This is precisely what I did. I think I showed that, for me, KK is losing more often than it should in these situations. Can it happen? Obviously it did, so yes. How often should it happen with this frequency? That, I cannot answer. I'm hoping spadebidder can help me out with that.

Sample size is an issue with my findings, and it will be the first thing mentioned (as it should). But this doesn't take away from the fact that I am well below expectation with one particular hand on one particular site. This is why I brought it to light.

Actually, Beaten Senseless is probably the poster most likely to be a shill.

I can imagine a pokersite paying him to post so that people look at this thread, see his posts and think; "Look at the sort of idiot who thinks the deal is rigged - I don't want to be associated with people like that".

(Even if he claims he doesn't think the deal is rigged.)

More likely he was banned for his own sins.

It's only complex because you can't define what you think is wrong. If you think there are more flushes than there should be that's easy to check. If you think you get AK more often than you should be that's easy to check. If you think "something isn't right" then that's much more difficult to check.

Define what you think is rigged about the deal and it will not be extremely complex.

Uh ..... If you contact U.S. regulators with allegations of impropriety I would also expect to be asked for plausible reasons for why you are making your allegation.

You make a good point. Without a clear idea of what is wrong, how can you prove it? There are certain things that are quite easy to check as we have done recently with checking frequency of pocket pairs dealt to player. The very difficult and complex things to check are how the flop/turn/river relate to those hole cards and the other players' hole cards.

I don't think it means more flushes, more straights, more sets, etc. Maybe it's just one more great flop when the preflop betting was big. Maybe it's one less hit draw when semi-bluffing the turn. Who knows? Without a concrete thing to check for, nothing can be proven.

With my recent look into my KK hands, I think the only way to really check for randomness is to examine hands that go to showdown and see if the equity numbers pan out after the chips are in.

If I have AA and raise preflop, get called by 99, and the flop comes 9K2 rainbow, there is a great chance the chips will get in on the flop (especially if the blinds are high compared to our stacks). We cannot look at the equity of AA vs. 99 preflop, but must look at the equity once the flop has hit and the chips go in. The 99 is a heavy favorite at this point. So if one of the two remaining A's hits the turn after both players are all-in and the river blanks, we have an unlikely event. Should happen about 9% of the time.

Now if 9% events are occurring much more often than 1 of 11 times, we have something to work with.

Awhile back I was toying around with a way to measure these events. It doesn't matter to whom they're happening. What matters is the frequency of the events based on their likelihood. The idea would be to always measure the equity of the favorite and have that number accumulate.

If a 80/20 situation won, +20 (since 100% of the pot was the result, you gained +20% of the pot than you had equity for), if it lost, -80. This should win 4 of 5 times, so in an average 5 hands, +20,+20,+20,+20,-80 = 0.

Would this number approach 0 over time? No. It should, however, not stray too far from 0.

I welcome discussion on this topic.

It sounds as if you want some sort of witch hunt.

"Burn her!

Why?

She's a witch

How d'y'know she's a witch?

Well, <pause>, (triumphantly)She looks like a witch.


You are suggesting the pokersites be subjected to some sort of inquisition on the basis of nothing more than the fact that you think that you might feel that something undefined may be wrong.

This is still flawed unless all in at some point before the river. If an opponent is chasing a flush draw against your overpair, you're only going to see the showdown when they catch you, assuming you're betting the whole way. The only way this can be a scientific method of analysis is if you never bet and never fold.

Is this really all you are getting from my post(s)? A witch hunt?

I'm suggesting a method of verification (that can even be done at a personal level) to ensure you are being given a fair shake. If you don't like that idea, so be it. I don't trust people or businesses until they have proven to me they are indeed trustworthy. This is a method of building that trust.

Honestly based on your statement here there's a lot of business you're doing that you shouldn't, because in many many cases in life it's impossible to get absolute proof. You can't prove a restaurant doesn't spit in your food. You can't prove that a mechanic didn't charge you for something you didn't need.

What you can do is a basic level of research to get comfortable with company you're doing business with.... participate in discussions with other customers, read reviews, interact with the business, assess the credibility of those chiming in with opinions, etc. At the end of that if you don't feel right about something, don't do business with them.

But to ask for all out proof is unreasonable. It can't be provided in absolute terms. I subscribe to a different philosophy. Do business with someone until they give you a reason not to. Those reasons can be entirely personal, and they can even be unreasonable. They're your reasons. But you can't go through life paranoid. We've all been burned dealing with a certain business in one way or another at some point in our lives. The key is to learn our lessons when that happens, share our experiences and continue to be proactive in calling out something shady when it really is shady. I have yet to see anything shady relating to the deal at any online poker site.

I'm not sure I agree with you on this. Betting and folding have an impact, for sure. Let me give you an example of a hand that has value for discussion, but had betting involved postflop.

Blinds 30/60

Hero (SB): K K
Villain (UTG+2): 8 7

Preflop action:
1 limp, Villain limps, 1 limp, Hero raises to 195, 2 folds, Villain calls, 1 fold.

Flop (480 chips)
2 J 7

Hero bets 270 chips, Villain raises to 2805 and is all-in, Hero calls.

Here's a situation that involves postflop action but has a clear favorite to win the hand. The hero is in a roughly 80/20 situation and calls his entire stack on it. Whether or not he wins or loses the hand is not the point. The point is this 80/20 situation is equal to an AIPF situation where maybe its KK vs. 99 or something. Do you get my point?

I think you are making a lot of incorrect assumptions about me. I am doing you the courtesy of not making them about you, please stop.

