I think this needs to be moved out of deep in an Other Poker thread into somewhere where more people will see it, because it's seriously disturbing. Stars employee Alex Scott volunteers the information that Stars is manipulating the odds in Triple Draw games. Complete conversation below. It may be this doesn't bother anyone else as much as it does me, but I hate the precedent.

When people want to see hands turned up in NLHE games, you go on and on about how you're recreating the live poker experience. What the hell? And that's a minor thing, not messing with the card frequencies! This attitude isn't so far up the slippery slope from rigging flops because people like more action, IMO.

Anyway, you don't do it because it isn't fair. Knowing that your opponent is more likely to get your discards than random cards is a small advantage, but an advantage nonetheless. Since the vast majority of players will assume the game is played like a live game, those of us who now know otherwise have an unfair edge.

For instance, suppose I start with 22227, and all six players come along, so I go ahead and draw to the hand knowing that if I make a hand, it will be good and win me a huge pot. Now if it goes far enough for a reshuffle, all my opponents who are drawing at a deuce have better odds to hit one than they ought to! Even if I'm pat they must if I'm in position, because the software doesn't know if I'm going to draw or not. You've essentially rigged the game so I get sucked out on more!

All of poker is based on the odds of a standard 52-card deck. To violate that in any form is utterly unethical IMO. I'm giving serious thought to leaving Stars over this, and I'm going to repost this in the Zoo, because people deserve to know.

Wow, this seems pretty shady - in theory it's not really that bad of a decision I guess insofar as it probably makes TD slightly more fun to know you won't get your discards back, but I agree with your point about how people will assume it works under the same rules and procedures as any other TD game would. I can't think of any other situation in which an online poker game has different rules (as far as the actual gameplay, not technical stuff like multiaccounting etc) than its live version.

Alex responded in the original thread. I hope he comes here soon cause copying is a PITA. Quotes from me in blue.

I find this attitude even scarier than the original one. Undoubtedly the effect is tiny; after all reshuffles are extremely rare in real-money games. That doesn't change the fact of the manipulation itself, which is the problem here. It's not OK to make a "tiny" change in the odds. (For one thing, who decides what's "tiny"?)

Not if I'm pat already. And if not, I'm actually more likely to pair sevens, since I haven't discarded one and one of my opponents may have.

I've generally been a big fan of Stars, and if I have to leave there I probably have to find something else to do with myself than poker - not a particularly thrilling prospect. But if the way you're not seeing the problem here is representative of the people making the decisions, I have a hard time continuing to have faith in PokerStars' ethics.

I'm not usually a hard-liner, but manipulating the odds, ever, is not acceptable.

It is simply not true that a triple draw player would never like to receive a card he has previously discarded.

Suppose you start out with 23788 and it is raised, reraised, and capped multiple ways. You might throw out the 8's to draw for a wheel instead. But if your opponents are drawing a lot of cards, you'd absolutely love to catch one of those 8's after the reshuffle. It might have been a mistake to discard it in the first place, but so what?

In particular, suppose you come down to a 2347 vs. 2347 draw on the last round, after a reshuffle. (This case is particularly easy to analyze.) If you saw and discarded 88TT but your opponent saw KKAA then you are at a severe and unexpected disadvantage. If you draw a 5689TJQK then he has 4 fewer cards that cause him to lose. If he draws to a 89JQKA2346 then you have 4 fewer cards that will let you win. We would expect the two draws to be absolutely equal but all the disadvantages are on your side due to different cards you drew and discarded pre-reshuffle. (You gain only a relatively small advantage because he has to draw a 5 or 6 for you to benefit from getting a 2nd shot with an 8 or T, or you have to pair 2347 in order for you to get an advantage from him not drawing a K or A..)

I can work out the number in detail but it should be obvious that only one person benefits in this example.

That's a very good example, and it generalizes to less extreme cases as well. Nines and tens commonly discarded on the first draw are often winning outs on the third.

In my 7432 vs. 7432 example:

Player A discarded 88TT
Player B discarded KKAA
The deck is reshuffled just before player A draws his cards.

The casino algorithm gives both hands 50% equity.

I believe the Stars algorithm gives player A only 47.4% equity.

There are 40 cards that player A can draw. For most of them that leaves 39 cards for player B, except for the KKAA that player B cannot get. So the total number of outcomes should be 36 * 39 + 4 * 40 = 1564. Of these A wins 696 and ties 92.

It does not seem fair to penalize a player's hand based on the quality of his discards.

they did say that you could redraw your discard back in the same round...so still 50/50

It mostly doesn't seem fair to run a game with different rules than what most of its players would expect.
I'm really surprised Stars is doing this.

