I did a search on the owners of pokerstars. 75% of the company is owned by an Israeli family and 25% is owned by the employees. So I dont see why any employees would want to sink this cashcow by ratting out some skimming.

Good job leaving out an essential word. That thread hasn't gone anywhere (yet).

I don't know what world you live in, but in the one I live in some people have ethics. I'm not saying everyone does, but don't you think that at least SOMEONE would care more about ethics than the money?

From what I have seen in people the last 10 years, I am not so sure about that. Especially if most of the people working for the site have no idea what is going on. If we are talking about a handful of tech savvy and / or upper management / owner types, anything could be going on. We saw this at Lehman bros and AIG. The entire wall street situation was a house of cards as a result. Greed makes perfectly normal people compromise their morals and their belief systems. I am somewhat of an expert on this because I talk to people all day long who are in terrible situations because of the decisions they have made. I have had friends that I thought I could trust only to find out later that they were ripping people off slamming them into subprime loans. You sound like you are part of the solution and not the problem, but not everyone is like you and I and some of the other people on 2+2. I just dont have that much faith in humanity any longer.

Hmmm....I'm drawing a blank here....

What world do you live in?

I take it you've met some of the CEO's from these Poker Sites and got to personally see how ethical and trust worthy they are. Could you please share this with the whole thread....

.

This wasnt a very good example, you should have written something yourself..

Thanks for bringing that thread to our attention. Do you see the focus of the debate there? There is almost universal agreement that detailed handhistories are needed for anything to get off the ground at all. Even the OP states that HHs will be forthcoming. The rest of the debate is focussed on whether its even worth it since the site is bust.

I think that he may have just been trying to establish that his hypothesis is within the scope of possibility. But I am not quite connecting up that thread to this one. The OP spoke of computer programming botting and the other thread is talking about Superusers. I guess you could have a bot that can see your cards and know what is coming on the flop. You could call it a Superuserbot if it exists.

All I'd be doing is rewriting what Markus said, so there's no point taking the effort. Society functions because there's an inherent trust that everyone is operating fairly and not out to cheat everyone else. Obviously that doesn't mean that you should just blindly trust that everything's fair if you feel slighted, but it does mean that unless you look into it further and find evidence to back yourself up, the majority of are going to write you off.

It happened with the Cereus super users. A few people said "Hey, some of these guys seem to be running hotter than could be possible" others said "Prove it or STFU" and then they proved it.

So far "Prove it or STFU" is prevailing with regards to RNGs being rigged.

Of course the possibility exists. It would be ludicrous to say otherwise and not one person in this thread has said so. What they've said is that it is unlikely because the risk of getting caught is not worth it. Note how that is not an issue in the other thread. The theory being advanced is that once the site realised it was going down anyway, it did what it could to prolong things, or something like that. By the time it would get caught it wouldn't matter anymore, which is why some posters are saying its not even worth pursuing. That actually makes sense too, much more so than that pokerstars or fulltilt is doing it.

A couple of things.

1. For better readability, please use paragraphs.

2. In regards to this:

Where did you pull the 80-85% from? Is it a ball park figure or did you actually study your hand history? If so, what program did you use?

--- I use the twodimes poker calculator for any hands that I don't know the estimated probabilities. I always use 75% as my number when I'm Ax and my opponent is Ay where x>y, not adjusting for suitedness. I always use 80% for my xx vs. my opponents yy where x>y. In cases such as this:

my A9 vs. my opponent's TQ
board 29J

and my opponent has gone all in, I count his outs as 14 (no flush draw) for the 3 T's, 3 Q's, 4 8's, and 4 K's, then use the x4 rule for 2 cards to come, which would put my opp. at 56% to win - then round down slightly to 55%, since it's really x4 minus a bit for formula approximation. In the case I just gave, this would be the twodimes prob:

http://twodimes.net/poker/?g=h&b=2c+...+9h%0D%0Ats+qd

which says it's a 50/50 proposition. Similarly, I use the 2x outs rule for one card to come on the river as an estimate; when my opponent has 6 outs, as far as I'm concerned, I call it 88% to win. It's splitting hairs if I'm 87% or 90% - for aggregate probability estimation, 88% is sufficient.

Another one: for my Ax vs my opponents yz where y and z > x (e.g., A7 vs KQ) I always use 55% as my probability. The real range is 52% to 61% depending on suitedness and the values of y and z, but for the purpose of defining an aggregate p value for a binomial distribution, the average of all such hands is 55% roughly.

In cases when there are 3 players in a hand - then I always use twodimes to find the probabilities. I have no estimates, formula, or memorization of any 3-handed (or more) situations, except roughly the AA vs. N opponents who do not have AA type, and even those probabilities I would never use without finding them out exactly.




3. In regards to this:

FTP use a continuous shuffle, so the deck is not "set" like a regular live deck. Instead, the deck is constantly being shuffled and does not pick the next card out until it has to act.

