This will be the last time I offer serious suggestions as they are out of place in a thread like this.

- Use less of your time obsessing about whether the sites are rigged against you just because you are having a bad run. Spend some time on it, but much much less as a percentage since you will never be 100% happy in this area.

- Join a coaching site and watch videos on the areas you play. You will likely discover immense gaps in your game that you did not know about and were not discovering because you are spending all this time tracking down "rigged or not" theories

- Go to the strategy forums for the games you play and get very involved there. Concentrate more on your game, not mystical forces that may be at work against you.

While it is smart to be vigilant, you are using way to much of your time obsessing about "what ifs" that go against common sense. Hundreds of people keeping a secret. They are targeting you etc etc.

How can you play your best game when those thoughts keep seeping in? You cannot. So maybe try for the next month or two decide to spend 100% of time working on your game and 0% worrying about how tough the cop is in the Isle of Man.

After that see if the results change. If they do not, then become a paranoid guy worrying about superbots, bad beats in freerolls and other things.

Your choice.

Much as I dislike plus ones:

+1

-1

XXXX XXXX Poker Game #XXXXXXXXX: $10 + $1 Sit & Go (XXXXXXXXX), Table 5 - 20/40 - No Limit Hold'em - 20:47:08 ET - 2009/08/20
Seat 2: Hero (2,385)
Seat 3: uconngm (1,695)
Seat 5: xottomanx (2,010)
Seat 6: The Kid K NYC (3,105)
Seat 7: SmnLikDat (1,450)
Seat 8: PG_snp (1,655)
Seat 9: SgtPush (1,200)
PG_snp posts the small blind of 20
SgtPush posts the big blind of 40
The button is in seat #7
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Jd Td]
Hero calls 40
uconngm has 15 seconds left to act
uconngm folds
xottomanx folds
The Kid K NYC folds
SmnLikDat raises to 160
PG_snp folds
SgtPush has 15 seconds left to act
SgtPush has timed out
SgtPush folds
SgtPush is sitting out
SgtPush has returned
Hero calls 120
*** FLOP *** [Js 7c 8s]
Hero checks
SmnLikDat has 15 seconds left to act
SmnLikDat bets 240
Hero has 15 seconds left to act
Hero has requested TIME
Hero raises to 671
SmnLikDat has 15 seconds left to act
SmnLikDat raises to 1,290, and is all in
Hero calls 619
SmnLikDat shows [Qs Ac]
Hero shows [Jd Td]
*** TURN *** [Js 7c 8s] [Qc]
*** RIVER *** [Js 7c 8s Qc] [Ah]
SmnLikDat shows two pair, Aces and Queens
Hero shows a pair of Jacks
SmnLikDat wins the pot (2,960) with two pair, Aces and Queen

Your advice is appreciated. I think it does belong here because it connects to getting a player who is on the fence about the Rigging idea back into the game to gain some more understanding about why the game in your opinion is not rigged. I dont think you are anywhere near being out of line on this.

I am building an action plan as we speak. I have friends who are going to take some of my action on fulltilt. I am going to play 40 - 45 player $10 sngs. This will start after I have taken the month off to study and get ready for this. I will be collecting my hand histories for review. If things go well, I might do another round of the same or move up. If they dont go well, it will be time to get a personal coach involved to go over my play. My ROI at this level and these specific games on FT is approaching 40%. I am probably going to write about this in another area of 2+2 once I get through this.

I am going to play this series of tournaments without any regard to the possibility of the site being rigged. If the two out bombs continue to drop, oh well, I will look at the hand histories later.

If you must post these brain farts can you at least explain what you think they show?

I suspect the fact that you've posted it simply confirms you have very little idea of the probabilities involved or the maths needed to combine them.

FYP

True, but I'd really like to know what he thinks that hand shows.

Even if it's just so that we can all point and laugh.

Thanks for stating the obvious! America has a lot of xenophobes and racists, I dont spend a lot of time worrying about their needs.

I guess Im not clear what that has to do with current sites being rigged.

All this demonstrates is that you are attrociously bad at sit and go's.

If you dont trust them, dont play. It really is that simple and its not meant as an insult. Lots of people dont play on Cereus because they dont trust the site, its a totally rational decision.

