Official Poker Site Data Analysis and Discussion Thread

**Bobo Fett** · 07-29-2008, 05:33 AM

This thread is an attempt to have an actual serious discussion of poker sites' RNGs, software, etc. One of the usual "rigged" threads turned into a pretty good discussion, so I thought it might be a good idea to start a clean thread and move the better posts over here. Keep in mind this means the first couple of hundred posts here (up to #185 ATM) could include a few references to the old thread, and a little bit of the beginning discussion might be off-topic or somewhat disjointed.

I'm hoping we can have a civil conversation about the potential for flaws in online poker sites' software, RNGs, etc.

If you have a concern, please try to make a rational argument and/or provide some kind of evidence so we have a starting point for discussion. "I keep losing to 2-outers at RiverStars" isn't going to be very productive. "This week I found that 2-outers at PokerStars were hitting on the river 25% of the time over a ~200 hand sample of all-in situations" would be better. This isn't to say that some kind of exact numbers are required with every question, but the more data you have, the better chance you will get help and/or there will be a productive conversation about it.

If you want to dispute someone's assertion, please come with something better than "That's retarded, Full Tilt makes way too much money they would never mess with their software like that". Not only do we want to avoid throwing around the insults, but it's also only fair that those responding to people's concerns should do so with some kind of logical and/or statistical argument.

The higher quality we can keep this thread, the better chance we can get participation from people who usually avoid the mud-slinging you see in the typical "poker is rigged" threads. Please don't troll; if you don't have something productive to add to the conversation, just keep reading. If you see someone you think is trolling, try to ignore them and move on. Don't feed the trolls, and they'll usually go away.

Now that I've moved all the posts, the last moved post is #184 unless any get deleted in the future.

MyTurn2Raise · 07-30-2008, 03:57 AM

stars is so confident in their games that they
1) don't allow players to datamine
--- you know, the way players have found problems at other sites
2) don't have a reputable firm doing audits

but, they have hired plenty of people who will go ape**** on people on forums if anyone says it isn't on the up and up

MyTurn2Raise · 07-30-2008, 03:58 AM

also, if you want to prove it, I'll show you how

look at all-in confrontations
compare the regulars at a level verse the fish
look how far short the regulars are compared to what their pot equity says they should be

it is there

tiltymcfish0 · 07-30-2008, 04:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MyTurn2Raise

also, if you want to prove it, I'll show you how

look at all-in confrontations
compare the regulars at a level verse the fish
look how far short the regulars are compared to what their pot equity says they should be

it is there

do you have this stuff tho myturn?

NoLimitLeagues · 07-30-2008, 05:10 AM

OP, pokerstars is the only site that i know of that hires a 3rd party to audit its RNG constantly. it also happens to be the site that gets analyzed more than any other site. your OP shows you have no clue what you are talking about. its impossible for someone to 'notice' that some people run good long term and some run bad long term without studying their 10s of thousands of their hhs. not sure if you realize this, but the nature of poker is that some run good short term and some run bad short term.

as someone else pointed out your two points contradict themselves. you are embarrassing yourself. QFT and read a book.

also, why did u feel you needed to start another thread? there have been so many of them addressing the exact same topic in the last two weeks.

MyTurn2Raise · 07-30-2008, 01:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoLimitLeagues

OP, pokerstars is the only site that i know of that hires a 3rd party to audit its RNG constantly. it also happens to be the site that gets analyzed more than any other site. your OP shows you have no clue what you are talking about. its impossible for someone to 'notice' that some people run good long term and some run bad long term without studying their 10s of thousands of their hhs. not sure if you realize this, but the nature of poker is that some run good short term and some run bad short term.

as someone else pointed out your two points contradict themselves. you are embarrassing yourself. QFT and read a book.

also, why did u feel you needed to start another thread? there have been so many of them addressing the exact same topic in the last two weeks.

I can hire Jim Bob from the trailer park down the street to audit my posts... doesn't mean a thing

until PStars actually hires a reputable firm to go over their RNG AND EVERYTHING ELSE, I'll just trust their current signaling that they are likely not on the up and up

An actual trustworthy firm in such a dubious industry would go out of its way to show that it is fair... nothing from PStars has signaled that

**MicroBob** · 07-30-2008, 02:38 PM

myturn - I think you've said before that you studied some all-ins or something and found incorrect results.
Care to share those findings?
Your methodology might not be as correct as you think but without you posting anything about what you did it's impossible to confirm your findings or determine where you went wrong.

