Another amazing contribution from this idiot. Ban.

Never play against short stacks on cash tables at FTP.
They win at an alarming rate.
It's like FTP doesn't want them to leave their seat, so they let them hit their trash hands.

Another brilliant post from a muppet.
Thanks Kermit you Fkn clown.
The irony in your post is awesome.

Well, he makes a very valid point. I'll find that if I win a few hands, it invariably is followed by a losing one! No exceptions! I mean, what are the odds of that?

RIGGED!

Any kind of "skimming" would have to have ways of keeping track of who wins and loses more often, and would be too cost intensive to be profitable. This was talked about a few months ago and the amount of server power it would take would end up costing more than they could get by skimming tiny amounts.
It's a bad idea to have huge hand samples hosted here, just because the sites themselves wouldn't be too thrilled about it.

Josem's idea of custom reports people can run in HEM against their own hand histories is probably the best, since there are some people who would probably discount anything posted by "shills" and would only believe their own hands.

Josem's awesome and all and has contributed A TON to this thread, but I will toot my own horn here and point out that he was bouncing off my idea!

Not bragging, just want to show I'm contributing to the thread!

Oh and....:

[x] douchy need for praise and recognition ITT

Please point me to just one post of yours that has provided any sort of real logic and therefore something worth discussing.

I can point you to dozens of my own posts that contain well thought out discussion of the issues at hand when people have actually tried to contribute something of substance.

You sir have contributed nothing of the sort. All you do is post single hands where you lose as a 70/30 favorite and scream rigged, or just post blanket one liner statements that x site is definitely rigged.

The other option is for someone to update PokerStat (available from pokerstat.com) - it appears to now be defunct.

That was used to generate this report: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...7f?hl=en&pli=1

Thanks, I have been looking for holes in my game and have actively been doing research and re thinking some of the bad plays I have made. If you cant take a hard honest look at what you are doing doing, you are not going to improve. I have constantly improved during my 6 years of playing as a result and have plenty more room to grow.

Something Greg Ramer said during an episode of EPT rang like a bell in my head. He said that the better you play the more bad beats you are going to run into. Some here said that in passing and now it is sinking in.

Do you know a good coach who understands game theory and things like the real value of hands? My next growth spurt is probably going to be in this are because live and online I feel pretty strong in the beginning to intermediate area of poker understanding. I am also at some point wanting to see if I can get some help staking so that I can get up out of the low buy in donkfests because I believe some of the bad beats I am receiving are from total donk calls. I do have some work to do on my numbers because my ROI on Fulltilt is hovering around 18% after being up around 80%. I am not so sure anyone is going to want to invest money in my game unless I am showing better results. If you want to see what I have done, and even poke fun, I am BadMonkey619 on Fulltilt.

Thanks for the responses here the last month, it has helped calm some of the voices in my head...lol

Then intentionally lose 2-3 buy ins early, or lose a couple buy ins early and then move up dramatically in stakes and win a ton.

Make millions.


Then play trash hands with short stacks.

Make millions.


I should charge a fee for such quality coaching.


Your game likely needs a lot more work than you may initially believe.

Join a site like stoxpoker or cardrunners (you can even do affiliate deals to get membership through PSO and such). Watch a lot of videos in areas that interest and concern you.

Very few will stake a player who has voices in his head/rigged beliefs because that is not a player who can be counted on acting in a rational manner at all times, so the sooner you move past that phase as a player the better or else you will be stuck with the same thinking process as that bucket guy. Think someone like that will ever work on their game and or receive staking (though I did offer some free coaching).

All the best.

So, people who believe online poker is probably rigged: What do you want tested?

You set the bar here. The only restriction is that it needs to be do-able on the basis of hand histories (obviously)

This will never work.

A true 'tard will just continue to find newer and more outlandish theories.

That's why I did not bother to expand and generalise the work I did analysing the hand histories for jagnje. It would be a fool's errand.

You'd probably end up spending years doing ever more detailed and specialised analyses only to be asked, when (if ever) you finally had all the bases covered, how the 'tard could be sure that your code was correct/honest.

I really don't think non 'tards should allow themselves to be lead by the nose to a position where the 'tards are calling the shots.

Innocent until proven guilty been the established rule in civilised societies for centuries and I see no reason to turn that concept on its head for a group of lousy poker players who will not take responsibility for their own failure to win what they believe they deserve to win.

if Greg Raymer is correct then I better pack my bags and head to Vegas because I am a super Pro with all of the bad beats I have taken on Bingo Stars....