--- I was not aware of that- frankly, I had never thought about it. If anything, I would have assumed the deck is "preset" when the hand is dealt. When I wrote my poker software for practice, I simply used an array with 52 elements and randomly filled the array with the values 1..52. Then, players 1 is dealt card[1] and card[5], player 2 is dealt card[2] and card[6], etc. The burn is card[9], and the flop is card[10] card[11] and card[12]. Etc. That's just the way I did it to simulate dealing, but of course, it doesn't matter, I could have made player 1 have card[33] and card[47] every time, and the flop could be card[4] card[27] and card[19], etc. Point being - interesting that the next card is picked out when it is needed. In fact, I find that incredibly interesting. If there is some sort of timing element of any sort to when the software gets the message "give me another card now" and that the message timestamp in some way triggers or randomizes based on that value - well then, you can imagine the rest. The obvious problem with any theory along controlling the deck along these lines is that a player(s) would have to act to an exact millisecond or something like that, which is virtually impossible, especially with internet lag and delay being completely unknown. Coupled with, someone would have to be privy to the random number algorithm used on the server. Anyhow, those thoughts do come to mind when you say "does not pick the next card out until it has to act" - as if there is some input (not a controlling thing) that a player "gives" to the software, namely, the last player to act.




4. Regarding your house bot theory, I don't think that a billion dollar company would risk their business on a scheme such as this. External auditors would easily be able to pick this scheme out. Also, major shareholders in the company are among the most well known and respected personalities in the game today. They would all have too much personal integrity to be involved with a sham.

I am not one to state opinions strongly, but in this case I must. These are all offshore "companies" regulated by... who? Software is validated by... who? OK, so maybe you have an answer to who is "who" in both these cases. But then, what domain or validity do those regulators or validators have? The bottom line is, anything is possible, and if nothing else, I'd say there is a much larger probability of something being askew offshore versus a U.S. run company for online poker, if such a thing were possible. As for respected personalities - yes, they are, and I like them all, so this is nothing against them - they are paid by these companies. That's the first thing, and the foremost thing. Sure, they may ask questions, but in the end, the answers will all of course be the ones they expect to hear - and they get paid. And next, Bernie Madoff. If it could happen at that level to thousands of influential people with "connections", then for sure we could have poker stars endorsing poker web sites which now, or some day, may be known to have been corrupted. And lastly, haven't other poker sites been busted for scams? I don't follow the poker world that much, but I've heard of something. And I have a friend who just lost $3,000 on some Euro poker site when it just shut down one day. That has nothing to do with poker sites being rigged in terms of cards or bots etc., but it does speak to the fact that anything shaky is possible. My friend lost $3,000 because the site just up and quit. And he said, in the last week, they were still promoting bonus sign ups! They were taking in new money to the bitter end when they even knew they were shutting down!

100% entirely possible and plausible. These are non-regulated companies. There goal is to make as much money as possible, as if the buy-ins and rakes in the 100's of millions isn't enough already. I agree with you observations all; the "he's a donk, he'll bust out his bankroll and be gone" is the exact thought process that we can all use to justify just moving on to the next tourney and chalking up extended "bad luck" to being just that.

As I said in another post, just like CC theft, if a CC thief hits up 10,000 accounts for $5 each month after month for some "phone" charge or "gas" charge or whatever, very few people will notice or complain. Same with online poker - just target the lower stakes players who don't have much bankroll anyhow, aren't likely to complain, and slowly siphon off monies here and there. Who'd ever know? These are non-regulated companies in the Caribbean and other non-U.S. and non-European locations.

You must not have read to the end of my post. I had topped out at $307. When I hit $185 two days ago, I called it quits, and requested a check be sent to me. So no, I did not say "hey, something's wrong!" and then proceed to go to $0. I stand by my conviction for now and hope that I'm wrong, but as it were, I called it quits at $185.

I will add these two things though: you are right in that when I hit $210, I was already extremely skeptical. But I persevered to see if, maybe, things would return to normal. I know the roller coaster ups and downs. Some small ups, some small downs, some big ups like winning 2 tourneys in a row, some big downs, like losing 8 tourneys in a row. I examined these streaks in my spreadsheet. At $210, maybe I should have quit, but I wanted to believe I WAS WRONG, and that things would return to normal. So I played 15 more tournaments (but did not track final all-in hand histories for those). The absurdity did not stop. In that run, on Wedn. night, I took screen shots of every single final hand to record how I busted out. I have all those screen shots. Most were ridiculous, some were your normal "oh, I'm 57% to win, but I just lost" which are no big deal. String 'em up, though, and again, it looks mighty sketchy. String up those 15 tourneys with all the tourneys from $307 down to $210 - something smells rotten. The second thing is... I finished on a high, winning my final tourney. At the least, I went out on a positive note!

Are you certain you're a mathematician/statistician? You just don't seem to be approaching this problem like I'd imagine one would.

I agree with you. I'd love to submit my entire hand histories to my own, and others, analysis. Where can I get full tournament history?

To be sure, I won many hands on my downslide. For sure, it's not like I lost 100% of the hands, not even close. I even caught a few lucky cards here and there, as we all do. And I certainly survived many all-in's, and I recorded those in my spreadsheet during that one run of tournaments I tracked. But common sense, without emotion, clearly indicates something is up on the whole including hands won and lost in view of the cascade of losing all in hands when I was a favorite or vast favorite. I would like to see my complete set of data - where do I get it from FTP?

