Do they do this at all stakes?

I dont believe you made that comment (in negritus), the only explanation is that you didnt read my post that you are commenting. I will quote myself for you, : "That leads to the conclusion that even if that software is running the better player will win money in the long run and the bad player will lose."


So how can the fact that players are consistently winning and other are consistently losing invalidate my theory?

"Lets say" whatever the hell we like then eh? Lets say the cards at Stars are randomly generated by a Leprechaun that lives in Negranus rectum. I haven't bothered to check that they aren't though.

If your theory is that it is rigged so that winners still win as they normally do and losers lose as they normally do, and everything happens exactly as it would if it is not rigged except those that rig it say nothing about the rigging that does not change the game in any way except that it is rigged, then all I can say is that the Russians must be involved somehow.

Anyway, good luck with your future riggedology studies, you seem to be a natural.

He's saying winners don't win as much as they should and losers don't lose as much as they should.

His theory is that winners win slightly less, and losers slightly less than normal.

How the sites determine this is unknown in his theory, but I would suggest Golden Accounts.

[ ] Account B wins this hand

Let's assume your general premise is true, that leveling out the equity leads to maximum profit by keeping the money circulating and thus all players' bankroll lasts longer, they play more hands, pay more rake. For the sake of argument we'll let that one go for a moment. I could argue this assumption isn't correct, since if no one can win you have no regulars, who pay most of the rake. I could also argue that losers losing faster and depositing more money more often might come out better. Or any other number of other permutations in this incredibly complex dynamic system of the money float on the site (which you think you understand). But as you suggest we'll say they just do it a little bit, making winners win a little less, and we'll assume your premise.

Further, let's say that to keep things not easily detectable, that the variance from expectation of a particular hand matchup type needs to be less than 1%, as you said, "almost in the right frequency". So if a particular pair-over-pair is supposed to win 81%, we'll only let it win 80.5%, so that even in a huge sample no one would be very suspicious. Moving the outcome much more than that would be a very obvious outlier statistically (exceeding 3-4SD) given a large enough sample, and the undetectable argument would fall apart. I'm giving you some leeway here, because even 0.5% shift is readily detectable if it is across the board and constant. It would be like a big sign saying "rigged".

Now, we also know that the average rake on a NL100 9-player table is about $.07/player/hand (using FT scale) and in an hour's time the average rake earned at NL100 is a little under $5 per constant player (you can calculate these yourself if you like). And let's assume that NL100 is the most common stakes played online across all cash games, or representative of a mean rake. Rake is capped as stakes go up, and FT never takes more than .33/player/hand at any stake NLHE 9-player table, since it is capped at $3.00 per hand. So we'll use .07 as our mean. So far we should be close enough to agree.

So from this foundation, please explain the math for how a half percent shift in equity across the board (all hands win 0.5% less than they should) is going to increase that rake by an amount that is meaningful to the site. Show us the business case for doing this. Keep in mind that the top two sites both probably make over $1 billion a year in rake. So to be meaningful and worth the risk of exposure, let's say that you have to increase that by at least 10%. I think anything less isn't worth considering in such a high margin business. If you as an owner are making $100 million a year now, would you risk losing it all plus jail for another $10 million? Highly doubtful, but to make it easy let's just go with at least a 10% increase necessary.

Now show me how it works. Show me the math. Show me how this small shift in equity is going to extend bankrolls and change player behavior enough to add 10% to the rake. Please explain this to me.

I'm guessing that you can't, because it is going to add up to a trivial amount of profit (if any at all) for the risk taken. That's why equity manipulation will always be detectable. To be worthwhile it will be visible.

Edit - by the way, what's your theory for how rigging tournaments (fixed fee up front) increases profits?

I think it's funny there hasn't been an interval longer than about a half an hour in between two consecutive posts in this thread since about 7:30AM today, then spadebidder makes that post which is probably in the top 1% best posts in this cumulation of threads (imo), and nobody makes a post until this one. And it's probably now around peak traffic times for 2+2.

I see you understood my rig theory quite well and your arguments against it are very good. I´m very curious about the math part you are asking for. I really dont know how big the margin of manipulation would be necessary to have a decent profit by doing it. Again, you are right, if the manipulation goes far from 0,5% 1% I think it would be easely detectable, if it kept being doing constantly in the same group of hands at any point of the round.

I would love if some math riggedologist could do these calculations for us, because that is a crucial point in the hole model I´m proposing.


Just one last thing, probably you didnt read my previous posts, and are not aware of one key point of my theory that adresses exactly these argumantation you made. (I have thought bout that too).

What I say is that one way it is possible to increase the margin of manipulation, turning lets say, AA vs PP not 81% but 75% or less is using multiple variable and mixing them up.

Explaining....

My rig software model is capable of chosing which hands it wants to manipulate the EV, which point of the round it want to manipulate it and when it want to manipulate it, all these three variable being independent.

