I have no proof that mystical forces are against me. Not sure where you got that from. If they are, I am still winning money live and on 2 of the three sites I play. I do have a lot of room to grow as a poker player, and that I will.

What I am saying is that if a site is rigging, they are not going to make it easy for you guys to figure out how they are doing it. It is going to be much more clever than you or you would have already figured it out right? It is much more likely that these sites are not rigged. This means that any other doubt a player might have is going to have to be dealt with by either deciding to play or not play based on the percieved risk.

Really?

So if a site decides that it wants to make some adjustments to outcomes subtle enough to still be within a reasonable statistical range but still be profitable for them, you think you can find it in the hand histories? I dont agree, I think there is a range that can be worked to be profitable and still be undercover or be explained away by variance.

Why would any of these sites be that stupid, to allow that kind of exposure? If they are going to do it, it is going to be very covert and much more complex than most of the people on this site could ever figure out. They arent going to allow patterns to be easy enough to be "Discernable".

Dont get me wrong, I trust the big sites enough to play on them, I have used clues and information about them to bring myself to enough of a level of trust, but I am not going to hand them 100% of my trust, that is just not smart.

Where I got it from was

Ripped off how exactly? Sure, mystical forces is a bit of a snarky way to put it, but that is pretty much we are talking about since you have no specific theory about how you may be being cheated.

People who are way smarter than you and I at "figuring it out" have said this cannot happen. People like you who have no skill at "figuring it out" keep saying it COULD happen, mainly because (big shock) YOU cannot figure it out. Have less faith in yourself in areas you have no expertise in.

Fine. Quit poker. Play poker. Believe you are being cheated or don't. You cannot grasp the weird circles of logic and paranoia you keep trapping yourself in, so just enjoy the thought experiment component of it I guess since it certainly does your game zero good. I'm getting off your train to nowhere.

Still, best of luck.

That eliminated one hand, so it's down to 111. Good eye.

Sure, I agree, all I am saying is that you look at the information and make a decision based on the available information. You are then left with a certain percentage of certainty and and a certain amount of uncertainty. In the case of online poker, there is a tipping point. 50/50, 60/40, 70/30, you have to make a decision based on what you see as the risk and make your decision. Looking at hand histories is the best we have, but I dont think you can get to 100% using these as your source of investigation if a site has decided to make some adjustments to their programming to benefit themselves. Especially if they are using something complex. You sure can find out a lot though. Please dont take any of this as a no thanks to the work you have been doing. I along with so many others very much appreciate what you are doing with this.

Actually, that's not what I said. Please read it again. I said, "real phenomenon at work that has an effect large enough that your brain was able to discern the pattern I guarantee it can be found with statistical analysis." The criteria was that the manipulation was large enough to be detected by people claiming that they know that something is fishy because they can tell from their own experience, I.E. their brain told them so. That's a different standard then large enough to be profitable.

Now, to answer the question, "do I think it's possible to tweak it so slightly that it would not be detectable yet be profitable?" Good grief, first off you'd need to demonstrate that there exists a non-fair deal that results in greater profit then a fair deal. That has not, to my knowledge, ever been shown, and might even be impossible on a theoretical level. Next you'd have to show that that deal meets the criteria of being so nearly the same as a fair deal as that the sample size to distinguish them would need to be so large as to be larger than any known held hand history present or future. That's very large and an unknown quantity.

Quite frankly any unfair deal will have a different outcome in the handhistory from a fair deal, otherwise it would be a fair deal. The smaller the difference between them simply implies a larger sample handhistory required to distiguish them in statistical testing. And since the possible handhistory size is unbounded I don't see how any unfair deal is beyond possible scrutiny. And in a less theoretical basis existant handhistories are already large enough to exclude any meaningfully unfair deals. Indeed the deals are already shown to be far more randomized then any possible randomization you could expect from a physical shuffling in a B&M building. So even if the deck is intentionallyrigged it is still more random then you'd get then by shuffling the deck yourself.

There was one "theory" I posted here connected to speeding tournaments up to increase the sites bottom line in tournament fees. I even have a little 80k db on one site showing that I ran really bad and was busting a lot when I was ahead and on the shorter stack. I was told that my database was much too small to come to any kind of real conclusion. Does anyone have a database available to run this specific scenario? It would understandably need to be huge because all you are measuring is how the shortstacks are running when they are all in for their tournament life and ahead. I am not even sure how you could break that down to be more meaningful, do you measure pairs vs over pairs? Do you set the mark at 70/30? I dont know, but I know that if this could be measured, and shown normal, this would shut a lot of Rigtards and potential rigtards up who claim that this is happening. My brain was telling me that this was happening, but as I have read, our brains our not wired to be absolutely objective without the help of some tools.

I am just trying to be objective. I think there is a very strong case just in these threads alone for the sites not being rigged. But I also know that you need to make sure that you are digging in the area where the bodies are buried or you are going to miss everything.