Now if you happen to find something that shows evidence that a site isnt being regulated, by all means post it. If there is a testable theory, its good to try and prove it either way. There's no way to get 100% comfortable with the auditors and there is no way to say with 100% certainty that a site isnt rigged. There's some form of cheating going on on all sites with about 100% probability even if its something as simple as 3 or 4 players at a table chatting on AIM.

If you need 100% certainty, online poker just probably isnt for you. Live poker may not be either, because I got news for you, there's cheating there as well regardless of who is regulating it.

Give him some benefit of the doubt and assume he posted it to show Donko what the "after" approach to the game is once you give into your paranoid beliefs. Every bad beat, regardless of how trivial, is something "bigger."

My logical, rational suggestions only go so far, so maybe his "you can be just like me" scare tactics will help in a different way.

Well post your proposals. We've made available such db with about 10^9 hands. AFAIU spadebidder is going to run allin samples against it.

I did a little research on the Isle of Man. Looks like a nice place, nice community. Might even be fun to travel there sometime.

As far as what you said about my comfort level, you are right, if I am not satisfied with the results of my research, I wont play and I will take a strong opposition to online poker to keep my friends and family away from it. I dont do anything half ass, it needs to make sense to me and there needs to be constant improvement and goals or I have no use for it in my life.

Fair enough, as long as you take a rational approach and not just "stay away from poker, I dont like them foreign folks".

I would offer that 45 Sit and Go's are going to tell you almost nothing FWIW.

Absolutely, I enjoy online poker and would like to make it part of what I do for a living, but If I am going to rely on half of my income coming from there, I need to know what I am getting into.

I am just going to use the $10 - 45 sngs to build a bankroll. At that level, I can dominate most situations. From there I will try to move up once I have enough to only use 2-5% of my bankroll per buy in. I have built $50 deposits to up over $2000 in the past. Like a donk, I cashed a big portion out and bought tv's and computers...I am not going to do that anymore. I am aware that some of my problem is my own doing. I am learning.

I dont have a problem with other countries, I think some of their governments may be more trustworthy than the United States Government...

Hold'em Simulation
990 trials (Exhaustive)
board: Js7c8s
Hand Pot equity Wins Ties
JdTd 74.24% 735 0
QsAc 25.76% 255 0

Wow, you caught someone bluff shoving and they won just like they should 25% of the time. Definitely rogged, nice conclusive evidence sir.

Predictable.. obviously

I actually want to apoloigize, I responded like a jackass, I admit it.

What Im meant to get at is that, yeah, there's a segment of the population that is going to think that anything offshore is rigged and of course its a positive for at least getting an on US soil option.

I just dont think a rigged discussion should be based around the thoughts of those people. I personally think they are misguided and I hate the argument that foreign=bad, but also practically speaking there is literally nothing that can be done to convince those folks that current online poiker isnt rigged.

Hmm. So that must make him really good at sng's?

It would certainly appear so.

You are hilarious, tk1133.

You can't even recognise a good player when you encounter one.

You don't have to apologize. And I see your point(s). I, too, don't like the foreign=bad mentality. After all, I'm a first generation American. My family is not from America (although they've been here for over 40 years). I'm not sure if that's the reason though that a lot of people aren't "comfortable" with online poker. I think it's the lack of proven reputation. Yeah, we know a lot of the pros play online.. and if they trust 'em.. blah blah blah, but that's not the case for everyone. A lot of people want to play poker online and they don't even follow poker on TV (or anywhere else for that matter). The people I was referring to are gamblers. Casino gamblers. I have spoken to people from all over the world (when I was a blackjack dealer) about online poker. The majority of them won't play online because they get the impression that the owners of these sites are in it for the short term. I'm not saying they are, nor do I tell people that. It's just the feeling I get. It's like they think that some hackers are running these sites to scam people out of their money. Look at these Google search suggestions:



Granted, the majority people are stupid (IMO) and this doesn't mean much, but it is what it is.. a bunch of people who question the legitimacy of online poker (and whether it's rigged).

Just my 2 cents (which I couldn't blow on the micro-stakes)

Indeed they are.

I think google factors into these suggestions what you personally searched for.

I did some quick research and came across this page, which says:
When I searched for "obama is" and "9/11 was a", I was not signed in.