MyTurn2Raise · 07-30-2008, 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MicroBob

myturn - I think you've said before that you studied some all-ins or something and found incorrect results.
Care to share those findings?
Your methodology might not be as correct as you think but without you posting anything about what you did it's impossible to confirm your findings or determine where you went wrong.

i've posted some stuff before

here's something easy

go through your hands and just do ev calcs on the regulars
even with numerous hands being v each other, what happens in the other hands (regulars v non-regs) is enough to show up

you can start there and just dig to see how odd some of the things are

I'm basically saying that PStars is programming in things that will help the fish last longer

cue all the PStars shills to tell me how full of crap I am, etc
bunch of sell-outs

tiltymcfish0 · 07-30-2008, 07:23 PM

lol where did you post stuff before? link plz ?

NoLimitLeagues · 07-30-2008, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MyTurn2Raise

I can hire Jim Bob from the trailer park down the street to audit my posts... doesn't mean a thing

until PStars actually hires a reputable firm to go over their RNG AND EVERYTHING ELSE, I'll just trust their current signaling that they are likely not on the up and up

An actual trustworthy firm in such a dubious industry would go out of its way to show that it is fair... nothing from PStars has signaled that

they did hire a reputable firm dumbass. gl getting out of the trailer park.

BadLieutenant · 07-30-2008, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MyTurn2Raise

i've posted some stuff before

here's something easy

go through your hands and just do ev calcs on the regulars
even with numerous hands being v each other, what happens in the other hands (regulars v non-regs) is enough to show up

you can start there and just dig to see how odd some of the things are

I'm basically saying that PStars is programming in things that will help the fish last longer

cue all the PStars shills to tell me how full of crap I am, etc
bunch of sell-outs

wow, I thought you were a respectable poster and a good player.....'till you post this crap.

**MicroBob** · 07-30-2008, 08:20 PM

Yeah, I had read myturn mention this stuff a couple times before and was like "Wha Wha Whaaaat?!?!"

myturn - I really don't feel like trying to dig through my PT for regs vs. non-regs an attempting to find the various all-in discrepancies or whatever it is you think you found.
Since you already did the research I thought you could provide more details on it.
If you would like to link to your old posts on this that would be great. Thanks.

1p0kerboy · 07-30-2008, 08:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MyTurn2Raise

i've posted some stuff before

here's something easy

go through your hands and just do ev calcs on the regulars
even with numerous hands being v each other, what happens in the other hands (regulars v non-regs) is enough to show up

you can start there and just dig to see how odd some of the things are

I'm basically saying that PStars is programming in things that will help the fish last longer

cue all the PStars shills to tell me how full of crap I am, etc
bunch of sell-outs

I'm not going to come right out and say that Stars is rigged.

But I definitely have noticed the discrepancy that he is referring to here and I think it should be looked further into.

**Bobo Fett** · 07-30-2008, 08:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1p0kerboy

I'm not going to come right out and say that Stars is rigged.

But I definitely have noticed the discrepancy that he is referring to here and I think it should be looked further into.

Wait, what?

Well, this is how these things start...lets see some stats!

1p0kerboy · 07-30-2008, 08:57 PM

I'm going to repeat that I'm not convinced that Stars is rigged or anything. But I have noticed the sort of thing that MTTR mentioned. I have discussed it briefly with him about a year or so ago along with a couple of other regular players.

About a year and a half ago, programs became available that calculated all-in equity in no-limit hold 'em cash games.When we started experimenting with the programs, we found that regulars as a whole were performing pretty badly over pretty big sample sizes. My results were horrendous.

Unfortunately, I no longer have those databases due to my hard drive passing away. But, my results from this year are even worse.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...ht=doom+switch

But even though that's a 700k+ sample it's obviously nowhere big enough to be meaningful, which is why we would need to compare large samples of many regular players and see the results as a group.

In the past we have heard that there is no way that a site would take a chance on running a dishonest game because the risk wouldn't be worth the reward. But this theory has been proven to be very incorrect.

I like to believe that Stars is running a fair game. The truth is, however, that it would be extremely easy for them to manipulate results and it would be extremely hard for them to ever be caught if they were doing so, especially with their no data-mining policy.