The chances of doing any valid statistical analysis of your hands without software assistance is virtually nil.

See here for information about the standard deviation. (Standard deviations from the mean is of particular importance.)

Why don't you just look it up? The Microsoft RNG certification info is here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc750357.aspx

and a statistical card output analysis certification is here:
http://cakepoker.com/Files/CakeGamin...tionLetter.pdf

and info about the company that did it is here:
http://www.tstglobal.com/
They certify government lotteries and other online gaming sites all over the world, including iPoker, which is the largest poker network in the world and a public company.

and more info is here:
http://cakepoker.com/en/Help/Integrity/RNG.aspx

So what are your concerns actually based on? And yes I'm a shill. A freelance shill against ignorance.

When you say software, are you meaning PokerTracker, etc ?

I'm sure it is possible to do it manually with pen and paper, but unfortunately a lot more time consuming. However, I do trust my abilities with pen, paper and calculator more than my computer skills. Yes, I am from the past haha.


I don't think standard deviation is relevant here. That seems to be where you have a set of results, with no right or wrong result, (eg. shoe sizes, 2, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12) and you calculate how far away from the mean they are.

Whereas, I'd be saying, 'This should happen 80% of the time and it's actually happening 74% of the time over 1000 hands. Is that a reasonable outcome ?'

I can't remember what this margin-of-error thing is called but I don't think it's standard deviation, because I remember doing margins-of-error at university, not school and I know I did standard deviation at school.

It might be 'confidence intervals,' but I'm not sure it's that either. Hopefully spadebidder will know.

That example is not reasonable as it is almost 5 SD offset from the mean, and I think you just made it up.

Confidence interval is directly related to standard deviation. Card events are generally binomial, meaning they happen or they don't. If you do an all-in luck analysis every hand is either won or lost. And the outcome distribution over time is predictable, because we know what binomial (and normal) distributions look like. Given some sample size, we can calculate the likelihood of being some amount offset from the mean expectation. I'm not going to teach it to you here, but if you have a specific sample that you want to see the math for, put the question in the probability forum. Lots of people know how to do it.

Indeed:

But I'm glad to see you've had the sense to quietly back down from your guarantee that the RNG is faulty:

Sounds much more sensible. Congratulations.

I think he means he checked all his All-ins from a 1000 hand sample - not that he calculated 1000 all-ins by pen and paper.

I did just make that example up, you're right. I was just explaining the sort of thing I was trying to get at.

So, for example, pocket kings should beat pocket 2s, when all-in preflop, around 80% of the time. If I take a sample of 10 hands and the kings only win 70% of the time, that can be put down to variance, or whatever and is a reasonable outcome, but I was meaning, say I take a sample of 1000 hands and the kings still only win 70% of the time, is that still a reasonable outcome ? (Edited to clarify: I mean an example of 10 instances of K, K v 2, 2, all-in preflop and then an example of 1000 instances of K, K v 2, 2, all-in preflop.)

I remember, (vaguely), from studying statistics, there being a formula or table you can use to work this out, but can't really remember what it is.


This is no offence to you Spadebidder, but I'm fed up of being told, 'Post in this forum and I'll tell you,' or, 'You need to post this here.' It all seems a bit petty.

The moderators are perfectly capable of deciding what needs to be posted where and I think my question above was absolutely relevant to the topic we are discussing and necessary reading for myself and anyone else who may read any further posts, so as to understand them.

Only the other day, I posted here and was getting some good replies, when someone said, 'You should post in such and such a thread, to get a proper response,' which I did and then got no responses at all.

As I said, I'm not having a go, it's just surely that's the moderators job and to refuse to answer something until it's put in a forum of your choice seems petty to me.

It didn't sound the least but petty to me; it actually sounded like very good advice.

You're only going to have a handful of regular posters in this thread who will be able to answer all of your probability questions; there's likely to be a much higher number in the Probability forum. Admittedly, that forum has much lower traffic than this one. But if you get no responses there, you could always come back here with your question(s) explaining that you had no replies.

And as for the mods, they don't comb through every post and decide if it could/should be in a different forum.

It's a binomial distribution.

Given sample size and constant P (probability of success) it will tell you how likely any number of successes is, or how likely to have at most some number of successes (cumulative distribution), or the complement of that, how likely to have at least some number of successes.

Which poker site(s) did you analyze when you did your big analysis ?