Are these massive databases only cash games?

The analysis is easy but I only have cash game history in quantity (except for my personal tournaments). Simply filter for hands where the shortstack in an all-in is the favorite, or over any equity level you like. I think just positive equity when the money goes in is all you want, there's no need to set a 70% cutoff. Or it might be useful to filter so that the favorite is 53%+ equity, because at 50-53% (preflop) the tie frequency actually exceeds the win frequency.

Donko.

Dude.

This is the definition of a mystical force at work. One that is commonly believed in among riggedologists except that some people think the force favors the big stack in tournaments. Some think the force favor the small stacks. Feel free to explain how both are possible, I admit having no idea how to use the force. No one including you has shown how and why this would actually make any extra money while avoiding detection/secret being told (don't worry - in now way do I expect you to ever actually address that trivial matter).

Anyway, it seems you made you choice, and riggedology has it's advantages as a follower, so good luck with that lifestyle choice. Was a fun ride but I am off the Donko train (in terms of offering serious/genuine suggestions) as mentioned before.

All the best.

I think I was clear about that. Bust me out sooner, I get into another tournament quicker thus paying more tournament fees over the course of time. Make some extra tournament fees from each tournament player every few days and show a nice bonus at the end of the year. There is a balance that could be maintained by not doing it so much to one person that they could show that it isnt more than just a bad run of cards. What is so mystical about this? If a site is unscrupulous enough, they could make this work and get away with an increase in their bottom line. Measuring this we are seeing is going to be almost impossible without a gigantic db. So there is an extra built in cover.

I just want to know if anyone has measured this and why people are so positive this is NOT going on.

Josem has posted before in this thread that the sites can manipulate the time it takes to run a tournament very easily by changing the way the blinds increase. And that most tournaments take a similar amount of time to complete.

There already are turbos that people willingly sign up for. Why would they bother going through the effort to rig the deck when its so easy for them to manipulate it without doing that and in a completely open way.

None of this is to say that it's not going on of course, and in fact I don't play tournaments so I can't speak from experience, however: it helps to calm the paranoia.

But if you really think this is going on, take some huge risks early in the tournament, maybe the first few hands, get a nice double up, and cruise on to victory! Sure you'll bust out a few times, but when you are successful, you'll have a huge edge! Also, when you are a big stack, just keep pushing into the small stacks: it will be rigged in your favour, so will be +ev for you! Profit!

They would take a similar amount of time to complete if they are all rigged the same way or not rigged. The site is either doing it or not.

So what would happen if they just did away with all tournaments except turbos? Would tournament business fall?

I dont think you have to necessarily experience it. We have players asking about this. Someone with a large enough db should just run a hand study on this. As soon as I have a large enough one, I am going to do it.

I have done this for fun and it seems to work, but the question is am I just dominating the table with a big stack after gambling early and getting lucky. Running hand histories would be better though.

Isnt that one of the secrets to doing well online in mtt's is to load up a handful of tournaments and make some good calculated risks to either build big stacks in some of your tournaments or bust? Then just ride the tables that you have built the monster stacks on like they are your little donkeys?

...that was the point. If sites want to speed up tournaments, they don't need to rig it to go faster. Obviously the sites think so, since otherwise they'd have nothing but turbos, since they'd have to be more profitable since they could have more of them running. I'm sure Stars has noted the tourney traffic on server restart nights and decided all turbos wouldn't be as profitable as what they already have. Hopefully someone has a large tournament database. I'm not sure how IndianaV8's database is arranged, so I don't know if it's all cash or if it's just a lot of assorted hands, but someone somewhere must have a multi-million hand tourney database. I know Josem and co. were able to assemble a fair amount of hands to confirm the Cereus superusers. This is general tournament strategy. It's what Barry Greenstein does at the WSOP. It's just easier to do online since tournaments are always running and you can play as many as want at one time.

The database for the AP/UB stuff was (if I remember correctly) about 5 million hand histories. Spadebidder's effort here is more than a hundred times larger.

There is no adjustment that is possible that would not show up in an analysis of sufficient hand histories. There doesn't exist a magic number where if you tweak it less than this you can't ever detect it. There will exist a 'small enough adjustment' that we can't detect it in, say, 200 billion hand histories, which may as well be 'never' for these purposes.

This isn't directly relevant to the thread though. People are not claiming poker is rigged because there is some rigging on the order of 1 part in 100,000, or whatever. That would be the equivalent of going to McDonalds and claiming that your quarter-pounder actually only weighed 3.999998 ounces. The benefit for the poker site and mcdonalds would be minimal. They are claiming it is rigged because there is some pattern that they have recognised by simple observation - if there was, it would show up in a relatively small number of hand histories.

This is the fundamental flaw in the nonsense of the "online poker is rigged" crowd. They simultaneously claim that they can detect it, but that it is also undetectable.

