I don't think that'll ever be viable. I offered to do a simulation to see how large the effect is, but it's close to a day's work to write it out and run the tests and right now I'm way behind on a product release already. I'll have time in around 3 weeks if no one else does it.

If someone else wants to write the code and run the simulations (and release it open source), all the better.

But yeah, until someone does the simulations, there's not much we can say one way or the other.

I think he's got something going on, and NLL has been analyzing his data, so yes I guess that's all we knew for sure was coming. I was just hoping we might get some new action, maybe from MT2R, maybe from others.

Nah, no need.

I really don't want to discourage anyone from posting their ideas and theories, I just hope we can avoid all the repetitive and/or half-baked ones (this said not pointing to anyone in particular).

I would absolutely love it if someone with practical experience and knowledge would analyze a large hand sample (and/or combine databases or even datamine at PokerStars despite their insistence against it) to make a conclusion either way, but the facts are:

1) That takes a lot of work

and

2) The results will almost assuredly be that PokerStars is not rigging the site.

As such, no one is actually going to do it, and they'd rather just bitch about it without any proof. MT2R is one of few who has done any topical research, and even he won't share his data or publish something.

Look at it then from this angle - what way could it be unfair that really concerns you?

Let's assume there is no actual bugs in their software (on Crypto for instance there are a couple like split pot games being awarded in 2 half chunks to a player who has a low hand but never showed it ) which are annoying though do not impact game play results.

The premise then is that the game is somehow not being dealt fairly, so the question would be why and how would it impact you. Let's also assume that the big evil poker sites do not actually target people (even the paranoid ones who would be depressed if they ever understood how little they actually matter to the rest of the world).

The only way this would be done would be that the game would have to be dealt in some unfair manner, either via the action hand theory (which of course actually slows the game down a ton with all of the extra decisions thus lowering rake overall), or maybe they reward bad play as many think.

A very simple look at any poker tracker database with a decent hand history size - even 50,000+ will show which hands do best and which do worse etc. Despiter bad beats, eventually AA will always work it's way to the top (assuming nothing silly like a .1/.25 player lost once with AA trying $10/20 NL), KK will be next and so on.

Most who have the feelings of dread never made it to the stage where their actual data would basically show them that for the most part things work out as expected.

Regarding the shuddering at the prospect of all of the data analysis, I guess I would suggest using the following line of reasoning. Others out there have crunched the numbers, which is how the super users and bots were caught in the past. There is no shortage of people who are gifted at data analysis who really put the sites to the test. If any of them found convincing data of any of these rigged theories they would not be shy about sharing their results. Still, to date nothing has been shown, so maybe - just maybe the games themselves are actually fair after all.

as KyleB pointed out,
the amount of work it takes to do this is quite a bit
it also is unpaid work
even if I further confirm what I found previously, what good will come of it?
I'm always conflicted in bringing this up

I apologize for using 'shills'--- i did have kyleb and others in mind as I wrote it--- I know he is not dumb and has good reason to think what he does--- I was just hoping to prevent his good knowledge from scaring anyone who has alternative viewpoints from coming forward--- I think it's awesome when he can pwn the total morons in the usual rigged threads
so far, it seems 1p0kerboy and schwallie are the only other ones stepping forward
this makes me sigh... perhaps, we are the unlucky few who are in the bottom 1 or 2% of results
Last year, when I looked at all of my data, I tried to look at other regulars... I was finding the same stuff, just not as distinct.... I also lacked sample size for them

as bobo fett also correctly pointed out, I've been gambling online a long time and come at it from the viewpoint that nearly the entire industry is a bunch of *********** a-holes, thus I'm biased to be against them when I sniff anything irregular

I'm still conflicted... part of me really wants to know whether the vast majority of regulars are getting screwed, or if I was just very, very 'unlucky' last year

the other part of me says nothing good will come from whatever knowledge is obtained


I am hoping that PStars and others will make a huge effort to show their games are on the up and up if they truly are.... what little they have up and is open to anyone does not have me brimming with pride


also, I wonder if Microbob does have some merit in his alternative explanations on why the math might be off--- a large portion of my own database I analyzed was shortstacking (I was ignoring multi-way pots)

My results were so far off that I questioned what are the distribution of poker hand results over and over
I ended up having to run monte carlos over and over to see allins

basically, I used Phil's program to pull out every single allin I had
It lists my hand equity pct at the time of the allin
I'd create columns and columns of random numbers
If the number was below my equity pct, I win the pot... otherwise, I'd lose
I'd add up the monetary won/loss as a result and see how that compared to the theoretical money I should be up/down (compared monte carlo results to sklansky bucks)
repeat many times---into the tens of thousands
My actual results fell within the bottom 2% of monte carlo'd results
It is possible I was very unlikely, but, as BoboFett noted, I come from the background of thinking everyone in the industry is a crook trying to skim somewhere.

