I did not filter any of the hands, other than selecting preflop all-ins which were HU. They are ordered by date. the x axis is hands and the y axis notional chips.

The probability is that of winning the actual proportion or less out of the total set. This is read off from the probability density function which comes out of the Monte-Carlo.

If I exclude the early period in each graph where things are as expected and just analyse the later periods the probability comes out much smaller (less than 5%). Also, if I exclude freerolls the picture looks even worse.

What I find so surprising is the way the curves seem to start diverging at a particular point in time. The sites where I am running as expected the curves just meander about each other in a smooth sort of way.

At both these sites I am still in profit overall. But after earning a lot in the early period I started seeing my bank roll gradually deplete. So I have withdrawn funds and will not re-fund them.

My gimmick radar was low that day, happens to the best of us. Congrats on your clever post.

Regardless, even if you say this now you will still find riggies believe your original post because it shows a graph, much like they believe any youtube video in the same way. Wait a few hours, quote your original post, and ask again for an explanation and see for yourself and get double the value from your creativity.

Monteroy, i realize you get paid by a site/sites to try and make people believe that these blatantly rigged poker sites do not manipulate their software, but have you ever played on one and seen how obvious it is, just for the hell of it? Just wondering.

truth you're pretty annoying. instead of spreading nonsense, how about you learn2play some poker?!

How can you say its rigged when MILLIONS of people are winning real life cash? You must be the one of those players who gets his Pocket Rockets cracked by two pair or straights; constantly. You are obviously a bad poker player and have taken one to many bad beats, so of course its rigged.

FYI: Just yesterday I finished 2nd place in a tourney (AGAIN); its obv rigged, and has nothing to do with my ability to read opponents/putting them on ranges or simple intuition.

For all of our sakes go play some roulette. You're as annoying as **** stuck on my shoe.

OK.

Can you answer this for me? If you have run below EV on HU all ins at these two sites as presented, and presumably above or equal EV on an unspecified number of other sites which you haven't mentioned, how unlucky are you overall?

I.e. if you took a sample of 1000 players who've played the same number hands on the same number of sites as you, on average how many would you 'expect' to be running worse and how many better than you?

Yes obviously if you cherry-pick the hands where you were most unlucky in, the probability of those occurrences will be even more unlikely.

Why do you feel that an event which has a probability of 10% of happening if the deal is random is evidence of rigging? Does the site in question have less than 10 players - otherwise it is very likely that someone (thousands of someones) will have run just as badly as you while playing a purely random game.

All the graphs are random walks, there is nothing special about the ones where you are running bad. They all 'diverge' and they all 'meander about each other', they just seem interesting because of the point where the graph stops (now). There was probably some moment in the past where the expected graphs looked 'interesting' if you had considered this stuff at that point in time.

I have never run above EV for any site for any extended length of time. But I am close enough to make me reasonably happy to continue playing there.

I agree that it is possible that running at < 10% is statistically possible, and there may be someone else playing who has outrageous good luck to compensate for my bad luck (never heard of anyone miles above the line though).

The point is that I do not need to be 100% convinced that something funny is going on to stop funding an account. If it was a game on the street or in someone's house and I had even the slightest suspicion that it was not a fair game then I would stop playing as would any rational person.

I presented the data not as evidence of rigging but as a rationale for not funding accounts. I think any sensible person would do the same if they had tools to do the statistics. Sometimes you just get a gut feeling that things are not right and unless you are addicted to gambling you should go with your instincts.

online poker is not rigged

Truly brilliant. But then only the people with brains would make such a remarkable statement. I'm totally convinced!!!!

You've done the analysis apparently. If you dont believe your results are actually suspicious then it is a little misleading to post it in this thread. If you're paranoid then it makes perfect sense not to deposit but I dont know why you are are announcing it in a rigged thread with graphs.

Unless you have the ability to check what you are concerned about. If your 10% figure means that 1 in 10 players recieve your bad luck (ignoring results from other sites making this figure worse) it probably isnt a good reason to stop playing at a site you presumably selected for good reasons in the first place.

Having said all that, if it is affecting the way you are playing then you should obviously play somewhere else.

The fact that I am coming up with probabilities less than 10% does not mean I am just in the bottom 10% of players generally in terms of luck. The probability density function is not one that describes the whole group of players at the site. It is a pdf of all the possible win percentages for my set of hole cards vs the opposition.

It should be seen more as a test for randomness. Normally one tests a supposedly random system at the 95% confidence level, which means that, for a 2 tailed test, if I were to fall below 2.5% probability I would have statistically proved the sytem not to be random at the 95% confidence level.

I realise I have not done that, but I am so far left of the mean that I have reasons to be suspicious. I do continue playing at the sites but only freerolls and microstakes so that I can continue building up more HH's. If the graphs start to eventually converge back to the expected line I might consider playing there at higher stakes again. Frankly it would take a huge run of luck to bring me back to the line so I cannot see it happening.

I wasnt suggesting that you were in the 10% of the unluckiest people to have played on the site.

I was suggesting that if you were to repeatedly run this set of all ins you are claiming that you would expect 10% of those sets of all ins to run worse than you have experienced? Given that you have cherry picked the worst sites this number would actually be higher than 10%? Correct?


So what you are saying is that you have carried out the maths which shows nothing suspicious but you are suspicious anyway?

