Perhaps they agreed to disagree...

No, because everyone who thinks the way you do also posts the way you do. All sorts of things they've witnessed, and they "know", but never any data. The whole purpose of this thread was to have some good discussion and hopefully collect some data. There was some good discussion going, and a lot of talk about getting data, but as always happens, it went nowhere in the end. Now this thread seems to be doomed to be filled with a lot of people coming in with their evidence-free observations and accusations, and a bit of constructive discussion now and then.

Sigh.

Most of the hands are at 1-2 6 max and 1-2 fullring with some 2-4, 3-6 and 5-10 scattered in there but very few hands.

but my 6 max stats were about 22/18, winrate at 6max was 3.2

fullring stats 19/14. Winrate at fullring 2.3 or so.

Overall winrate 3.0, PokerEV said I should've won 2.3bb/100 instead of 3.0.

So.... there isn´t any investigation... OOOOKKKKK !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Without reading all these posts, one thing I want to add is that:

Let's assume that I'm the owner of these sites, and doing a little tweak on the code where it basically has no chances of discover by people, and it would increase my profit by 10%, I will do it without any doubt.

And I assume 99% of business owners or people would do it. (It's just common sense that most people are greedy)

So what's my take here then? To continue to play in a rigged game knowing that it's rigged or stop it?

OMG the whole world is rigged!

The problem with your reasoning is that you assume it is possible to rig a game with no chance of discovery. It is not possible. If a game is rigged someone with the proper skill set can discover it. So this risk free cheating on the part of the sites simply does not exist.

The question then is given that there is a risk would a site take that risk? From a business perspective for a large site it makes no sense.

I'm not entirely convinced it's not possible to do something like that which would be virtually undetectable by the players (whether the site can get its employees to keep their mouths shut is a different story though). It might be possible theoretically. Sorry, but I think it COULD be done.

But I do know that if such a way were possible then it wouldn't be noticed by casual observers like those in this thread who pretty much have nothing more than, "the cards run differently...you can just tell!"

The ones complaining about the massive variance or their crazy losses:
The riggedness isn't happening to you. You are the losing players that the sites would want to help win. And evidently whatever riggedness they are doing isn't providing enough help to keep you in the games long enough.
The ones complaining about losing too much THINK they are the good players who the sites have it out for but about 999 times out of 1000 they are not in this 'good players' group that the site would want to watch out for. And so many times in there the player they are complaining about who won is not a fish but rather an aggressive player who made a move that was too sophisticated for them to understand ("he went all-in on a draw! OMGZZGMGMG!!!")

Two things:

1. Not worth the risk? Maybe not if you assume the status quo for the next decade, but that's almost certainly not going to be the case. The US is key for the current major sites, excluding Party Poker. If the US regulates online poker, the current big sites are almost certainly going to be a relic of the past - and just end up getting bought out in the best case. If the US effectively bans online poker, the vast majority of players on many sites (well Stars and FTP in particular) will be gone.

The current sites are only prospering since online poker is still in a grey area in the US. But with 'us' trying severely to get it regulated, and groups such as FoF or various pandering politicians trying equally hard to get it banned - I don't think it's reasonable to expect the status quo to last all that much longer.

2. I believe you are incorrect about it being possible to develop an impossible to detect method. Imagine you're just flipping coins with somebody who happens to have a 'cheat button' that lets him win any flip he wants to. Say he only uses the button around every 1/100 hands. It'd be basically impossible to prove he was ever cheating. He'd be running at 51% instead of 49% - but hey, that's just variance for you. No different than the countless graphs we've seen of guys running dozens of buyins below all in equity over large samples. It's not proof that the coin isn't fair, just evidence of it.

Now consider how much more infinite complexity there is in poker than flipping coins, and subsequently infinitely more complexity in any data analysis.

The fact that 'bunching' is compensated for by control samples means it has zero relevance in any data analysis. It's just a red herring.

1) Party Poker doesn't have US players and their yearly revenue is in the $250M/year area. After the initial hit from the loss of US players their revenue has been increasing at a fairly aggressive rate. I'm wouldn't risk that.

2) It is impossible to design a system that can not be detected.

How about this for a middle ground, it would be impractical for them to rig it in most of the ways suggested because they are very obvious and would have been caught a long time ago if they existed.