This is really making a mountain out of a mole hill. This is situation that comes up about as often as using a community card in stud.

If this isn't posted somewhere on the rules page, it should probably be added. Other than that, it's really fine.

I ignored the 3rd round discard, assume that the discards I listed are from the 1st and 2nd round.

Quote from Alex above: "if you are going to receive a card that you have already discarded, that card is simply skipped and you get the next one instead."

The specific issue here is quite tiny indeed. The point is, once Stars has demonstrated willingness to deal from different decks in one situation, why should we trust them not to do it in others?

You can't be just a little bit rigged.

In this situation, they made a slight tweak they thought made the game better probably based on a recommendation from one of their pros. Since the situation only affects extremely low limit games, they neglected to include it in the rules page. This has honest error written all over it. Obviously, Stars is not trying to hide what they're doing (since they explained to you what they were doing).

Also, LOL at using an example with only two players drawing one on the river to demonstrate the effect. I've had a deck reshuffled a few times, but never with only two people drawing on the river.

It had honest error written all over it - and I treated it that way - until Alex came back and said it was intentional.

I do not like the philosophical and ethical underpinnings that allowed them to create this policy. The integrity of the deck is the foundation of online poker, and they ought to know better than to monkey with it.

If the community card in Stud was drawn from a distribution that was not fair, or that included, say, the 8th player's 4 discarded cards, it would still be an error that should be corrected.

If Stars had intentionally changed the rules for this Stud situation at the suggestion of one of their pros in order to make a "better game", it would still be an ethically questionable decision even though the situation is infrequent.

I don't ascribe bad intent to Stars. But I am bothered that they got bad advice in this case and decided to implement a nonstandard variation. (Is anybody going to argue that they think this is a great idea?)

You are quite welcome to work out a more complicated example.

I think the math is clear, though: a pat hand is not as strong after a Stars reshuffle (compared to the casino version) because other players will not get as many paired or high cards as they ought to. A drawing hand that discarded low cards or medium cards will be at a disadvantage after a Stars reshuffle to an equal hand that discarded pair or high cards.

I think the change is fine. Add it to the rules page and I'm 100% satisfied.

This is a complete overreaction. This is not an ethical issue.

It's still a fair game with a random shuffle and well-defined rules for dealing cards. It's just that those rules are very slightly different than standard B&M rules. People who don't care about triple draw can go back to sleep if they want.

There is no larger message here except that the exact rules of all games need to be completely documented on the Stars website. People who read the rules are relying on them to be correct. If Stars insists on their wonky version of triple draw they need to write it up.

But speaking as a TD player I think they should fix their software to replicate the standard B&M reshuffle and deal. Their "enhancement" adds nothing to the game and creates unnecessary complexity for players who already know the standard rules.

Standards are good: stop creating silly differences just for the sake of being different.

"This attitude isn't so far up the slippery slope from rigging flops because people like more action, IMO."

This attitude isn't so far up the slippery slope from wearing a tinfoil hat so the goverment and aliens can't read your brainwaves, IMO.

you should change it back stars, it isn't fair and that's the bottom line.

mark gritter provided proof, so there's no reason not to change it back to a neutral deck.

Isn't the last card of the deck not dealt out (but reshuffled
with folded hands) in 7-stud? It shouldn't bother us if the
last card of the deck is dealt out in 7-stud in an online
version, should it?

This sentence scares me a lot.

Right. People who don't care about triple draw can continue to ignore the fact that Stars has, believing they are acting in good faith, created a dealing algorithm that intentionally skips cards a drawing player would dislike.

Would everyone else be OK seeing that in their games, if only it were documented on the website? Really?

Sigh. You people are overreacting, as usual. Yes, this is a deviation from the TD games of live, and yes, Alex is wrong about "no one would want to draw a card they previously discarded," but this is not some absurdist rigged RNG bull**** that you people are espousing.

It is a different game, however tiny the change is. I think Stars should change it back to how it is dealt in live games, if only to keep up appearances. However, if they don't, it's hardly a big deal.

EDIT:

tapirboy, if you actually believe this (especially the bolded part);

You are an idiot.

One thing's for sure. Some people were unsure of the technical practicality of rigging a deal in the Official Poker Site Data Analysis and Discussion Thread. This shows that it is not only practical, but extremely trivial as well (based on the assumption that if this 'deal modification' was not trivial, then they would have gone with the 'normal' rules). This shows the server has all functionality to easily modify future hands dealt based on past actions and previous streets. It is a perfectly random deal unless you get a card they think you shouldn't have.

It's actually kind of worrying that something like this would be so trivial. Don't underestimate the complexity of a system like this. How many years did it take for auto-reload to be implemented simply because of technical challenges, but rigging a deal is done in the blink of an eye.