How many times do you people have to be told that it is almost impossible to prove that it isn't rigged. You can however prove it is rigged by providing the evidence of your own experiances that have convinced you. Your statement of "if something does show up" is completely meaningless because nothing ever does despite so many people analysing their hands.

Here's an often repeated inflamtory example that might help you understand -You don't want be wandering round your neighbourhood telling everyone you're a paedophile do you? It would be impossible for you to prove definatively that you are not and your only defence would be "he's made that up, wheres the proof". Apparently me saying "he could be and he's not willing to prove otherwise so he must be guilty" is a reasonable argument.

Yeah, I don't think that can be done because of player protection.

Pokerstars provided 100 million unaltered, complete hands with all hole cards to Cigital last year for a study. It was not looking for riggedness or statistical anomalies, but was for a skill vs luck argument to help in court cases. But they couldn't have been willing to do that if they were worried about that info getting into the wild. One curious employee at the contractor could slice and dice that data all they wanted and then leak the info.

The point is, the vendor solicited players on 2+2 to submit their own hand histories in order to match them up and confirm the integrity of the database provided by Pokerstars.

The other thing, however, is that there are a dozen or more datamining vendors now collecting billions of hand histories. Those don't have folded and mucked hole cards, but they have more than enough to check the deal. And many people have used some of those hands to do analysis, including me. I'm in the process of doing several studies on a billion hands (obfuscated ones). This isn't to prove non-riggedness (impossible), but to discover other things and unknown removal effects. But a side benefit is that I've seen the correct distribution of hands in huge samples, tested in many ways.

Wrong.

And wrong again. How about a decent sample size?

Nevermind.. I misread your typo :P

.. But it's a bad analogy nonetheless because child rape and poker rigging aren't nearly on the same level of heinousness.

In other new, I hope these last 300 people I need to outlast lose soon.. I dunno how much longer I can keep my eyes open

That depends on your standard of proof. Sample-based (inferential) statistics can give you a high confidence level that any rigging is rare or probably non-existent, but it can't prove a negative. On the other hand, manipulation in the deal is like a black swan. It only takes one clear and convincing sighting to show that it exists. That black swan has never been seen yet, despite a lot of attempts to paint a white one black. And many many white swans are seen all the time. That means that if there is rigging, it seems rare with the available evidence. And thus not something to worry too much about.

The "level of heinousness" is irrelevant to his point.

I didn't say his point was invalid, just that it's a bad analogy.

Yes, you are.

And a hypocrite now as you came in treating people like idiots in your first post. (See spadebidder's first response to you.)

Mumu, you really should start over and not assume that most of the people posting here are less intelligent than you. You seem like you can be reasonable, and I know you aren't an idiot. There are many people on 2+2, some who post in these rigged threads from time to time, who are extremely talented mathematicians, statisticians, professional gamblers, computer science experts, and yes even finance experts (I think that's what you represented that you are). The regular posters here, in many threads and not just this one, have seen so many half-baked illogical rigged theories based on anecdotal bad beats, that they are jaded and have little patience for new ones. However, if someone wants to have a logical discussion and presents themselves reasonably, many will be willing to share their knowledge. Almost every rigged theory you can think of has been seen and discussed, and usually debated reasonably at first if it deserves it.

Hmmm. T9 was 37% to win when the money went in. You think that's a bad beat? The suspense was created by the dealing of the board in three streets, when in reality this was a preflop all-in and the 5 board cards were all dealt all at once with no betting in between, and thus no new odds. The 7 coming on the river as opposed to any other board position, is irrelevant here and only has suspense/entertainment value. The hand that won had 37% equity, which means he was less than 2:1 to lose. Not a bad beat, and not rare. Not even close.

I agree you will see this a lot online. Live too.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that people cry rigged because of perceptual biases? Yes they do. With no basis in math to support it.

This definitely has to do with the difference in integrity between live play and online play, and it would be silly to think it might be related to the fact that the rate at which hands are seen online is the rate at which hands are seen in live play multiplied many times over.

Very, very, simple answer:

Because if they did the 'tards would just say the data had been manipulated.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

The posting of this hand is really funny and shows the level of confusion of the poster about this subject tbh.

It's bad analogy as far as the 'tards are concerned because it's actually an extremely good analogy.

That's right, mumu.

If you can't think of anything intelligent to say just post gibberish.

No, it was just a somewhat metaphorical way of pointing out that people who post in the manner of idiots will, inevitably, get treated like idiots.

It doesn't always take a large sample to test something statistically. If you test a poker outcome that is supposed to have a binomial distribution (it happens or it doesn't), then just use basic methods for standard error and confidence intervals, and the sample size necessary will be dictated by what you are testing and its expected frequency. For any reasonable sample size you can just use the normal approximation, which is easier to work with. When something is found that is several standard deviations from the mean, then it becomes interesting and worth looking at. Then you reduce the chance of it just being an outlier by repeating the test with other samples or other players. The thing is, nobody has ever brought to this forum to my knowledge, ANY sample of supposed manipulation that was even interesting enough statistically to need further investigation. It always turns out to be well within the normal range of outcomes, or more commonly turns out to be purely a mistake.

I'd find anything at 4 standard deviations worth looking at, which means only about one sample in a thousand should show that outcome. But even then it isn't that rare considering the thousands of people who play online and also post on message boards. To prove something wrong it would take more than that, and/or it would need to be repeatable with other samples (which will narrow the confidence interval). I think the effect size also needs to be considered, because lots of rare things can be thrown out by common sense, e.g. if it's only expected to happen normally once in a million hands. Who cares if that happens 2 or 3 or 5 times? A poker site certainly doesn't. But sometimes we see examples of these miracles presented as rigged too.

lol mumu, you continue to expose your cluelessness

Keep digging the hole deeper. You are, indeed, an idiot.

This influx of "new" riggies spouting off the most easily disproved rigging theories and/or trying to test the randomness of an RNG with 1,000 hand samples is getting really boring.

It is because they are fakes, pretty much all of them. This one is just a variation of the old Donko clueless guy fake, which is easier to fall for than the snake "proud to be a gimmick" fake.

I put the under/over at 2.5 gimmicks before one breaks spade's resolve and


turns into


or


or even more impressive - a smart comparison to Lizard People and a listing of riggie commandments.



Arouet is determined to help even more so I put his over/under at about 4.5 riggies before he turns to the shill dark side.


The under/over in qpw changing his tactics is about 20,002.5 riggies.


Place your shill bets...

I did a very calculation showing a result 15 standard deviations from the mean using 800 hands to prove cheating at Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker.

That proves that you don't need huge databases to do this sort of stuff.

Well, 1,000 hand samples would be sufficient for some tests (eg, extreme win rates in the case of AP/UB, or if a player was deal AA on 1,000 consecutive occasions)

The mathematics of statistics is consistent and valid, whether you use 10 hands for a sample or 10 billion hands for a sample.

I lol'd. But don't think I haven't been tempted!