Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Haven
You asked why I think that the major poker sites bother to verify their RNG and shuffle algorithms but not the dealing algorithm.
I agree with you that the major sites which verify their RNG and shuffle algorithms shuffle the cards correctly and deal the hole cards correctly. Furthermore, nothing I have seen makes me think that they then dig through the remaining shuffled deck for specific cards to deal to particular players, remaining on the different streets, in a particular order. Not one player in millions has provided any statistical evidence that the street cards are not also dealt correctly, from the shuffled deck.
Therefore, it seems logical to me that they do deal correctly from the shuffled deck, and therefore I see no need for them to verify anything more than they already do. As far as I can tell, no one but you thinks it would be a worthwhile exercise, in any case.
Now, please answer my question: with what aims do you think they may be rigging the deal in that manner?
We all know that's utter rubbish. If you break down the thread title and most of the concerns, they boil down to whether the deal is fair or not. In order words, 35%-45% of the player base thinks the deal is off. They disagree with your assessment Mike. How can you not understand that, having read this thread for years?
There's hardly anybody complaining about other aspects of the game. When people ask, is online poker rigged what else do you think they mean? I'll let the Fair Poker team answer:
Quote:
Poker is not fun when poker is not fair. Traditional poker sites have the power to deal whatever cards they want to players, see face down cards and manipulate the game. If they can cheat, they will cheat. They want you to trust them. But trust has no place in the decentralized future.
You can find that on the front page of their website
https://fair.poker/ I guess that makes them a bunch of riggies in your book?
So do you still think it's just me?
You likely do because logic and explanation has no place here, just as trust has no place in a decentralized future. I'll answer your questions anyway. There are many reasons why a site would cheat, here's a few that I'm sure you already know and have heard many times:
- To favor one player over another for any reason. Could be to give new players a "better" experience of poker and lure them in. Could be to give weaker players a better chance and have them lose their money more slowly (Party Poker seating fiasco comes to mind). Could be to give house players an advantage.
- To not lose money on tournaments with massive overrounds.
- To steal millions simply because they can. Here's an excellent documentary about the Ultimate Bet scandal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT2KzfoEJf0. We can talk about how players did a good job of catching this but it happened and millions was stolen with virtually no consequences. And if the crooks had been just a tiny bit more subtle, chances are they would never have been caught. If that's not an incentive, I don't know what is.
None of that is new nor groundbreaking but it is all valid. You can of course choose to hand wave it all away with your reasoning of "I believe what I'm told" or "I don't think they need to do anything more". That hasn't worked in this thread for years and it's never going to work either. You should have picked up on that by now. It's also naive in the extreme. Let's go back to the Fair Poker team:
Quote:
Traditional poker sites have the power to deal whatever cards they want to players, see face down cards and manipulate the game. If they can cheat, they will cheat. They want you to trust them.
I'm firmly in the "Trust but verify" camp and none of the major poker sites are willing to verify. Hence my question. Can you explain why that approach is such an issue for you?
Ultimately, you can't provide any evidence to me that the game is fair, so I have no more reason to believe you than you have to accept my arguments. We're at different ends of the spectrum but I don't have a vested interest, in contrast to many of the other posters here.
Last edited by TheoryJuicer; 12-04-2021 at 06:34 AM.