At first I wondered if the worst hand was winning more often. Later, I wondered if something was being done to prop up fish. I came to that because so many regulars were posting horrible poker ev info. I'd go through my own databases and just put regulars in poker ev and found that they were running worse than expected far more often than better than expected. I did not do any exhaustive and detailed work beyond cursory views of their poker evs. Basically, at that point, I was like, "ah, makes sense. Time to accept it for what it is and move on."

bah, this is a long rambling post that has taken up far too much of my time
damn non-value added activities

cliff notes:
I believe what I wrote, because I've done a lot of work on my own data and I'm biased against online gambling companies.
I'm conflicted between wanting to know what is really going on and what will happen if we do find anything.
I was hoping other regulars would come forward and confirm what I said-- we only have 2 and 1 isn't a very strong supporter-- so, it might just be we are at the bottom of results (someone has to be.).
Good arguments on both sides.
Most OMG rigged posters are ******z.
Not sure what else to say, or where to go.

the one very strong argument I have against my own rigged against regs theory is that it seems to me to be something very tough to program into the software

an easier way of accomplishing said goal would be to adjust the bonuses and such (Bodog pulls this with their deposit bonuses for losing players)

MyTurn2Raise: I asked this earlier but I guess people missed it. How are you deciding who is a "regular", and how many of them are there in your sample? Are you sorting players by # of hands you played with them, taking the top X players, and finding that all of them run extremely bad? Are all of the "regulars" in your sample known to be winning players?

regulars--- players I know that play over 75k hands per month and are long-term winners
really, if you play a lot, you know the regulars at your levels

OK, how many regulars did you look at in your sample and how many of them were running extremely bad?

MT2R;

There are many dataminers. They have like literally 100's of millions of hands I would assume. I can only assume out of the 10 or so prominent ones, one or two will let someone have them to run tests on.

This does not mean that anyone has the system to analyze this kind've data, but someone once came along saying he was a data guy blah blah had access blah blah.

My gut tells me the "Microbob effect" is for real, resulting in a tiny imbalance in equities that cumulatively effect a sample - thus regs with their big samples always trend towards "unlucky" in anything other than HU games.

I am yet to come up with a sensible example that can demonstrate why they are never(or merely less often) on the flip side of the card removal equity changes, however

As a general rule, when you get it in good you are wanting cards outside the playing zone to hit, and in a heads up flop in a multiplayer ring game the stub will be rich in these cards to some degree.

I think eventually this will be discovered to be a "red herring".

I hope the new PokerEV will allow us to isolate the situation where one is ahead / behind so that each case can be evaluated separately as well as together.

Thanks Bobo for creating this thread.

>>

Got through 18 pages and skipped to the end. It stll looks like the discussion is following the rigged regulars and the card bunching effect.

I highly doubt that regulars are targeted. It is much easier to simply tweak the RNG to deal out bad beats in domination situations (not legitimate draws getting there). I am talking about pair vs 1 over preflop or TPTK vs TPWK or 2nd pair type hands. This will hit the tight multitalbers the hardest and reward the fish very effectively. It's easier to do and harder to prove, and just a more logical way for the sites to rig the games.

I have 20 years live experience, 8 years online, and went pro 18 months ago. I don't multitable online but prefer to focus on the details, watch every hand, take lots of notes. I use online poker to experiment with games/styles, improve my live game, not for income through volume of play. I think I can better notice when something seems to be a little off perhaps even a little better than a multitabler, even though they see more hands.

My observations:
Does any of this sound familiar? It was after legislation hit that I first saw the fish drying up at an alarming rate and then sometime later, I noticed a marked increase in bad beats around the tables, not just my own. This was more noticible to me since I usually take notes when a bad beat happens. I even noticed myself catching more suck outs when playing more laggy or small baller styles. I also noticed that legitimate draws hit far less often than they should. Finally I noticed more and more good players blaming Stars in the chat box rather than the fish for the beat so I'm sure a good number of you have noticed the same thing and it's not just my own variance/imagination.

Phil, can you make a check to just look for frequencies of all-in bad beats, regardless of player, hero doesn't even need to be involved. This will yield a larger all-in sample.

Regarding bunching. I think rigging should show up much larger than bunching effects could account for but to do it right, I think card removal should be based on players preflop stats. But yeah, I can see that being a lot of work.

Also, has anyone looked into getting large samples from the dataminers? This guy seemed willing to cooperate and I think he has Stars data.

Hand Histories Web Site

I am willing to send my HHs to a trustworthy 2+2er if something gets organized, hopefully in a new thread since requests would just get lost in this one. However, as I said, my style tends to vary a lot so I'm not sure how helpful they would be.

BTW, has anyone else noticed notes disappearing? Nearly 100% of players I play should have at least some starting notes. I always note the number of tables a player is at or hidden in ring games and always note the players OPR stats in tournaments. I often run into players that I or PT recognizes and there are no notes. Perhaps off topic, maybe not.

