So nice of you to drop by and keep is informed about your lack of interest in Internet poker.

Excellent choice of forum, too.

He made it up.


That is why many riggedologists assume everyone is a petty scam artist. They would be if possible.



The number of companies that audit Stars is not really important as they will simply be dismissed as being in on it.

I highly doubt riggedologists have similar types of friends as you with regard to playing poker.

This requires a riggedologist to assess their own play and adjust/adapt. Much easier to say it is all criminal, that way the losses are not their fault. Many do say "I know I am good at poker and play a solid game" so how could it actually be them?

******ed, you see.

(Also deluded.)

Basically. It would def. take time, but when online poker sites can start advertising their actual sites (not the freeplay .net/info ones) everywhere and the general public starts to know that online poker isn't illegal "anymore", when poker sites can be started in the U.S. by well-known companies such as Harrah's, then we should start to see a change in games. But again, it'll be a time-taking process.

Do you think if that happened there would start to be some competition to bring rake down?

That would definitely be good for OLP both because it would mean that winning players could be a bit more profitable and the losing one would lose more slowly.

My winrate in 2004-2005 on Party Poker through 70k hands was 8 ptbb/100. My winrate now over my last 300k hands on Full Tilt is in the ballpark of 2 ptbb/100, at similar stakes. It's not just simply that the average level of players went up dramatically, but they play way more tables. Back on Party for a long time there was a max of 4 tables. Very few people actually played the TAG style that is so prevalent today. In 2004, you could sit down at a table on Party Poker and it wasn't at all uncommon to have at least half the table playing more than 50% of their hands. You're lucky to find one player on a table today playing that many. Even if you've evolved and studied, there is no way you can win at the same rate now as you could then. The only way to compensate for it is to move up in stakes or add more tables. Most people have added more tables, as the higher stakes games in general are just too tough.

When winrates get chopped up this badly due to the evolution of the game, naturally winning is tougher to come by and the downswings are going to be longer than what you are used to. My all time largest downswing was about 15 buy ins, and I know of players better than me who have experienced well worse than that, probably due to different playing styles that incorporate greater levels of variance.

What you're going through really isn't unusual at all. I wouldn't expect anything different. To give you an idea of how the games have changed, I played a 30/5 style back when I was earning the big winrate on Party Poker in 2004. Try playing a 30/5 style now and you'll get destroyed. I actually tried it for a while until I realized that the isolation raises when I was out of position with marginal holdings were eating me alive. I pretty much play half as many hands today. I used to be able to limp in with just about anything and see cheap flops, and get paid when I hit. Now I can only play about half as many hands, and clearly can no longer take advantage of the previously available opportunities. People aren't as willing to stack off light, nor will they let you just play any hand you feel like playing. I'd say that 80-90% of the seats at today's online tables are at least semi-competent, where I'd probably say 40-50% were in the past. When competent players beat up on each other and fewer fish are out there, there just isn't as much to go around and we pretty much have to divide up whatever profits are available.


Also, I agree with DMoogle that your 10x earnings estimate on rigging the deck sounds a bit ridiculous. Let's not forget that the rake is capped on each hand. A lot of times people like to argue that the bigger the pot the more rake, but that's really not all that true. A $60 pot and a $300 pot get raked the same amount. Not to mention that even at 1/2 NL, a $60 pot is a pretty rare thing. Half the hands we don't even see a flop. Whatever little bit of extra rake they may be able to squeeze out by setting up hands would not be worth being subjected to scrutiny of people who have the documented hands at their disposal where they'd be in jeopardy of being found out. The UB/AP thing is a very different argument and that involved insiders playing on specific accounts and pretty much stealing people's money. Josem was one of the primary investigators that helped prove the fraud. With people like him out there capable of an amazing level of analysis, it just defies logic to try to squeeze out a little extra rake by making the games unfair. Look at the business model of these sites. They are guaranteed to make money every time a flop is seen, and have tens of thousands of players at a time logging on to play against each other. There's no reason to mess with that, and no real reason to favor one player over another in a pot when no matter who wins they get a piece of the pot. I guarantee you if anybody found proof that the RNG was rigged at any poker site, the business lost from such a discovery would be devastating to that site.

I agree, OLP gets togher. I play mostly SnG's. In 2004 there was planty of SNG players, clueless about SNGs pecularity. Once I started 9 tourney and by mistake scrolled down one window (I was 8-tabling then). That window came up after with congratulations about winning of 3-d place I won money without even betting! I cannot imagine it could happen now.

Well, I cannot dissmiss this as a possible explaination of my winrate dropping.
In 2004 my ROI was 15%, now it's 2-3%. Bad!
Thank you.