Nice to be back

Arouet- you get a pass for an off day for not noticing that guy was clearly joking. We all have those days and the quality of riggies in the past week has been laughable with all the freeroll beats posted.

That said, eventually some riggies should start making fun of all the Poe's Law references.

spade - don't fall for the Fated trap. He will not post his questions in the probability forum like he should (though it would be amusing to see that interaction if he ever did) , and all he really cares about is his obsessive belief as to whether ipoker is fair to him or not (assuming he is even legit) so all conversation roads with him lead there as you can see from his latest question. You have done that timesink with riggies in the past.

Just tell him you have 100 million hands from ipoker (whether true or not) if you want to mess with him. Tell him zero hands if you want to see his real agenda. Either could be fun and much less of a time waste than answering his questions with actual statistical lessons he will ignore.

Donko - keep up the shill work even if it's a routine. I am still hoping you do a reveal that you are Fated one day. Then again, maybe I am...


Freeroll riggies - keep those beats coming, you represent the future of riggies!

Oh, and Wiki, keep hitting the riggies with that fish.

Monteroy, I'll tell you my 'real agenda' right now. You got it spot on. To see if iPoker is fair or not. As I've said many times, I'm not sure how it's an 'obsessive belief.' Poker has taken up perhaps 40 hours of my week for two and a half years, as I tried to make a living from it, so it's quite an important issue for me.

Not sure it can be an 'obsessive belief,' when I don't actually have a specific belief one way or the other anyway.

Why spadebidder would want to lie to me, or mess with me, I'm not sure either. I'm trying to investigate some of the same things he has for other sites, for the iPoker network, so any help on the statistical side of things from him will be greatly appreciated.

I'll save spade some time. Assume spade is telling the truth in both cases (going to ignore your bizaqrre take on reality from the joke I made earlier)

Scenario 1: He says 100 million hands of ipoker

You would not be convinced because you need something to be wrong with ipoker. So you would ask which skin he did studies on, or what game limits and game types or what time frame or make up your own questions.

Then you would ask if he could do some other study that is statistically meaningless and pointless and even if spade feel for that all it would do is get you and him right back to the starting point


Scenario 2: He says 0 hands of ipoker

Much simpler, because then you can simply say "so we don't know for sure if ipoker is fair or not" and we get to the same point as scenario 1, only much quicker.


Assuming you are legit, all you are is a riggie. Granted a bit of a weird one with some personality issues that go past the normal paranoia we see in riggies, but a mundane riggie nonetheless.

Given that I am merely trying to save spade a lot of time because he has done the poker community (and even this thread) a lot of good service in the past so I wanted to be clear that all of your silly "I'll do some stats by hand" comments and questions where you clearly indicate you have no idea what you are talking about in order to get "help" are all smokescreens for your real agenda.

Refreshing to see you basically admit this.


For my own amusement I will suggest you post all of your statistical questions in the probability forum. Ask there how to do a study and give some ideas you have in mind.

Obviously you will never do this (not the riggie way), but it's fun to toss that suggestion out there knowing you will deflect it as that will also help demonstrate why genuine nice shills should not waste their time and efforts on a time sink such as yourself.

Here is another thread you should look at, a very innovative coaching concept. Maybe post there asking if he can help you. Again, I know you will never do that and frankly it would just be fun to see how your request (if you made it) would be handled.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/16...em-pt3-681687/

All the best!


P.S. ipoker is fair. You just can't win at poker. Move on with life - that is your fate...

I can't really win. I'm just doing what many others on this thread keep telling people to do, which is to gather some evidence and present it here. Nothing wrong with that. I don't 'need' anything to be wrong with iPoker, but it would be nice to have a better idea either way, if there are some statistical irregularities, I can take things from there, if not I can assume the flaws are in my game and move on with my life.

I'm only really interested in iPoker, as that is where I play, but as spadebidder's analysis seems to be one of the most thorough that is known to be readily available, I'd like to know which site(s) his investigation comes from as well.

I'm not asking spadebidder to do any investigation. I don't know where you got that from. I am in the process of doing my own investigation, as I haven't seen any iPoker investigation so far. Spadebidder appears to be, like myself, interested in solving this debate, so he has no reason at all to lie to me or mislead me, like you suggest.

