What happens to fish with one buy in?

Dear Mr Stars ..

I do not wish to moan .. but please could you find the time to listen to my humble requests ..

Please allow me a few days of upswing on your site ..ive been trying to acheive this on and off for over 5 years now ..

In all fairness .. you did allow me a nice MTT win in only my second day at your site .. however .. since that fortunate day .. ive not had a decent run at your site since. in fact .. ive never had a decent upswing on your cash tables at all.

I have recently returned to your site after vowing to NEVER play there again after many debacles .. but ive returned once again in November hoping to try again.

However ... like some unforgiving wife ... you have not forgiving me for some earlier transgressions that i must have done ...although i have no idea what that might be ... maybe you could enlighten me on this please.

Since returning .. you just refuse to allow me to hit any draws at all .. i think im currently running at maybe 5 completed draws in over 100 i have got on the flop ... sets ? .. i think im running at 3% and most of those are with AA or KK ..

And yet to seem to be able to justify giving me fellow opponents all kind of post flop benefits when i have an over pair or 2 pair ..

In those 5 years ive played at many poker sites , over 30 in fact .. and you are the only one im showing a loss on ...I would be truly gratefull if you could remove me from this vice like doomswitch type grip and allow me to re-coup these losses and have a clean sweep of profitable sites.

I have purchased a goat .. for which i am about to slaughter to appease your poker god ..

May this be an end to your wrath towards me .

Thanks

You never played serious poker.

I recently found a good read that pretty much proves the major Poker Sites are not rigged but they are somewhat controlled by your mouse movements...

Makes sense to me now that evertime I go to the restroom during an on-line torney for say 5 minutes during play when I come back I noticed my hands that were instantly folded were like AA, AK or QQ and such..

Has Anyone noticed the some occurence at all..

Anyway way this info is from 2006 but still an interesting read.

Please do so and post your comments .. ;-)

So I've seen post after post after post either directly accusing or indirectly insinuating that online poker is rigged. Though the complaints more often than not come from folks who are frustrated from bad beats, the most common theory is that the poker sites so this to encourage action and thus increase the rake at their tables. I think if we polled the regulars here at Cardschat, I bet the vote would slant in favour of "not rigged". Still, despite the fact that accusations of rigging really don't make a ton of sense coming from current players (goodness, why continue to play?), I thought it would be worth investigating.

So here goes nothing...

Logic and reason

This is my own opinion: rigging a poker site would be like a professional athlete stealing sporting goods from his or her team -- the risk of losing something good would dramatically outweight the gains from cheating. I'm trained in game theory, and I can tell you that experts in the field would suggest that this is ludicrous (hip hop afficionados might suggest that it is instead ludacris).

Thus, I personally believe that it is unlikely that major sites are in any way rigged. I know if I were running one, and I do have a business background, there is no way I would risk the mint that online poker sites make in rake just to add a few extra bucks.

Research

For the sake of argument, I decided to use Poker Stars as my research subject, though I would apply my conclusions to Party, Full Tilt, and any of the other large, reputable sites. As for flybynightpoker.com and stealingyourmoneypoker.com, I speak not for those.

So, I did something incredibly complex and comprehensive: I went to pokerstars.com and looked around. Clicking on "integrity", I found their policy on shuffling basically immediately.

According to Poker Stars, there are many ways to shuffle a deck of cards. How many? Well, picture a 5 followed by 67 zeroes, that's how many. So what Poker Stars has to do is select one of those 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ways to shuffle a deck and start dealing the cards.

How do they choose it? Believe it or not, they use us players to generate their random numbers, using "user input, including summary of mouse movements and events timing, collected from client software". In the event that there are problems with this as a RNG (random number generator), they have a backup: "true hardware random number generator developed by Intel, which uses thermal noise as an entropy source". They go on and on describing how they obtain and apply their RNG, but these details are mostly beyond me.

So why should we believe Poker Stars? They could say anything on their website right? Well, their RNG is certified by 2 independent organizations: Cigital and BMM International. I decided to look into these organizations.