You need to be a little more specific because I was responding to a specific statement you made about requiring proof. I'm in no way trying to be disrespectful. You said:

"I don't trust people or businesses until they have proven to me they are indeed trustworthy."

This hand is all in on the flop, which is fine. You can look at the equity of the hand from the point where the money went all in and that's a legitimate analysis without any interrupting factors.

You mentioned that you were looking at hands that show down. Many hands show down without the money getting all in. I believe I stated that it only works for hands that are all in before the river.

I did make that statement. My philosophy (as long as we're discussing it) is that trust is something to be earned, not a default.

To further reference your other post, I assume that a restaurant is not spitting in my food. I don't TRUST them to not do it. If I knew the cook personally then I could probably make that statement. Do you see the difference?

I agree with that. Those hands would not impact the measurement I'm discussing anyway. The river equity will always be 100% for the "favorite", 100-100 = 0.

Well, I guess the question ultimately comes down to what does it take to earn it. Let's just assume Full Tilt provides a fair deal. I believe they, and quite frankly every major poker site does. If you're going to tell me they have a burden of proof beyond that, beyond what is required from the audits and regulator requirements they must meet (yes, they are regulated) I'm going to disagree with you.

I guess I'm just very confused about what you're trying to accomplish. Yes I assume the cook isn't spitting in my food just as I assume the poker sites aren't rigging against me. I need to see a pattern of behavior that says otherwise. If a small sample of KK losing is what you consider a pattern of behavior, then so be it I guess, but I'd definitely recommend broadening your sample size. Poker is a game in which it's actually more likely than not that you (any one individual) DON'T run to expectation. Short term swings can be crazy, but the more hands you pull together the more certainty you can get.

And yeah as far as this back and forth goes, I think we're on the same page while using slightly different language and we've confused each other.

This is basically a discussion of All in EV

Your onto something here im not a mathematician but i can digg it

I'm not going to say they have a burden to provide me proof. They are running a business and may run it as they see fit.

As far as what it would take for me to trust an online poker site, that is a fair question, and one that I'm not sure I'm capable of answering at the moment.

I know the sample size is small, but I think it still has some merit. The only reason I even bothered to share all the KK info is because of the instant response of others to discredit anything I say because I must just not know how to play KK. What a ludicrous statement in the first place. Is KK that hard to play for some of you? It's nearly automatic for me, just as AA is. Obviously not directed at you, NFuego.

One thing you said though sticks with me. "I need to see a pattern of behavior that says otherwise." We use patterns constantly for everything in our lives. I sensed a pattern of losing with KK in high equity situations and decided to take a peek at the numbers. That validated the pattern. Is it a large enough pattern to make any concrete conclusions? No. But there it is, just the same.

I have another small correction to make to the statistics I posted earlier.

For the Poker Stars hands I said that was from January 1, 2008 to about April 1, 2010. This doesn't change the actual statistics at all .... but ti was actually from January 1, 2009 to about April 1, 2010.

My 2008 hands were not in that database ..... I shoulda realized that when the sample size was only ~387K hands, but it didn't occur to me.

Fair, and I often do this myself. Not out of suspicion but just to analyze leaks and to see if my perception is reality. If I play a long session and can't recall flopping a set in about 30 or 40 pocket pairs, I'll check to validate.

I'm not implying you play KK wrong, but at the same time I think stretches like that are very normal. Countless times I've gone back on sessions where I was just on the wrong side of variance and found spots where I was, for example, 0 for 5 with kings.

EDIT: If I recall much of the criticism had nothing to do with saying you play KK wrong. It was mostly a result of toltec's lack of understanding assuming there is one "right" percentage in which KK should win a hand while ignoring all those other variables.

This isn't necessarily true. Even without specifying exactly how a deal is being rigged, we can still note that the relative frequencies of each card are being skewed by any deal that isn't random. You should get a 2 as your first hole card with a frequency of 1/52. Every card in the deck should have that frequency for every position in everybody's hand in any poker game, and for games with community cards, every position on the board should have that same frequency for all 52 cards. (To be accurate, the card frequencies for the board are changed slightly because not every hand sees a flop, turn, and river. Normal playing habits affect which cards are seen more and less often on the board. Aces have lower frequencies, deuces have higher ones. It's known as the card removal effect.)

If we calculate that our hole cards way out of line with expectation, then we can say that "something is wrong" with the deal even if we can't define it and have no idea what effect it's having.

Same with the community cards (allowing for the small card removal effect). Any rigging scheme that doesn't somehow correct the frequencies it's skewing can be easily discovered.

It says something about the quality of the rigtards in this thread if we've now come 20,000 posts and they still haven't explained the method they think rigs online poker.

Like, ffs, if it is so "obvious" that online poker is rigged, tell us how it is "obvious" you muppets.

I have posted here for a while and sometime not long ago everytime someone questioned the integrity of poker rooms the insta answer were: Show a sample and a stat analysis showing something is wrong! Without HHs and analysis you are not going anywhere.


Now smithcomma has come with a sample, a suspicious result and the will to make a stat analysis of his sample and the answer just turned upsidedown!!

Now the answer is: you cant show the deal is rigged trough stat analysis because you can only analyse AI situations, all the other situations depends on players decisions and are not good for stat tests.

Im fine with this new answer but what few understand is that basically what NFuego20 and others are saying is that spadebidder 1 billion hands analysis cant prove anything, because it can only test AI situations wich are the least part of played hands.


So, if we cant prove anything making stat tests how could we prove or know that the deal is fair?


The logical conclusion is: We dont....Basically we have to trust, but if the game is rigged we will never know, because not even stats analysis can detec that.

Fine.