I don't have 'no idea what I'm talking about,' either. I have studied bits of statistics here and there, but there was one bit I needed which I couldn't remember, so I asked spadebidder for help. It was completely relevant to this debate, so I posted it here, I wasn't asking for a massive explanation, just the name of the thing, so I could investigate further for myself on wikipedia or wherever. Also, I thought it would be better for others who are following to be able to read all the details in this one thread, rather than having to search other areas of the website. Just my opinion.

You can't sit there and say 'iPoker is fair,' without presenting your evidence. If I sat and said 'iPoker is unfair,' without presenting evidence, there are 10 or 15 regulars on here who would jump straight down my throat, so it can't be a different rule for you. It needs to be the same for everyone.

Assume for the time being that ipoker is fair. There is a vanishingly small chance that that is not the case so you might as well stay ahead of the game.

And I gave you a link to the relevant page very quickly.

No, but we can say 'ipoker is very probably fair' because there are a lot of people playing there and a fair few of them have the maths and stats skills and the hand histories to check. If they were unfair to any noticable degree, someone other than yourself woul have noticed and done the requisite analyses - and provided Evidence.

You are, once again, suggesting that people need to prove a negative if they want to counter you evidence free meanderings.

It hasn't washed before and it won't wash now.

Stop posting meaningless hand histories that show awful players, make awful plays in pointless freerolls and some of them get lucky. This is obviously no surprise and the only surprise for you may be that you are one of these morons.

"Quite important", yet you have only just bothered to take a cursory glance at your hand histories using some cheap and very useful software. Your tales of woe make no sense whatsoever but we've been over that already...

The link you posted me before was not to the right page. It wasn't standard deviation which I was looking for, as I explained to you.


I'm not suggesting people need to prove a negative at all. You and all the other 'regulars,' know that Monteroy saying, 'iPoker is fair,' isn't a fair comment. As you explained and I'd agree, iPoker is 'very probably' fair.

You are very quick to shoot down people who don't agree with you, when they make a glaring mistake, please be balanced enough to shoot down people who share the same views as you, when they come out with unacceptable comments as well, rather than this pack mentality which seems to have developed whereby 10-15 of you immediately jump on anyone who doesn't conform, but won't speak out at all against each other.

If you want to tell me what didn't make sense to you, I'll happily clarify, but like you say, we've been over it already, so maybe better if we just move on.

It's also the most highly regulated online gaming company in the world, licensed and subject to redundant regulation in about 10 different countries (UK, Italy, France, Spain, Isle of Man, Estonia, etc), as well as being publicly traded. If they aren't fair, we can't have confidence in anyone, ever.

Can you tell me as well please, how you know that all these analyses (analysiseseseseseses) are out there ? They may be Wiki, but I haven't seen them, that is why I am doing my own. Spadebidder's seems to be the one that everyone holds up as an example, that is why I am interested to find out what site(s) he investigated.

I haven't seen an iPoker one, so I'm going to investigate that as best I can. I don't think I have the statistics or computer knowledge, or the software that spadebidder did, but given time to gather enough hand histories, I can still do a reasonable investigation for the iPoker network.

There are plenty of people who come on here who think they have seen irregularities, but as you know, most of them don't bother to investigate, probably not having the knowledge, or the tools, or the time. I'm going to investigate, as Spadebidder did and see what I find. I'm doing it for myself mainly, but there are plenty of people here who will be interested in the outcome as well.

There's no reason to shoot me down for doing that. It's what you yourselves keep asking 'riggies,' as you'd call them, to do, over and over again.

Your investigation wasn't for iPoker by any chance, was it ?

Might save me a lot of time if it was.

I can't find anywhere which site(s) you have analyzed. I think I remember reading it was Pokerstars, is that correct ?

If it wasn't standard deviation you were looking for it should have been.

And, you have correctly pointed out that it wasn't a certainty.

That's just avoiding redundancy.

If one of the 'shills' says something wrong there are plenty of riggies and 'tards to point it out. On the other hand there's no way we'll actually defend erroneous logic on the part of another shill, which would give you legitimate cause for complaint.

The truth is out there.

It must be.

It said so on every episode of 'The X Files'.

It wasn't standard deviation, as that has to do with the 'mean' of a group of numbers. My investigation has nothing to do with the mean.


You're like Usain Bolt the way you come flying out of the traps when someone who doesn't share your exact beliefs posts something you can jump on.

As an adult, you should be balanced and respectful enough to act the same way with Monteroy, Spadebidder, Arouet and the rest of your list of regulars. The fact they share roughly the same views as you shouldn't change that, you should treat everyone in the same way.