It's like the invisible pink unicorn - it is either pink, or it is invisible. It can't be both.

If you're going through alcohol withdrawal you'll see pink elephants, sometimes unicorns, but they're invisible to everyone else - ergo, invisible pink unicorns.

Anyhoo, if people didn't think sites were rigged, poker wouldn't be as profitable. In the end, it doesn't matter. I saw a guy yelling at a live dealer accusing him of manipulating the (machine-shuffled) deck for a particular person that was running hot vs him. This went on to the point of hilarity. Never did he consider leaving before he ran out of money, though.

I haven't gone through this thread and I don't know if this has been posted, but I saw this youtube video and I'm wondering if this is possible? Seems kinda F'ed up if it's real. If it's old or fake, skip the post and move on.

http://www.youtube.com/user/them1n#p/a/u/0/461uxUSwY4M

if this is real, someone at stars has got to fix something quick.

That was the point of the poll I tried to run to ask people who thought poker was rigged to state what percentage of their hands they thought suffered from rigging.

Unfortunately the the mods merged it into this thread and then destroyed the poll by overwriting it with one proposed by one of the rigtards.

What was immediately obvious, though, was that the vast majority of respondents to the poll seemed to believe that they were suffering at such a rate that, if correct, it would not only be instantly detectable with great confidence, even from a small HH sample, but would also have necessarily have resulted in loss rates of many tens of BB's/100.

Fake. All of those videos are either just 'innocent' fakes or they are trying to sell some product that they claim allows you to do the same. In this latter case, at best the product costs you money and does absolutely nothing, at worst it costs you money and installs something unpleasant on your own machine.

You don't need to know about how holecard data is sent out to players machines, or how it is encrypted, to decide that these are likely fake. Just consider that if *you* really did have a method of seeing other people's holecards, why would you sell it for "the one-time only must end soon price of just $50". It would obviously be worth more to say nothing, and not sell it!

Brought back memories of being a dealer.

So while in the shower this morning I decided to put on my "black hat" and imagine how I would change the code (I am a professional software engineer) if I were to rig the deal. I think this is how I would do it (given 10 minutes of thought.)

Presuming the current code looks like this:

<turn is already dealt>
- burn a card (if continuously shuffled call RNG as needed)
- get the river card (if continuously shuffled call RNG as needed)
- determine winner by ranking of poker hands
- calculate new player chip holdings
- transmit river card, winner, and new player chip holdings to clients over network

My modified (rigged) code:

<turn is already dealt>
- burn a card (if continuously shuffled call RNG as needed)
- get the river card (if continuously shuffled call RNG as needed)
- determine winner by ranking of poker hands
> if rigging criteria met*
>> generate a random value
>> if random value < preset threshhold**
>>> get a new river card (if continuously shuffled call RNG as needed)
>>> determine winner by ranking of poker hands
- calculate new player chip holdings
- transmit river card, winner, and new player chip holdings to clients over network

* rigging criteria can be anything such as winner of hand was not big stack in all-in during tourny, or winner of hand was not a recent depositer, or winner of hand was not a golden-ticket account holder, etc. Note that it is quite possible to have multiple rigging criteria.

** preset threshhold is a threshhold value the cardroom sets and can change at any time. A value of 0 would set it back to "fair play". As the value gets larger the deal becomes more rigged, but also more detectable.

One of my primary design goals was that it did not require massive calculations into what cards would need to hit the board to make certain players winners or losers as that is very resource intensive for thousands of simulatanous games. This design requires very little in terms of machine resources.

As a bonus to this design the RNG itself is untouched and can be publicly scrutanized without any concern to the cardroom. They can happily advertize that their RNG is certified by a zillion different groups because it itself is really and truly random. It is spitting out absolutely random numbers. The deck itself is also spitting out cards in a truly random order. We just choose to re-river from time-to-time as the rigging desires.

A nice thing about this is that implimentation time of the design is zilch (depending on the complexity of the rigging criteria.)

Of course this is as detectable in the hand-histories as any such scheme to the degree that the threshhold is set.

Your scheme is actually pretty clever. But it would be more easily detected than most, because you are only fiddling the river. All we have to do is check the distribution of cards on the river and it will be wrong, because you are discarding the undesired ones. It will also eventually show up in the equity-v-win record of every player who was live at the showdown.

Some of the difficulty in such a scheme (aside from keeping it down to a level that isn't detected while still being profitable, which I maintain is not possible) is keeping the elaborate player profiles required to target them for a "re-river" deal, and doing so in such a way that it actually benefits the site's profits. You mention a couple of profile characteristics, but showing how those lead to higher profits is another matter altogether. I guess trial and error in the profiling could be done over time to optimize it.

To which I agree.

Heck, I don't think any of those schemes are profitable either. I'm just the programmer hired to rig the deal. I didn't ask WHY they wanted to rig the deal. You're the one assuming the reason is "increased profits." I did not make that assumption.