Is it possible for a site to rig it to make more money in a way that would be hard to detect? Sure, I can think of a couple of very clever ways of that, but it aint going to be something like "flush draws hit too much"





In theory, a poker site does not care who wins a flip. You are playing against other players, not the house. Online casinos would be different, and perhaps that is a reason why some are rogue at casinomeister.

How does a poker site make more if you run at 51% instead of 49%?

1. Party Gaming 5 year stock chart:



2. Very convincing form of debate. Repeat yourself a few more times and you might just finally make a point!

1) You are confusing stock price with price with revenue.

2) I don't see the point in getting into a debate on stats with someone who has no idea. Your example made it clear you don't have any formal education in statistical analysis.

Please read at least some of the thread before posting. Both of these have already been answered, many times. There should be a FAQ and cleaning of this thread since the noise ratio is increasing rapidly.

1. Nobody with any sense about them has claimed any site is rigged in any base manner such as "flush draws hit more often." Various theories have been posted throughout the thread. I'm not going to repeat them.

2. The same as above. The benefit to the site has been posted many many times already. In my particular example, I was talking about a different game outside of poker where you are literally just flipping coins. The reduction to fundamental simplicity still being extremely difficult to ever 'prove' anything was meant as an illustration of the difficulty in ever 'proving' anything regarding the infinitely more complex game of poker.

1. To be honest, I wasn't sure why you stated revenue as it's one of the most irrelevant figures available. While pure stock prices obviously don't show the whole truth, they give a decent approximation of a company's time relative performance. Profit's also a useful figure. Here's Partygaming net profit profit figures in millions of pounds:

2000: 83.6
2001: 350.1
2004: 293.2
2005: 128.4
2006: 41.6
2007: 64.9

2006 obviously being when the UIGEA hit. The 2007 numbers are also a little twisted in that this is the whole of Partygaming which has seen a huge surge in profits from online casino players apparently. And these numbers are from when there was no explicit banning/enforcement of online poker. Things aren't likely to end up much better for Stars or Full Tilt.

2. Incredible! Ad hominem as well as blatant repetition. You truly do a great job of supporting any points you try to make. Call me poopy face and I really think you'll finally have developed a sound foundation for your logic!

1) I went with revenue because I knew the revenue numbers off the top of my head after reading a story about how their 2008 numbers are a big improvement from 2007. Regardless at $120M in profit for 2007 that is still a lot to risk.

2) You tell me that a unfair coin game can't be tested for unfairness. You learn that is not true in first year stats (in some cases you learn that in the last year of high school). Since you did not know that I think it is easy enough to conclude that you never took any stats.

2. You entirely missed the point. First off, I never stated the coin flipping game couldn't be tested for fairness. Anything can be tested. The important part is proof. And the reduction to simplicity was designed to illustrate the absurdity of 'proof' for poker. Start with the basics. A sample of 5000 flips using my 1% biased game yields a result within the 95% confidence interval for 'fairness'. A sample of 10,000 and it's outside the 99% confidence interval for 'fairness'. Not too bad, but this is very very far from poker.

Now bring it one step closer to poker by adding the third dimension of wagering. Say 5% of the time you wager $5 on the flip, every other time you wager $1. And now furthermore assume that your cheating opponent only uses his cheat button if he does his random 1/100 selection and you both also decide to wager $5. The sample size required to show anything with any level of certainty now skyrockets.

Now add in the incomplete information aspect which can be modeled by basically assuming you are unable to collect data on some certain percent of the flips. The worst part being that this data omission is not necessarily random either.

Now add in the multiple opponents aspect, such that some of your opponents may be cheating while others may not with no entirely accurate measure of determining. The detection, let alone proof, is quickly becoming effectively impossible.

This is just the beginning as well.

And my variance comment was tongue in cheek. The site could dismiss a study showing substantial data 10 stds out as variance. It doesn't matter that it'd be practically impossible. They have plausible deniability and you'd have a conspiracy theory with math that most people won't follow.

It's kind of hard for any one person to analyze enough hands on PokerStars to be able to say whether or not they are rigged, and how so. To go along with a few points that have already been brough up in this and other threads, one thing that is for certain is that PokerStars seems to be the most against any form of datamining. All the other instances of cheating were found be analyzing tons of hands containing different players (not just personal played hands). In order to do any real form of analysis against PokerStars, many many people would have to contribute their HH's. Until this is done, everyone really has far too small a sample size to say anything conclusive.