Yep, sure am. I taught at a university for 2 years in the south, then was an adjunct faculty for 1 year. Remember, when I tracked my 120 tournaments on the way up, it's because I wanted to see how FAST I could double my $100, and I wanted to know exactly my win rate and ROI (I had one column for ROI on buy-in and one for ROI on buy-in + entry -- the ROI for buy-in was 33.5%, of course higher than the 31% for buy-in + entry). I was not tracking data to prove FTP is rigged. It never crossed my mind. Everything was pretty normal on FTP to that point in time. My approach when I was suspicious was not wholly scientific, I agree. I tracked about 15-20 tournaments hand for hand that I contested to the river and cards were revealed. And in my final 15 tournaments, I took screen shots of every exiting hand when all-in. I wasn't so much set to prove FTP is rigged - I was hoping my "luck" would turn around, my "bad streak" would end - as to try to show myself that my exiting hands were within the realm of reasonableness. They were not, across the sample. What do you think the chances are that you could ask a friend to sit next to you and watch because he's about to see some theatrics - and to pull it off 3 tourneys in a row? I did that on Party Poker. And I sure could do it now on FTP. When you are a winning player, and I know I am, and suddenly things go sour, then REALLY sour, then UNBELIEVABLY sour, and finally what I would call IMPOSSIBLY sour - well, your logic radar goes off, and you set out to prove or disprove what you are seeing and what is happening.

The statement that these sites are unregulated is one of the most commonly stated and false arguments the rigged theorists continue to post. Josem has made several posts within this thread providing great detail on regulation of these sites. The position that just because the regulators are not in the United States the sites aren't regulated is preposterous. The US isn't the only country in the world that operates under a legal system.

As for this superbot crap, I just have to point out that I really think I'd have caught this a long time ago if it were really happening, at least at the site where I play. Again, nobody is saying that it would be impossible for a site to do this, but I'm pretty damn sure it's not happening. There are sites out there now that monitor pretty much every single hand played. If I ever see a donk making ridiculously stupid moves and maybe get lucky against me in a pot, 9 times out of 10 the donk shows up in those online databases as a massive losing player. I have yet to see a player show up, make a killing really quickly, and then never appear again. Usually the player has already lost a ton of money and just had a lucky session, and when that hasn't been the case they've shown up again to give it back. It takes a certain amount of time and number of hands for results to moderate, for winning players to win and for losing players to lose. This anecdotal observation of individual sessions where some donk gets lucky is not evidence of anything at all.

I'm not trying to be insulting, but as a mathematician you should have a very well developed understanding of variance - much better than my own, which comes from poker books and this site.

Again, no offence intended, but your approach to this discussion doesn't seem - let's say - as scientific as I would expect. When you talk about samples in the 10s or 100s, I would expect you to consider them to be very unreliable. You would have a better idea than me of how big a sample you would need to be remotely convincing: how big is that?

There are some very detailed posts in this thread discussing how to go about more in depth studies of your handhistories from a statistical perspective. I suspect you'll be interested in that.

Any of the sites (except Pitbul I guess should be able to email you your complete hand histories, although most sites allow you to download them as you play. It shouldn't be any trouble for you to then do an analysis on them to figure out if something is amiss. Your results should make for interesting discussion.

Unless the superbots and superduperbots were created by a mystical force or just evolved on their own then indeed people would have to be behind them for the poker sites.

A lot of poker sites (again unless you suggest only a few use the superduperbots).

Several hundred and or thousands of online poker rooms have existed (many of which are gone now). That's a whole lotta superduperstupor bots programmed by someone.




So, these same couple of secret agent ninja programmer agents do it for all the poker sites? They certainly get around.

Well, even assuming they never tell a single person, they have to come in contact with people at all the hundreds of sites where they do their evil deeds. Lots will know what's going on.

That is unless they are invisible. Are they invisible?

Some would say the same thing with regard to taking the risk of committing an immense fraud on the public, yet you and others wave aside that risk as trivial and meaningless (ignoring any moral issues as well which some programmers may have).

You would not have to turn yourself in. Someone else would who knew what you were doing.

That is unless you are invisible.

Are you invisible?

All the best.

This actually could make sense. The big thing I remember when taking Stats was a relatively small sample could be used to get fairly accurate results for a larger group. (Forgot the exact terminology).

It would make sense if he was just using his other stats knowledge and applying it to poker, since usually a sample of 200-300 could be an accurate representation of milions of them.

I think you should try and understand the term variance.. Variance usually occurrs to players after a very large sample size... not within a couple hundred games. The fact that most players experience these ridiculous swings of "variance" in such a small sample of games makes me think "rigging" might be the better term.

Wat? I stand to be corrected but I thought it was the opposite.

I don't know that he's capable of leveling.

It is backwards, the larger the sample size the smaller the difference needs to be from the mean to be statistically significant. Don't confuse Stephen with facts though.