Or "The sneer at anyone questioning any online gambling software thread".

Why is the go to reply when responding to anyone suspecting shadyness always to mock and sneer at them? There's not really much debate at all.

Do I think there are any online poker sites that are rigged? Probably not. Would I bet my life on it? No, that would be crazy.

So how are the defenders in here, who are racking up a lot of posts, so sure unless they coded the software?

Sneer away. ;p)

The "defenders" are relying on the fact that the output of the RNG ( hand histories ) is enough to determine if there's any foul play going on.


You're right. No one can be 100% that any foul play isn't going on. But that isn't just true for the online poker industry. That's true about any industry.


If you're a Coca-Cola consumer, can you be 100% sure that the company isn't putting cow piss in it's drinks to save up some production costs ? No. You do not see the production process, you only see the product when you buy it from the store. Is it happening ? Most likely not as no Coke drink has ever been shown to contain cow piss in it.


I realize the example is childish and ridiculous but the same goes for online poker. Can we be 100% sure that the RNG is not rigged in any way ? No. We do not see the way the cards are produced. But we do see the output of the RNG and the results that it produces over large samples. Is any rigging happening at any site that counts ? Most likely not as no RNG has ever been shown to be rigged. On the contrary, every decent analysis done on big enough sample sizes portray a random and fair deal.


People will always find conspiracy theories and voodoo explanations for things happening, especially in the gambling industry where a lot of people lose a lot of money. And especially in poker where you play against other players. If you lose money long term, then it means that other people were better than you. It's not an easy to accept feeling, that people took your money because they were better than you when in the first place you thought you were better than them. So, of course the brain automatically will start pointing fingers at the closest thing that it can find: the house/online operator.


Hell, look at football ( soccer ). In the 70's-80's when Liverpool FC were dominating the English League, football fans said they won because of the referees. When Manchester United FC enjoyed their most successful period under Sir Alex Ferguson 1993-2013 ( they won 13 league titles ), people said they won because of the referees.


P.S.: I don't think that any riggedness couldn't be done. It could. But I ( as many others ) believe that if anything shady will go on, it will be discovered eventually. You cannot rig a RNG systematically without leaving traces behind. And if any trace/pattern will be discovered in a RNG, then it will mean one of two things: either the people that discovered it will get very rich or the site will go down. The latter will eventually happen if the pattern gets detected. But as long as the sites provide hand histories that can be analyzed, I am confident that they have nothing to hide.


And this is not to say that I believe the sites have the best interest of the players at heart. No. It is in the sites best interest to keep the games fair and the distribution of the cards random. The risk versus reward ratio is not worth it ( and that's putting it gently ). Especially when they have other, more efficient methods to increase the bottom line. Look at Stars with their rake increases and their implementation of games that reduces edge.


I've ranted enough.

I have put many hand histories on here. I have sent you a graph. I have shown number how on ignition poker all my hands from 99-AA and AJ-AK win less then on other sites by a large margin. I guys just choose to ignore it

You've sent me a picture of a graph that cannot be verified if it's yours or not. You have typed in numbers that state your respective hands win less then on other sites.

What about A 6 off ? Heard that was the Ignition nuts.

Why do you do this to me ? I have stayed away from fries for two months now.

Now, there's a 99.99% chance that I will only be able to say this two months from now.

I think the attitude in this thread has changed somewhat over the years. Many of us had a lot more patience for some of this stuff years ago, but after seeing people post the same stuff over and over again, come back to the same logical fallacies, the same theories with no proof, it gets old. Unfortunately, that sometimes means that we get people who are genuinely wanting to understand if there's a problem who get replies they probably don't deserve - unlike this guy, for instance:

Just to translate for those who don't speak jungmit, the last sentence means: "you guys keep refuting my theories [ed: known to others as nonsense], but since I don't really understand and am convinced that sites are rigged no matter what you say, you're obviously ignoring what I had to say."

Don't knock it. Almost the entire British and Irish beer industry is based on cow piss. (Apart from Guinness, that is. Based on river water. Hence the colour.)

You have fine tastes, my friend.

There are a lot of problems with that study, and it saddens me that someone who actually has the ability to put that together and may really be a PhD, could use so many flawed premises to come to his conclusions. It isn't objectively analysed at all. And even if you look at the straight math, he doesn't even use normal significance tests on his results, he just shows a supposed deviation and jumps to "zomg rigged". I also question some of his actual data gathering on a few points because they don't make sense even for a rigged deal.

An example of his mistakes is his conclusion that getting 100 more pocket pairs than expected out of 55K hands played, means the deal is manipulated. But his result is a mere 1.8 standard deviations over expectation, which is a very common and normal result in a random distribution. It shouldn't even be suspicious. I'm not sure he really understands statistical analysis.