Cigital: An independent software risk management organization working with such companies as Qualcomm, Visa International, Texas Instruments, AOL, MasterCard, General Electric, Motorola, Pfizer Health Solutions, and Ericsson. Why would they put all that business on the line to lie for Poker Stars?

BMM International: A global organization that provides independent computer systems assurance and compliance certification testing services, the Australia-based company is a client of the Australian government among other organizations.

My question: Why would Poker Stars lie about its 2-tiered RNG when it is immensely profitable without it, and why would 2 independent organizations risk their reputations to vouch for it?

Conclusions

To me, if this is not enough evidence that Poker Stars (and in all likelihood, the major poker sites) is un-rigged and up-and-up, then nothing is. Personally, I believe it. That's why I bother risking my money there, and at Party Poker, and any of the reputable poker sites. If I thought for a second that they might be rigged, I'd take my cash out in a flash -- and so should you.

So the next time you're thinking you've taken 1 too many bad beats, or that you seem to win more in the morning, or after you've made a deposit, or during full moons, or what have you, and you think about posting that online poker is rigged, please ask yourself 3 questions:

1 - Isn't it possible that it seems rigged to me, because when something happens in my favour or my best-hand-going-in holds up, I don't notice it as much as when I take a huge bad beat?
2 - Anyway, isn't it true that even AA vs. 72o is still just a 8:1 favourite (according to this), and even here you should expect to lose once every 9 times, and no hole cards are 100% to win.
3 - Why would a poker site that is "raking it in", so to speak, bother to risk all its profits and cheat just to generate a little more action?

If you answer "no" to all of these questions, then I have gathered some additional links that you may find helpful: here, here, and here.

Epilogue

If anyone wishes to discuss this further, I would be happy to in a constructive way. I have just found that people are all too ready to blame their woes on multi-billion dollar companies rigging their operations to squeeze a few extra cents out of us. Personally, when I lose a bunch of cash on a bad beat, it's more often than not my own damn fault.

Please feel free to direct future queries about RNGs here, and I will add to it as needed.

Thanks for your comments on this.

It does not prove anything of the kind. It merely restates several things that have been stated ad nauseum in this thread which strongly suggest that it's not rigged.

Oh, good grief!

That is most emphatically not what using user input to assist in the generation of random numbers means.

True , i whored bonusmoney instead playing seriously.
But i am clever enough to recognize.

1. Its possible to beat the system
2. That does not mean the system is fair

Its the job from gambling companys to sell the dream you could be rich soon, a few made it and many fail .

Myself is absolute sure that at least the micros are not random...and all other parts from a not fair game are proofed and well known since years.

Off course ( in todays games ) i play only games where i pay a few cent for a bit entertainment....and ok thats still money that the sites gave me in the good old days.

First up, the fact that the RNG has been 'certified' in isolation does not mean that the whole process from RNG to showdown has been certified.

Having said that I find it very unlikely that rigging would take place at the Corporate level. I do believe there are shenanigans but that they occur at the employee or player level.

Frankly you would be mad to keep pouring money into a site where your skill-independent stats are running miles below EV (as mine are with a couple of sites). If it quacks like a duck it probably is a duck....

If you're looking for an example of someone who ran over EV for a long period, you picked the wrong guy. That graph is a fake. The same poster faked a hand in which he flopped a ten-high straight flush holding 98, got it all in on the flop against a guy holding AK. The turn and river brought J and Q, filling villain's royal flush. He posted the hand and asked what the odds were that he would lose such a hand. The clue that the hand was fake was in the hand summary.

With the board showing 6 7 T J Q, the summary he posted was:

I thought we established that based on your cherry picking, your 'bad luck' percentages are actually not what you are claiming (though you never confirmed what the odds were of encountering a run this bad on one of your sites).

You've convinced yourself it sounds like a duck because you want it to. I admit the graphs you've shown where your lines seem to hit a point where they suddenly start diverging look odd, but that's what cherry picking after the event will do.