Less actual rake? I doubt it. Fish don't pay attention to rake, and regs don't care enough. I'm sure we'll be seeing a TON more bonus offers, and probably better rakeback deals though. A ton of people who get rakeback understand it so little that they think higher rake means more money for them, not less.

Actually it is very important and would pretty much eliminate the possibility of rigging if many separate companies performed an audit.

If one or two companies audit a site then they could easily paid off, or just be too lazy to test all the variables.

If 5 companies audit them, then that chance goes down greatly.

If 20 companies audit them, then it would definitely shut rigtards up, but I don't see sites calling out for companies to perform audits.

No it won't. The pockets of the Israeli/Russian mafia are deep.

No it wouldn't because they are ******ed.

That's where the name: 'rigtard' comes from.

Do you see what we did there?

That is because, in the great scheme of things, rigtards have about as much importance as your average garden snail.

They come on here and make idiots of themselves, sure, but they are so ******ed they keep playing and anyone ******ed enough to believe them will similarly keep playing.

So it's hardly likely to be a number one priority for the sites to attempt to assuage their concerns - even if auditing could accomplish such a thing.

It's not a priority for the sites to show that they are running a fair operation?

Well, it is a legitimate question.

Bad guessing. I didn't make it up. I figured it out. Maybe, my estimate is wrong, but it's based on dependable source:

http://www.partygaming.com/prty/uplo...ults110309.pdf

This is official PartyPoker 2008 annual financial report. There I've found some usefull information:

Net Revenue from Poker: 274.0 millions
Clean EBITDA from poker: 76.1 millions
(that is: Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization.)

They don't declare their profit from poker separately from others their enterprises, like PartyCasino, PartyBingo, PartyBets and so on. I can assume the proportion of profit to EBITDA is same or close for all activities.

Total EBITDA: $133.3 millions
Total Profit after tax: $77.8 millions

EBITDA from poker: $76.1 millions
After using proportion calcualtion clean profit from poker comes to about 45 milions.
Let it be $50 M. This is their legitimate earnings.

Now some more information from the report.
Unique active players: 1,241,300

Here dependable part of my research ends and estimate starts.
Question 1: what part of all players are winners.
I read different estimates, ranging from 1 to 20%.
Question 2: How much all winning players, including big winners and small stake grinders, win on average.
A read an oppinion that, "slightly" good player can winn 10,000, very good - 50-100K.
Let's remain on a conservative side and put it this way: 1% of players wins 20,000 per year on average. Or, 12,240 PartyPoker players may win altogether $250 mln. Theoretically, If PartyPoker could somehow cut possible players earnings in half, it would be additional gain of $125 millions. 2.5 times more than their legitimate earnings.
If to be less conservative and to take 5% for winning players, $30,000 as an average yearly winnings (note, it includes 6 figures winners along with others), or allow PartyPoker take away from winners more than half, the ratio may easily be 10 and more.

Well, if you still call it "made up", then I'm sorry for this.
Better yet, prove I'm wrong. I'll be glad. As I said, those concerns about rigging bother me.
O, please, don't call me a rigtard - I never said that PartyPoker is rigged. I only said that I see great incentive for them to do something. Maybe, they are too good morally to do such sort of things (no joking).
Riggedologist is acceptable This word comes from "logic" instead of "******"
(joke).

They have for 99%+ of the players who play ( a large amount do not care and many who do are comfortable).

Guys like you will never be satisfied, so it should not be a priority to satisfy those who will simply adapt their theories (mafia/entropy/secret super software etc) and continue to believe it is rigged anyway. Riggedologists do not represent much of their player base anyway.


While you may have had honest intentions, the reality is that this essentially means that you made up the figure, and that is a big problem when dealing with riggedologists - their data is always quite soft (either it does not exist or it is just an interpretation of actual data).

How did you come up with this 99% number?
Did you make it up or did you conduct a survey of the players.
Many players I have talked to agree that certain things seem a little bit off, but they continue to play because it is still profitable and entertaining.
Don't accuse others of making up random numbers when you did the exact same thing.

Well thought out post.
Would read again.

I agree that an estimate is not the same as a guess, but is based on logical assumptions and what you have just come up with illustrates why nobody takes you people seriously.

You "estimate" a total profit of $250m for winning players and ask what if Partypoker could "somehow" take half of this profit for themselves. WTF are you talking about? You can put your mathmagicians hat on and do all the spurious calculations you like but even if the figures you have made up are accurate the final figure you have calculated is literally meaningless. Does it even back up your statement that they could make "10 times" their legitimate profit? No, because just like the rest of your nonsense, it was totally made up.

It's good to see you people trying to use your brains to do some research and produce some figures but I think we both know that this is utter nonsense don't we.