In my observations I see postflop bad beats happening too often as well as preflop bad beats.

I think card removal should help the tighter player against post flop bad beats when TPTK, over pair, or set gets cracked by some random 2 pair hitting. I even see the rare runner runner hitting quite often. The stub should have more higher cards than middle/lower.

I can't see if this has already been posted but the pokerEV luck graph doesn't do what everyone seems to think it does.

It doesn't show you how you "should" have run.

I think there are a lot of silent 2+2ers who have suspicions but have remained silent. Noticing statistical anomalies is one thing. Coming up with evidence proving that they are not anomalies is quite another

I do think that rigged discussions poping up with higher frequency is quite telling. One or two can be shrugged off as players tilting/running bad. However when I see more and more people around the web and in chat boxes noticing the same things I am seeing, that doesn't seem to be coincidence. Some might even go as far as to say it's bordering on common knowledge. I'd say most of the bad beats I see taken by a decent player is followed by some Stars comment hinting at rigging.

This is why I think there needs to be a function that will just look at all-in bad beats regardless of the players and see if they follow the statistical norm or is the underdog getting an advantage.

I think another indicator pointing to bad beat rigging is to look at the ones hit the hardest. The tight weak high volume player.

This type of player will usually have lower win rates but far less variance and they make up for it with high volumes. They play when ahead, lose small with marginal hands, and dominate marginal hands with stronger hands for larger pots. The bad beat rigging will have the biggest impact on them since they rarely get their money in bad to see the other side of the bad beat and the bad beat will hit them for larger amounts. If this disadvantage is enough to offset their win-rate, than the large volume will blow up on them.

However, good LAGs will often shut down the marginal hand before it can improve. FE on marginal hands is part of a LAGs advantage. Also, through frequency and aggression, they will usually see more cards with marginal hands and will see the other side of the bad beat rigging, enough to at least partially offset their own bad beats.

I think the TAGs who were consistant winners for years and who are suddenly showing up with the same highly unlikely results in BBV within such a short period pushes the highly unlikely into statistically insignificant range.

I suspect that it's the LAGs that are mostly the dissenters. Since I experiment a lot with styles, I can see my TAG style getting cracked more and my LAG style getting lucky more.

Edit: I should add that I also see a higher than normal frequency of bad beats in tournaments. However I think the shortstack nature + the higher FE inherant in tournaments on top of the aggressive approach that most good players take might subdue this effect, though it still impacts results.

Hey guys longtime lurker. I just wanted to get some opinions on my game mainly because I have recently went through a pretty nasty downswing and want to look for leaks in my game. I have PT2 and Pokerev and noticed that my stats changed pretty dramatically around feburary or march. This is mainly due to subscribing to deucescracked and changing up my game a bit. At first it worked great and I went on a really nice heater now I seem to be swinging back down see if you notice anything out of the ordinary. I will provide stats for how i played before and how i have been playing recently.

As just background, my background is grinding fullring. I started w/ .01/.02 w/ initial deposit of $100 and have worked my way up all the way up to 200NL fullring following a 20 buy-in br management rule. I have recently switched to 6-max 100NL around late march. Here are some graphs from my fullring days

Notice my luck graph doesn't have huge deviations between expected all in winnings and total winnings. Which would be expected in fullring. Toward the end is where i start to switch up my game and see larger deviations.



Here is my analysis, I really dont know how to critically look at this particular graph. I suppose i want my total winnings to be higher than my showdown winnings, which would mean all the hands that aren't going to showdown are netting me a profit. Sklansky bucks should fluctuate around the showdown winnings correct?



Now I know that i should expect larger fluctuations in 6-max but are my numbers way out of the ordinary?




The luck graph says I am on some unbelievable heater, however, my sklansky bucks are way above my total winnings in the analysis. My showdown winnings are above both. I take this to mean that I am spewing a ton in pots where I end up folding and that when I do get it in I am often behind.

Anybody want to just flame me all to hell about adjustments I likely need to make?

And for giggles here are my stats from PT. The fullring stats I am not particularly proud of, I feel like that are too loose and not aggressive enough. I would prefer a 14/10 in full ring. 6 max i feel comfortable with a 22/19 but obviously i am doing something wrong if my expected winning are the way they are.

fullring:


6max:



Thanks for any help.

Peace

To be fair, MT2R's points about PokerStars not allowing datamining and not having their work audited by well-known companies doesn't inspire confidence. That being said, I am all for someone datamining the games "illegally" for the purposes of monitoring the fairness of the games.

I feel like I must be missing something since I have yet to see someone correct this. Everything below 2.5% is not outside of 3 standard deviations. It's a little less than 2 standard deviations.

Heh, I missed that. Yes, that is not even close.