He should also make his data available if he wants to be taken seriously. Any real academic study has to do this.

Looking forward to see his reply. That's if it'll come of course.

He did refute the common favorite "Riverstars" theory. Give him some credit.

Another example: he makes a big deal out of only being dealt AA 240 times when the expectation was 250. This result is less than 1 standard deviation from expectation. In other words a very common and normal result. Also, there is a 1/13 chance his AA would be his least dealt pair, yet he cites this as surefire confirmation that the deal isn't random.

It's nonsense.

And incidentally, his 2nd MOST dealt pair is KK. He can't have it both ways.

I don't know how I missed your first post about this. I too noticed that the numbers he presented did not represent/mean what he stated that they represent/mean but I posted the study to ask people more competent than me in this field just to be sure.

Sadly, a PhD isn't what it used to be in my country. After the communism fell in late 1989, the level of professionalism and competence of universities and of the educational system all together severely dropped ( not that I am an advocate for communism of any sort ). 30 years ago, if somebody had a PhD or even a bachelor or master's degree, you were damn sure that person knew what they were talking about in their field. Nowadays they're handing them out like free coffee and any average Joe can be a doctor in almost any given field.

I don't think he wants to be taken seriously. Maybe it was some weird college stats project or something of the sort. Maybe it was his weird way of venting out his frustration of losing at poker or indeed he does really believe what he writes in that "study" which makes me chuckle and a bit sad at the same time.

Edit: The guy that did the study is most likely Romanian as well based on his name, hence the brief history of degrees.

Unintended wordplay

https://driftaway.coffee/why-is-coff...-a-cup-of-joe/


Also, that person is not the first self proclaimed stats guy (though most like that guy violate simple rules of research, not that riggies care) to explore theories, and some actually have a proper working of statistics like this one

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/25...hould-1299786/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/25...isive-1293249/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/25...untry-1123425/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/25...uency-1116343/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/25...omaly-1007942/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/25...l-play-985031/


If riggies see that they will get excited, even if they have no idea what it is actually saying, just like they did with the fake "University Study" (that was not affiliated with any actual University) years ago that essentially showed that the more people dealt in a hand (where all hands go to showdown) the stronger the winning hand ends up being on average. Yeah, riggies thought that proved a rig as well.

Here is a video that got riggies very excited as well that had a ton of LOLobvious flaws, and riggies did not even care that the person doing it was a paid voice actor, they still thought he and the theories were legit. Riggies gonna riggie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3tv-1rBJeY

Haha, did not know that.



Well, the "wykh" fellow does seem more knowledgeable ( even though he did made some errors that he eventually rectified after reading the threads ) than the fellow who did this study. And his research, from what I can see found nothing shady and only strengthen the idea that the sites do deal random cards.

I did know about the famous "University Study".

Lol at the video.

I don't doubt that the author of that article knows some probability and statistics. But he is really deficient in understanding probability and statistics. People have made good points above regarding his drawing conclusions that are not warranted from a true understanding of probability and statistics.

One of my favorite and most valuable classes was a "meta statistics" colloquium led by Persi Diaconis and Brad Efron. I think it was titled something like what it meant to be a good practitioner in probability and statistics.

In the colloquium they would present arguments appearing in newspapers or academic journals and lead a discussion of the errors the authors made. Occasionally the errors were simply a bungling of the statistics. More often, though, the errors were subtle and not so obvious and highlighted the importance of what they called "meta statistics".

I am confident that the poker article linked to above would have made wonderful fodder for the colloquium.

So how can I verify my graph ? Do you just believe everything is a lie, except online poker sites tell the truth?

I find it interesting that Google can't find any discussion of this paper on the web anywhere. The only search results are the few places where the author has made the paper available, but nobody anywhere (other than this thread) seems to have analysed or discussed it on public forums.

How did you even discover it?

Isn't that because it's not on any of the internets? Because you have to download a publication?

If you search for, for example, "Pokerstars, Amaya, rigged, Hold'em, statistics, probabilities", (and probably some combinations of those keywords), you can find another site from which you can also download the paper.

Well, you can view it directly on Scribed , Google Docs, and a few other places without really having to download it. But nobody is talking about it anywhere, and it's the kind of thing riggies salivate for because they think it has to be accurate.

I was surfing for online poker books and in the recommendations of the site, this came up. It's rather new, so give it a little time. In a few months somebody might come up and use it as "proof" for Stars being rigged.

Also, I'm not sure that the guy published this in stores. And if anybody agreed to publish this, I'm not sure how they're not out of business yet.

Provide your username.

It's on the picture in the graph. Do u still have it?