has given you some fixed parameters with which to create a theory and if you ever do (doubtful) he will point out the flaws in it and all that will do is have you asking your next "what if" theory. I am just trying to save him some time, he seems like a nice guy, unlike me for instance

Some people are convincable, some aren't, but anyway, I have some free time so why not.

I like to give people some benefit of the doubt. Not everyone has the math skills, or the programming skills, to be able to rigorously prove this kind of thing to themselves. Without at least one of those 2 things, many things seem possible that aren't.

At one point in my poker-lifetime, I was really, really sure things were rigged against me. I didn't think the site was doing it, but I thought possibly I had a virus or backdoor that was allowing someone to read my cards. I felt a few people in particular were winning far more than was likely given the circumstances. Anyway, I did my research and was able to confirm to myself that my computer was in good shape, and that the outcomes of the HU matches weren't as far from "even" as I thought they were, and I learned a lot at the time about how the brain responds to such things. And believe me, I've always considered myself a rational person, so I do believe that basically rational people can believe things that, from an outside/objective standpoint, aren't rational.

Without having worked through this issue myself, possibly I would never have been satisfied that I hadn't been cheated. To this day I still have to accept some doubt on the issue as to whether someone had some kind of unfair advantage over me that I wasn't able to detect - there aren't enough hands involved in this period for me to say much for sure, but for the most part I'm satisfied that it's just something that happens some times.

qft.

You of all people know that once in a while heads hits 20 in a row, and the wheel hits 20 reds in a row, and your favorite hand loses 20 in a row to donks who make calls that defy logic. If it never happened, THAT would not be random and would be suspicious.

I was just generalizing, but if you feel guilty or whatever

Absolutely. But, sometimes when a coin hits heads 20 times in a row, it's rigged. When it happens to you, it's your first thought, for sure.

I absolutely don't believe that poker is *institutionally* rigged. It's also undeniable though, that there are spyware programs out there, that when installed on your machine, can tell remote people that you're online playing poker, what tables you're on, and what your hole cards are. That's basically what I was suspicous of at the time. Anyway it's easy to give in to paranoia, and hard to get out of it, but it's something that has to be done.

My larger point was really that if you don't have the tools to analyze things logically yourself, it can be hard to take on faith what people say about these things.

Its not correct to say its definitely rigged.
Its not correct to say its definitely not rigged.

LOL My programming skills are moderate, indeed, but I'm working on that. Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts and offer to help. The million hand challenge is interesting.

Monteroy, can you generate another full-page rantresponse to a single sentence?

Yes, those things are real and if you saw something that made you suspect it, that wasn't paranoia. Fortunately its pretty easy to clean and protect your computer.

You will never prove a thing, and will keep wasting an inordinate amount of time looking for any reason to explain why you lose to cling to except your actual play until even the kindest of souls leaves you alone.

All the best.

bump

I'm relatively new to 2+2 but came here for the "thought provoking discussions on poker and gaming topics." Looking back on the past couple days, we could delete the posts by bacats32, EvilSteve, Monteroy and theBruiser500 and lose a lot of flame and meanness and almost no value. Yet these posters have accounted for over 20K posts to forums.

But there is a lot of good on Two Plus Two, so this is just a minor complaint.