Good God, you're right.

I've just run an analysis on 1.2 million of my own hands and I can confirm that every single series of wins (not one single exception, even for a unitary series) is followed by at least one (and often a lot more) losses.

What are the odds?

BASTIDS!

set via set 9 handed = set via set 6 handed

really amazing should be a few % more 9 handed...ok ok variance lol or
lets create action = rake

Your assumptions are wrong.

At any size table, if 2 players see the flop with different pocket pairs, there is a 1/99 chance for both to flop sets. So what we need to compare is the rate that 2 players see the flop with pocket pairs in the two games.

At a 9-handed table, obviously there is a higher chance that 2 players are dealt pocket pairs. However, that doesn't translate directly into a higher chance of both seeing the flop. At a 6-handed table most pairs are going to try to see the flop. At 9-handed small pairs are going to fold in early positions and fold to raises a lot, for sure more often than at 6-handed. Thus it's reasonable that the rate of set vs. set is similar in the two games. I know you don't have any real data anyway, but if you did, I wouldn't be surprised if they are close to the same.

You think that "prove hypothetical superbots that cannot be detected by man do not exist" is outlandish...


Simple question to the action hand groupies.

Do action hands (with all the 3 betting, 4 betting, showdowns etc) take the same amount of time to play as non action hands ( ie: I raise preflop , 1 caller I continuation bet he folds)?

Wouldn't rake be more with a ton of "non action" hands that see a flop then end on the flop?

A rigged theory should at least genuinely make the site more money if true as a foundation, so knowing whether "action hands" even make more would be a good start. Likely with the extra time they take they do not, so perhaps this could be the start of the more accurate "non action hands" rigged movement.

There are other problems with that theory too. Rake is capped, and at high stakes games the blinds cover the full rake. At medium stakes games a couple bets get to max rake without a showdown. At low stakes games the time factor you mention comes into play. I would guess without any hard data, that the max rake is achieved by seeing more flops (no flop no rake) and having fewer late streets and showdowns. So if the site wanted to juice rake, they'd probably do it with starting hands, not with action flops. As you mention, anti-action flops might be more profitable. But of course starting hand distribution is the easiest thing for any player to check in their own hand history. So I guess the rake juicer proponents need to go back to the drawing board, and use some math this time.

I agree that action hands is one of the weakest theories given how easy it would be to disprove (and the fact that it may not even be a money maker). This is probably why most theories of late are the "thought experiment" pretend ones.

Math cannot really disprove made up stuff that have "cannot be detected" or "they program it by having hands be expected to avoid detection" as one of it's guidelines.

Flush draws hitting - easy to calculate

Superbots/lizard people at work - not so easy


Will be interesting to see the direction of rigged theories in the upcoming weeks/months .

I'm still awaiting a single theory from someone who believes online poker is rigged that we can test.

although still interesting. Not begging you to do extra work, but I'm sure it wouldn't be considered wasted by many who watch this thread. Learning how to think about analyzing your own hands, think about varriance is one of the most useful aspects of this thread.

I'd like to take you up on that. First though, a few points:

1. Thanks for your contributions to the Ultimate Bet/Absolute
Poker case.

But keep in mind, your past work on this issue, specifically, your
repackaging of others' findings into nice graphs during the final
stages of the case, should not (hopefully, does not) lend you extra
credibility on the subject of online "rigged-ness." Even more so, as,
from what I gather reading these forums, you have since moved to work for a major online-poker site.

2. As far as online-poker fairness is concerned, it appears we disagree on a
basic premise: you think the burden of proof is on the skeptic,
whereas I believe it's on the site. My reasoning for thinking the
latter is if a site is cheating me, I most probably have no serious,
adequately accessible, legal recourse. Online-poker is
quite unique in this respect.

3. The legal future of online poker is bleak. The only reason one can
still find a game online is willingness of hundreds of thousands of
players to still fire up tables on a regular basis. They do so despite perceived legal risk. This is good news for an online poker enthusiast of course. But now consider this. If the games were also perceived to be truly fair, then there would be a significantly greater influx of new players, which would further help overcome current legal stigma.

In fact, I think there is a silent majority (I'm certainly one), who could, and probably would, demand a clear-cut legalization of online poker. I don't, because in the back of my mind, I'm doubtful as to the fairness of online games.

A rigorous audit of the online deal, by an independent trustworthy reputable
institute, would go a long way to overcome this. Anyway, your offer in the above quote is certainly a baby step in the right direction.