So, the software can make huger changes in the EV of given hands for little period of time and then start making huge cahnges of another group of hands.

These changes can be set to be done from the PF play, from theflop play and from turn play on.

I believe if you can use all these variables and keep moving through them constantly the amounts of manipulation in the EV can be bigger, and still would be very hard to detect.

They are furiously calculating riggedology math to figure it out.

lol

Here is the original post sapdebidder.

So cumulatively you come out with even less effect than if you do it across the board, by only skewing selected hand types instead of all of them. OK.

And the effect of that is exactly the same as doing a smaller change more often. OK.

No. The cards don't matter unless a showdown occurs. So whether the rigged card(s) is given at any street makes no difference whatsoever if the objective is for the underdog to win slightly more often than it should. This one doesn't fly.

Keep working on it.

Im having great fun with this forum.

Spade,

What exactly is your counter point to "Russians are to blame" Mr. Smarty Pants.

When they start running a poker site, be afraid, be very afraid.

You are right, so the aplicability of my model rests on the math caculations you asked for. But its not over because if I get it right you dont know the answer to these calculations too.

No, I've tried to come up with a model that works, and I can't. Sites can't manipulate hand equity in a profitable way without it being detectable. That's always been the problem with this particular theory.

What do you mean?

FWIW if you prove something isn't right, then I'll be happy. If you find out that there isn't anything wrong, I'll also be happy.

Maybe they will allow people to download songs for 8 cents each paid for from their account.

On a more literal note, that guy you are arguing with probably has worked on his creative theory for a long time. You know the type, lots of notes pasted on the walls type of guy.

He is totally engrossed in it and believes he has seen effectively the "Hand of God" through his discovery and anything you say he will somehow interpret as support for his life's work and he will reply with wacky stuff like

since you are now a partner in his mind.

I find your posts interesting as they provide a better idea of what type of statistical work can be done, but you will never be able to have a genuine conversation with that person ( I suspect you know that), and frankly guys like that can drain a lot of time once they think they have someone who supports their views (in their mind).

To be blunt, I would rather see a post in the probability area detailing the theory behind the data analysis you will be doing.

Im saying I´m almost convinced my theory does not work, just would like to see the math showing it. I have no problem in throwing my theory away if I get what I think is a good argument that shows me it does not work. No problem in being wrong. Let it go. I´ve been learning to fold.

But, that doesnt mean that someday I come with an improved theory, and the fun goes on.


Dont take that as resigning, I still want to see the math showing the profit would be too low by changing 0,5% in the EV.

None have come forward, because those that know the math, know that your theory is bunk.

I'm still working on the java code, and right now I only have a sample database of ~2 million hands to work from. IndianaV8 (who has the 1 billion hand database) is going to be unavailable for a week or two to run my code against the full database. He already put one of my programs in his public distribution on pokerftp.com but you can't get the full database for your own use unless you are a qualified (published) academic researcher, and I'm not. So I have to submit my runs to him.

I had to brush up some on my java coding and use of objects/classes since I don't write code for a living, and way back when I did so I used mostly procedural languages, but it's coming along.

The full database has a huge amount of PS and FT hands (well over half), and a smaller amount of 4 other sites. I don't know if Indiana is going to let me get results broken down by site, as even generically identified (site #) it will be pretty obvious by the counts which is which. He is being careful to obfuscate site and player identities when he allows others access to the data. But I've written my code to separate them, so we'll see if he allows it.

So far I have a very clean all-in analysis working for preflop all-ins, broken down to a fine grain of equity vs. wins. I fixed the problems in the preliminary run that was posted, which didn't account for ties properly, and had small equity errors (<1%) by using 169x169 hand types instead of full outcome enumeration of exact suited hands (1326x1326), which it does now. I also am tabulating a corresponding summary of the hand types in each bracket, which is interesting in itself but it allows a drill down on any anomolies too, to see if particular hand types come out to expectation.

I'm also working on extending it to handle all showdowns that include an all-in at any street, and possibly doing all showdowns regardless of bets (but that will take days to run against the database). We also have the ability to segregate the equity analysis by player histories or stakes, with whatever criteria are interesting.

All this applies only to NLHE, which is the only game I'm working on.

Realistically, once the entertainment value of chatting with you fades there is zero reason to make any effort to help you understand the flaws in your grand theory, even if you hint that you may be open to change.

Why? The reason is simple, at the core you utterly believe in everything you have created, and even in the face of an immense amount of proof otherwise all that will happen is...

which is exactly why I am suggesting to spade that he smile, pat you on the head, bid you a fond farewell, and post some genuinely interesting stuff in the appropriate forum.


Do it yourself then. If you cannot do it then just stick with funny conspiracy theories that require no real data. If you can sucker spade into wasting more time on you then good for you I suppose.

Anyway, you were a breath of fresh air for a while, but that time has passed.

All the best


Ugg, all this will do then is create a new "NL is fine, but Badugi is rigged" following...