Sorry but you have completely lost me here...I cannot understand what you are trying to say. If you mean that if I lumped all my stats from all sites together the average would be greater than 10% then you would be correct. But I am trying to make a comparison of different sites so why would I do that?


If I run the stats on all the sites I have played a decent number of hands what I see is that on a couple I am running at roughly 45 - 50%. On the 2 I presented I am running at 7% and 8%. On one other site I play you are not allowed to access HH's for analysis but I strongly suspect the percentage is very low.

You obviously think I am just unlucky. Personally I believe I have reasonable grounds for withdrawing funds. If I am wrong I have nothing to lose.

Most likely case is you are doing your math wrong.

Less likely case - rooms are targeting you for some reason (which is required for your concerns). Post your screen names so we can see the volume and buy in of games you play to verify that it would be worth it for the rooms to target you for some reason. I won't even ask why they would, though if you have any theories toss them in. Most go with "they are punishing me because I am a winning player," but if you have something a bit more creative that would be appreciated.

If you are uncomfortable playing online for any reason, real or paranoid, then cashing out is probably the best choice for you.

is it my imagination , but if you play tight on a loose board, the computer will not give you good hands, i went 30 straight hands without a A2 or A3 in omaha hi low everyone else was playing every hand

Yes.

[x] Contender for greatest ever first post.

No.

You seem to have a better grasp of the maths than I do so I believe you know what I am trying to say, even if I'm wrong. The percentile you would need to be in to have a strong suspicion of riggedness on a particular site would be more extreme given that you have tested many sites and cherry picked the worst one ignoring other data?

I.e. going back to the inevitable coin tossing example, if you decide that getting X number of heads in Y number of coin tosses for a particular coin leads to suspicon of rigged coin prior to testing, if you actually test Z number of coins, X would need to greater for a particular coin to lead to the same suspicion.

HHHHHH isn't a 1/64 event if you have actually tested multiple coins with the same trial and ignored the others, though it may obviously be good reason for further testing. You know what I'm saying.


I think bad luck within reasonable expectation is the most likely explanation ahead of you lying, making a mistake or the game being rigged against you. If it is is making you paranoid, affecting your play or making the game more frustrating / less enjoyable then you should absolutely play elsewhere. My point is that you appear to be knowledgeable enough to mathematically test what you are concerned about and acknowledge that the test shows nothing more than bad luck.

If you selected the sites in question because of software, rakeback, bonuses, security, available games, player field etc it is a shame to leave the sites because of what you affectively admit is paranoia that your bad luck could be something more. If you are saying that given this set of all ins you would expect 10% of people to run worse, is this reason enough to quit a good site?

In before "happens to me too."

You should start playing every hand, obviously.

Sorry but I am not prepared to give out my player id or be specific about which sites I am talking about.

Here are my sharkscope stats for both sites:

Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit Form Ability /100
437 $1 $3 92% $449 70
660 $2 $5 4% $994 66

Prior to the downturns I was $500 up at the first site with an ROI around 150% and $1400 up at the second site with an ROI around 20%.

The reason I had such a high ROI at the first site was that I developed a very effective strategy in low stake/high field MTTs such that most times I could limp into the money and also won the tourneys twice. Since this involved using the clock to advantage approaching the bubble and FT I know this upset quite a few players who were very abusive in the chat box.

For the second site I had a big MTT win early on, which I withdrew. After that I was mainly playing low stakes ($2 - $10) sng's.

On the coin toss analogy:

Say I have 4 coins I am testing for randomness. These coins (like 4 poker sites) are completely independent of each other and I have a choice in the future which coins I can choose to play with.

For 2 of the coins, after a few hundred tosses, I find I am winning close to 50% and am within 0.5 sd's of the mean. However for 2 of the coins I find I am only winning 8% of the time and am nearly 2 s.d.'s left of the mean.

I then have a choice which coins I would like to carry on playing with. Which would you choose?

Your response would seem to be to say: 'Well if I lump all the results together I am winning 116/400 and since this is only 1 sd left of the mean I will choose to carry on playing with all 4 coins.

What I am saying is: 'Thanks very much but if it is OK with you I will play with the 2 coins which have come out at 50% after a few hundred tosses, and you can chuck the other 2 away'. Paranoid or just rational?

Indeed, it happens 10% of the time, so obviously it is statistically possible. It isn't 'outrageous' bad luck at all. Amazingly, ~10% of all the players will find similar results if they analyse their samples of hands

That would be a completely insane way of testing a random system, especially one which has thousands of users running the same test - since it is basically guaranteed to fail the hypothesis for multiple people even if it is perfectly random.

If you don't believe me, take a coin out of your pocket. Flip it 20 times and call that a 'user'. Now generate 999 other users. See how many of them reject the hypothesis that the coin is fair at the 95% confidence level.. Is 'their' experience reasonable grounds to reject the hypothesis, or would that be completely ridiculous?

If you are assuming that poker sites have a high a priori chance of being rigged, then fair enough, but that has nothing to do with your sample.

Also you are under the misapprehension that the expected line converges to the actual line on an EV graph. In fact it diverges (standard property of all random walks), although it is recurrent (the lines cross infinitely often). The mean distance between the two lines grows as sqrt(number of hands played).