4. I'm a little surprised that the poll on top of this massive thread is
PUBLIC (i.e. other members can see how one votes). This is unlike most other polls in these forums I believe. I'm just a little curious as to why that is?

I will post later with proposals for some experiments. It would be ideal if the database includes hole cards info in non-showdown situations, do you have such hands? Assuming not, then the database should AT LEAST be such that

a. All hands in the database come from a single site (e.g. fulltilt poker)
b. All hands in the database are all-in situations between exactly two players
c. There should be a way to verify the database consists of hands that actually took place between real players (i.e. they are not the result of a simulation, or a test-run of the site's software)

I don't disagree with you at all here: I certainly think sites should prove their honesty and respond to queries from players. I'm pretty sure I've said similar stuff in this thread.
I agree 100%. I think they are fair, and I agree that a key factor that discourages people from playing online is a fear on this issue.
Well, the existing multiple audits by various reputable organisations don't seem to quell much scepticism.

I suspect that a little more scepticism would be quelled by people being able to conduct their own mini "self-audit".
You should probably ask whoever made it: If I remember correctly, they were someone who believed in online poker being rigged, and started another thread, that got merged into this somehow. I don't know how to check this, and I might well be wrong.

Presumably a reason for having the voting public is that it allows anyone to look at the voting list and ensure there's no manipulation of the vote.

I imagined that such a report could run on Hold'em Manager, using whatever hands a person already has. It wouldn't work to rely on sites to provide additional data: the whole principle is that the process is transparent and people should be able to conduct such research themself without the assistance of any online poker site.

I assume that almost every person concerned about the fairness of shuffling in online poker is concerned about the fairness as it applies to themself.

Maybe this should start with a theory. My thought on this is that if a site is rigged, there would obviously need to be a goal that they are trying to acheive. Increasing the sites bottom line is the only real reason I can see for a site doing this. Yes there have been a lot of arguments against a big site doing this, but none in my mind have been strong enough arguments to 100%convince me that greed could not be a much bigger factor.

One theory I would like to drill down on and find a way to test is the idea that sites want to keep cashouts to a minimum to maximize the pool of money they have to make investment returns on. If some adjustments were made to make sure medium to low stakes players cash out less as often this would acheive that objective. I say medium to low stakes because this is the segment of the population where most of the deposits are happening and this is where most of the beginning, less educated players reside. These players are least likely to figure out what is going on and least likely to pursue action.

If I were to expand on my theory based on personal experiences, personal experiences of friends, family members and some of the riggedologists finding their way to this post, my first thoughts would be that a lot of low to mid stakes players are complaining about an excessive amount of beats in tournaments where they are the clear favorite. This could be during a very critical time in the tournament, like all in with your tournament life on the line, almost all in to be left crippled. I would imagine that to keep balance, players would have to be handicapped in some way so that the programming could adjust to their skill level. This handicapping would conveniently level the playing field so that money is floating around and less is being cashed out. This could explain why players who are improving are seeing more and more beats, less and less opportunities to cash out. A player like this would probably re deposit because their first thoughts would be that they are just running bad and getting unlucky. What could be really happening is that their luck has been influenced artificially, near or within ranges of standard deviation.

So how could we test a theory like this? Could a program sort through hand histories and pull out all in or near all in situations like these and analyze them? I would imagine that there would be lots of ways to artificially influence a players luck, these are just the first couple that come to mind. With more ways to do this finding ways to test for this will get more complex. As a for instance, you can just have someone go card dead for stretches, you could also deal certain handicapped players AA, KK, QQ when no one else on the table has a hand so they get no action but still see their fair share of good cards. The programming could be complex enough to keep mixing it up to camaflouge the agenda of the program. I am sure there are a lot more ideas along this line of thinking.

Donko, if I understand Spadebidder correctly, you couldn't do something like this without it becoming detectable with a big enough sample. If they are changing the results, the wrong number of straights, flushes, pairs, two pairs, etc. will be occurring over a big sample.

In PT3 under the Hands setting, if you set it to display "final hands" it will show how many each type you are seeing, at least in your hands. It will give some hint (that needs to be adjusted for sample size) of whether you are experiencing the expected number of these hands.

I would also think that the All-in ev calculators would be relevant to your problem. You also can't look at the time you got knocked out, you have to look at all the times you were all-in in a tournament. PT3 I'm pretty sure can do this. I don't have HEM.

Can anyone advise whether this type of analysis is useful in anyway?