The fact that Pokerstars does not allow datamining could be contributing to many players thinking they are rigged. What do you say Pokerstars....loosen up.

Now you are playing a systematics game. You can't actually prove anything ever outside of formal logic.

The fact remains that since many of us have databases that exceed a few million hands and we further have access to other people who have similar sized databases we have that ability to test for any form of cheating.

If someone says I believe X is happening it is possible to design a test that will determine if X is happening or not. If someone believes Y is happening then it is possible to design a test to determine if Y is happening. There is no systematic method of rigging a poker game that can not be detected when the people doing the testing have a few million hands to work with.

If these topics are going to go anywhere we need more people doing statistical analysis and posting their work as well as the raw data and less people just making random claims with no evidence other than their observations. I've seen a few dozen poker is rigged topics but not once has someone posted anything other than anecdotal observations.

This is what someone who believes poker is rigged needs to do

1) Decide what they believe is abnormal / rigged.
2) Design a way to test for that.
3) Get a large sample of hands and test
4) Upload their evidence so others can confirm and to draw other people into being interested.

Fine, dismiss the most common pairs win too much/action flop/draws hit etc type stuff, and I have no doubt you can propose dozens or hundreds of very intricate methods that rigginess can be done that would be hard to detect.

The problem is that this creates the disprove a negative dynamic. Your 51% example or the other subtle things you mention fall into that. There can be thousands more that are layered on as well, but to disprove all of these negatives via mathematical means will be nearly futile, as there will always be a new "what if" that can be thought up.

Some of the strongest forces against any form of rigging (intentional, not unintentional software errors) remain:

1) Too many people would know, and eventually someone would let the cat out of the bag.

2) The risk is just too great. Unless the rigging makes an insane amount of money, why would any of these large, established and often publicly traded companies take such a risk?

3) The data is out there. Even without a whistle blower there are plenty of stats freaks like yourself who would love to prove a site is rigged, and all of the hand history data is there.

Call me a simple guy, but I am having a hard time thinking of too many intentional forms of software manipulation that completely escape the above 3 conditions. Add to that years of no one yet actually proving anything, and while this may not be technically mathematical it does seem to add up.

what i can´t understand is how people can be so naive tho think pstars don´t risk manipulating game to get 2% more of benefits. If they manipulate game and help fishes to stay is because THERE IS THE BUSINESS AND NOT ONLY A 2% EXTRA.

Let´s take a look at tournaments. thousands of players .... and always almost all of us are eliminated in most tourneys by the few outs. Pstars do that to get more players, to induce them he can win thousands of dollars payin a 20 or 30 $ entry.

I have been playing several years tourneys of low cost, mtt and sng, perhaps near a thousand or more. AND ALWAYS IS THE SAME STORY, most times eliminated same way. Of course, sometimes you get ft ... but the fact is MOST OF TIMES you are eliminated by a draw of 9 outs (i remember is a 35% wining at showdown, 1 of 3), by a fish getting a miracle river, etc.

Why Pstars is knowing as riggedstars, riverstars, thievestars and so on???

The BIG PROBLEM is that NO ONE INVESTIGATE THE SITE, NO ONE AUTORITHY CHECK IF THE SITE IS FAIR OR NOT.

PD: Sorry for my english again...

You're intelligent, Henry, but I don't think you ever own a business or steps into the business world before.

Not worth the risk? Look at all the trillion dollar business today that file bankruptcy because of greedy

Also, if it's not worth the risk, these company would not risk their ass in the federal prison in the first place by entering the U.S. market.

Whatever, there's no point of arguing. Tons of stupid people in this world.

tommycam - If you get it all-in as a 70% favorite over and over again you are extremely likely to get eliminated one of those times.
30% underdogs will win about 30% of the tie strangely enough. You aren't supposed to win 10 out of 10 as a 70% favorite.
Out of 500 players there are going to be 499 players who get eliminated at some point...and a lot of those players will be losing on some sort of bad beat.
It happens just as much online as in live tourneys. You are using anecdotal evidence and selective memory to get paranoid about how the site is out to get players like you.