Quote:
Originally Posted by J9Suited
I'm based in the UK and play on a site hosted by a major high street bookies (betting shop)
Whilst the UK has a fairly librel view of gambling, the providers are heavily regulated.
To suggest a company of this size would risk losing it's sports betting privledges by being associated with a crooked poker game is bearing on ridiculous.
Only about 5% of there revenues come from poker but obviously they will risk 95% of their income to scratch an extra bit of rake from the poker players.
Their poker is a skin on a network so unless there is a "it's a UK bookie unrigged RNG" running and another for other regions, I'm happy to accept it's not rigged until proven otherwise.
Having played on not one but FOUR major, high street, UK bookies' poker sites, it is fairly apparent that the argument you have put forward is not strictly accurate.
These UK bookies have signed up to be part of poker networks, which they trust an independent company to run for them and the bookies have no real say or control, (whatever you want to call it,) over what goes on on the poker site.
It is clear when you speak to anyone at the UK bookies' sites, be it from customer service staff, up to 'poker managers' that everything that goes on on the site happens without their input and I believe in a lot of cases, without the site even being consulted or really aware of what goes on.
To take an example, iPoker have 'Rio Jackpot' tournaments, whereby if you win 6 in a row, you win a jackpot of $25,000. The jackpot used to increase by $10,000 every week. Recently I spotted the jackpot was at $50,000, which obviously wouldn't be possible with increases of $10,000 from $25,000. I worked out that iPoker had changed the set-up and were only increasing the Jackpot by $5,000 a week. I went to the websites of 2 major UK bookies who operate on iPoker and they both still claimed this Jackpot was going up by $10,000 a week. I spoke to customer service staff who told me the same. This was months after the change had been made.
This is just one example of the UK bookies having handed over complete control to these poker networks and how everything that goes on on these sites happens above their heads, so to speak. As much as these major high street UK companies you mentioned would certainly not intentionally risk their massive profits and reputations, this could be going on without them knowing about it. The independent sites they have trusted to run their poker sites for them ARE doing whatever they want without the UK sites' knowledge and this could in theory stretch to a 'rigging' of the deal.