I 'cherry picked' this site because I have a particular concern about it. I also 'cherry-picked' SNG's because it is in SNG's that I suspect cheating is occurring. I have done the maths on the PFAI's and come up with a likelihood of 5%. I have not cherry-picked which hands to represent - it is the complete set of HH's for that site for that format.

I also fail to see how looking at one site's sng's can account for a sudden divergence in the graph. It's not like I have any graphs hidden away where the line suddenly diverges above the EV line.

If you genuinely believe something is wrong then do not play there, not sure what else you want said to you.

Obviously your feelings are essentially paranoia because you are creating a situation which simply makes no sense unless you can explain to me why a specific site (not even sure which site it is) will target specifically you to be unlucky with KK hands.

Did you piss off someone there or something? Aside from some weird personal vendetta that a rogue employee would have against you that he decides screwing you on KK hands is the answer there simply is no financial gain for the site to do any of this to you.

You are creating a world where you are the main character when all you are is a blip (we all are). You are looking for an explanation for something based on this flawed belief structure.

It's up to you whether you keep these lingering paranoid beliefs or not. If dropping one site does it then go for it, though eventually you will find patterns on every site once you have a bad bit of variance. You can post anything you like and say it is rigged and have genuine riggies believe you of that provides the emotional support you require.

You can also do the more challenging path

- Drop all the time you are wasting on these paranoid beliefs

- Get coaching in some capacity (video site, specific training etc)

- Participate in the proper forums for the games you play


From all of your posts I can already see a lot of the holes in your game. You have "poker knowledge" but you do not play poker with a plan other than thinking you know how to play (which you probably are better than many of the droolers at the games you are playing).

I work with guys like you all the time, and the ones who can turn off the tilt/emotional/paranoid switch and get into the flow of the game end up destroying the games. Others (like where you are now) sit there and wonder why they are not doing as well as they should be doing and that also restricts their growth as a player.


You see the nutjobs in this thread that are the genuine riggies. The path to that lifestyle choice is subtle and many current pure riggies were posting all the same types of concerns you are now at one time, and once they kept losing and breaking even for a while longer they converted to a full riggie.

You will either be a full riggie or a reformed riggie/winning player 6 months from now. Choice is yours.

oh ****

ty

The most recent graph I posted was not for KK, it was for all hands played PFAI

You didn't cherry pick it because you had a particular concern, you have a particular concern because you cherry picked it.

I don't see why you have trouble understanding because it seems you have a better grasp of statistics than I do. If I flip 10 coins each five times and get this:

LLLLL
LLWLL
LWWWW
LLWWW
LWLLW
LLWWW
WLWWL
LLWWL
WWLWW
WLWLW

It is not right for me to suggest that there was (1/2)^5 = 3.125% chance of such a run for coin 1 and I therefore have suspicion to think the coin is rigged.

The chance of having this run with at least one of the coins would be:

1 - (31/32)^10 = 27.2% Correct?

So what I could be describing as a "3% OMG rigged coin" event is actually almost 9 times more likely than I am claiming because I have cherry picked the worst event I could find. If I am paranoid I think it is a rigged coin even though I have no genuine reason to think it is.

I don't know how bad your luck is because you haven't given me all the information and I probably couldnt work it out anyway. I can't guarantee the sites aren't stealing your equity and perhaps it warrants investigation depending on the numbers.

However, as I have already said, if you have tangible concerns about a site or it is affecting your play then you should obviously play elsewhere but stop cherry picking the worst data you can find and convincing yourself that the numbers mean what you want them to.

LOL at anybody who thinks the RNG is up & up & im so tired of everybody claiming you see more hands online ...thats BS & oh yah The 1 about why would they rig there site because they make so much on rake...That couldnt be because they wanna keep u there longer to get more rake could it?

Well its not as though I have other sites which show wildly above EV results to somehow compensate for the stats I presented.