Sorry for missleading: I didn't mean exactly that. I never commited any kind of scam. I just tried to get in their shoes: big money gambling related business, for some reason registred in off-shore country (tax evasion?), no warry about prosecuting and so on.

Didn't you confused software testing with auditing?
Here is an opinion of one man about these testings / audits

Questions:
A.how can we as customers be sure they are indeed using the code they sent ...
B. is it possible for a company to submit a the RNG but then use another "comprimised" one.
Answer:
"The short answer is that you cannot be sure. It is absolutely possible for them to submit one RNG and use another."

You would say, rigtards always querry validity of poker sites audits. But this guy is not a regular rigtard. He is a Technical Manager with Cigital, Inc. who conducts these testings (that you call audits).

"Even if we went to some extreme measure and observed the entire software development process and observed them load the software onto the servers, we can't be there at all times. The moment we left they could swap in something different. We have no reason to believe they do this, but there is no way we can detect it or prevent it.

I don't know if this is a satisfying answer, but I think it's realistic."

Full text is here (Post #183):
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...6/index13.html


Why are they so shy to speak up for themselves?

Your estimate might work if it weren't for the simple fact that, in poker, players play against each other, not the house.

OK so how is this different from what I said? You'd only scam people if it were on a large scale?

I don't know much about how the audits work, someone more knowledgeable can talk about that. 1. They aren't. Check out the monthly and yearly graph threads in BBV.
2. Because it's nobody else's business how much they make. I, for one, definitely brag too much.

It's common sense. I maybe see 1 or 2 rigged whines all day on any day on Stars and they are always from bad losing players. Most people play with play money or micro stakes as well, and while you may scream OMGRIGGZORS when you lose 8 cents, most of them do not care.

The riggedologists tend to live here and there in the low stakes area mainly, are bad players who do not improve their game and find reasons for their failings as long as it is not themselves.

Every activity or sport or competition has a few of these people. They are rare but all behave in the similar manner.

Also, I have no doubt that many of the people you talk to and hang out with share your outlook, as riggedologists tend to attract each other and support each other unconditionally, and the conversations you have with your poker buddies is quite a bit different then the chats good, improving players have about poker.

All the best.

What I tried to show is that poker sites may have incentives to manipulate games. I don't claim they do so. Maybe, there are some obstacles or other reasons not to do so.
I didn't say anywhere about exact number "10 times". I said "up to 10 times". It depends on initial assumptions. But you didn't even try to challenge my assumptions or math. If we stick to a conservative assumption of 1% winning players and 20k average winnings it still makes 250 millions in player's earnings, comparing to 50 mln in strait profit. IF IT'S realistic, isn't it an INSENTIVE.
Now say that it is not real that 1% of players can win 20K /year, and we should agree, that online poker came very close to online casino where there are no long term winning players by definition.

No, WE don't. Using several times the word "nonsense" by you doesn't help me understand that it is noncense, because your never clearly explained why. I concluded, it's because you didn't took me seriously, as you wrote. In this case you shouldn't post the reply.
As for using brains, I would suggest this to both sides. I don't see much of brainwork in most of posts.
If one have nothing meaningfull to say, s/he doesn't have to.
Sorry for somewhat harsh reply, I will try to be tolerant and polite.

How are we supposed to take you seriously when you suggest that a site could cheat its players out of half of their expected profits and have no one notice?

Though you failed to understand what I was talking about, I take you seriously. So, I'm trying to explain to you one more time. I spoke only about insentives. I didn't say anywhere, even in suggestive manner, that they do anything bad. Every time I say something that could be interpreted as suggesting rigging, I start with "if". Several times I said that I allow the posibility that my logic or estimate are faulty. I kindly asked people to prove I'm wrong. I expected some logical objections, but got nothing but your rejection to take me seriously.
Also, I never said a word about "a site could cheat its players out of half of their expected profits and have no one notice". How did you make the deduction that I suggest that?
Or, if you are saying that poker site cheating by no means can go unnoticed, that would be a good point, if you could prove it by some facts or logic. It would clearly show me, a doubter, why, despite great temptation, they still aren't rigged.
I don't know a way poker sites could do this, so I don't speak about this. If I knew I would stop playing. Just because, along with great insentives, I would know about real possibility of the cheating. By now, I don't.

Its true if the house doesn't cheat.
Frankly, I cannot predict what I would do if it were on a large scale. Can you? Big money tend to influence human mind.
BTH, I did some business on a middle scale and managed to stay honest.

Excuse my ignorance, what is BBV?

What incentive do they have to fleece their customers if they can only get away with it for a few months before permanently damaging their reputation? If you don't think it can be done secretly, why even bring it up? It's as silly as saying "If they wanted to they could all just keep every cent deposited".
Beats, Brags, and Variance