I have 4 sites where I have substantial hand histories to work with. Here are the results for the other 3:

Site A: -1.2 sd's (12.9% prob)
Site B: -0.41 sd's (35.8%)
Site C: -1.78 sd's (4.7% prob)

I only play with serious money now at Site B.

AKA The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.

"The fallacy gets its name from imagining a cowboy shooting at a barn. Over time, the side of the barn becomes riddled with holes. In some places there are lots of them, in others there are few. If the cowboy later paints a bullseye over a spot where his bullet holes clustered together it looks like he is pretty good with a gun."
How do they keep you there longer?

Simple the underdog wins they play at site longer

Any system flaw like this would be very easy to exploit for millions if true. People have destroyed companies who have flawed programs (casino whoring comes to mind for this industry), and anything this simple and easy to work with would be worth literally tons.

You figured it out, yet likely you are a standard losing micro stakes donk still. Interesting.


Seriously, you need to go out and buy some perspective already. Every single scenario of yours requires you to be the main character in the poker universe for any of this to make any sense whatsoever as an intentionally designed situation.

If you are playing on a site you are happy with then good choice, but your flawed approach to reasoning will always keep you back from ever beoming a good player.

You sound more and more like Churchmen in the 16th century denying the earth was round or that it revolved around the sun - rather than the othre way around Monteroy.
You offer specious arguments that are not backed by any facts whatsover.
Please please give us al some real facts not clever air

What facts do you require to believe that a company making billions is not rigging the game against a player in freerolls?

I can create a gimmick account and spew any random riggie theory and you would believe it at face value because it represents something you want to believe in, while at the same time you can look at spadebidder's billion hand study and ignore it. That is a riggie lifestyle but that is not how the real world works for rational people.

To be blunt, riggies believe the world revolves around the sun and their way of validating their beliefs is with the standard "prove me wrong"


Let me dig up my old riggie commandments

Commandment 1: Thou shalt ask others to prove it false

Commandment 2: Thou shalt state an opinion and declare it a fact

Commandment 3: Thou shalt hurl personal attacks

Commandment 4: Thou shalt assume

Commandment 5: Thou shalt have no time to test thy theories

Commandment 6: Thou shalt support they brethren unconditionally

Commandment 7: Thou shalt believe anything is possible with software


A fellow believer...

I'm not suggesting you havent been unlucky at all, I'm suggesting the numbers you are quoting do not represent what you are claiming. If you can't work out the actual numbers or don't want to thats fine.

To clarify, my questions are:

1) given the number of hands you have played spread over all of the sites you have played, what are the odds that you would have encountered this "suspicious" bad run on at least one of those sites?
2) What are the odds of you running as bad as you have over all of the hands you have played?
3) Are the mathematical odds of these events reason to believe the sites are rigged?

Rather than trying to help you understand they could just call you a lying moron and accuse you of beating your wife if you prefer

You figured it out, yet likely you are a standard losing micro stakes donk still. Interesting........ yep u nailed it! im a losing player LOL

Monteroy:

I've been following this thread for a couple of months now and am wondering why you're still discussing/arguing with the riggies?

You give elaborate 'answers', some of which are just to detailed or long for you to be another 'casual' user of 2+2.

It seems you make it your business to convince people Online Poker isn't rigged. Don't you have anything better to do? If you know its not rigged why 'waste' the time explaining day after day after day that it's not.

At first I didn't care much but it doesn't take a genius to see that you have some sort of agenda you're following; more so than any other poster ITT.

I'm trying to put myself into your shoes as to why you're so involved ITT. There can be only two reasons: 1. You're just bored out of your mind all day and find it amusing to try and convince riggies it's not rigged. 2. You have some sort of agenda.

#1 just seems really far fetched as even the most bored person would eventually stop posting ITT seeing new riggies come and go everyday.
#2 seems much more logical IMO.

Either way it's impossible to NOT proof it's not rigged, and vice verca. (PS. Sorry my bad english, but it's my third language)

Interesting to say the least.