I think he's saying that if there was no illegal activity going on, poker sites would not have as much traffic. Since there is a ton of illegal activity going on, and people are profiting immensely from it, traffic continues to grow.

If we were to live in a world where all poker site operators were doing so legally and within the rules of the game, poker sites would have very little traffic, since no one would be profiting and games would be terrible.

I meant the traffic and the activity in the forum.
If it all would be just some useless nonsense and no one would make a profit
there wouldn't be hundreds or maybe even thousands of people actively posting . If this is the direction the game is going towards the future of online poker looks grim.

Ah, so you're saying that because there are so many posts and threads on this forum about cheating, there must be something to it? Um, yes. Glad you're all caught up with us now.

Here is what people got wrong about the rigged poker debate.

(0) the RNG doesn't matter when it comes to fix the game.

(1) an online poker site can be rigged in a way that profit the company but NOT a player in particular, I will show you how.

(2) since (1), we need a poker site we can tell with decent certainty is not rigged. It doesn't matter that PokerStars doesn't do (1), my point is that you will never know and that's not acceptable.


About (0). Most people make a big mistake when it comes to RNGs and poker: it's not because you have a good RNG that you don't have a rigged poker site. The reason is simple: RNG gives you number, not cards. Let me show you how you can fix a poker hand using a perfectly sound RNG. Let say you generate a number between 0 and 51. That number gives you a card index right, for example, if 0 is given, ace of spade is dealt. But you don't have to do that. You can map the number to the cards the way you want. For example, I can generate a number from 0 to 510, then divide this number by 11 and that will give me a new card index. Using that method, you can easily tell that the 2 of diamond (or whatever is the 52th card) doesn't have the same likelihood of being dealt than the other cards. So in both case, I have the same RNG, still the second method gives a rigged game.

When it comes to rigged poker, the RNG doesn't matter, what matters is the Card Index Algorithm (CIA).

Every time a poker site is telling you about his RNG as a proof that it's not rigged, you are being fooled. It's that simple. The RNG doesn't matter when it comes to that. If anything, a good RNG makes a better fix.

About (1). Now, how could a poker site profit from a rigged CIA? Well, it's quite simple. Do you remember that "it's because you take a bad beats that bad players come back at the table"? Poker players often say that and it's true.

Let's say I have a poker site, that I want to make more money even if it means fixing the game, here is what I would do. Using a rigged CIA, I would make sure that some of the times, for a short period of time, some players just got bad luck in order for them to give money back to the system (="it's because you take a bad beats that bad players come back"). It doesn't have to be every player. With advance AI, you could actually find what player are best targeted by that system.
I would also do the opposite: I would make sure that a player who havent played for a while (or never) has quite some luck.

All of that is easily doable using a rigged CIA. Let me know if you want me to tell the details technically here. Basically, you can do things like have a luck index by players and according to that, do some weighting math to get card index that will slightly favor the players with high luck index.

About (2). I believe it is possible to make a verifiable CIA. A website like random.org can generate digitally-signed random number sequences. By adding a little trick to their system (we need partially masked digitally-signed random number sequence), we could have a verifiable CIA.

I really think some people with influence here should take seriously the problem in their hand. For example, pokerstars should stop talking about their RNG and start talking about their CIA.

This was almost enough right here. You made an awfully long post to explain the obvious - the site could ignore the RNG results. Yes, they could. You're far from the first to bring up the idea, although you may be the first to have made up a term to describe what happens next.

Why? Someone else would just come along and say that they can ignore their RNG and your "CIA" as well. They could make up their own term, like this:

Stars takes the RNG, hands the result to the CIA, but then they run that result through the FEA (Fish Equalization Algorithm). Stars needs to stop talking about their RNG and CIA and start talking about their FEA.

I've never understood why anyone thinks of RNG certification as some kind of end all, be all either. But talking about some "CIA" as being the answer to everything doesn't make any more sense. Only one thing matters - results. If you don't think they're dealing the cards fairly, analyze your results. If you're not happy with those results, play somewhere else. If you don't believe those results, maybe move to live poker.

This theory has been discussed before.

https://www.soundboard.com/sb/sound/126944

Sure I was aware that there are people that are using bots and solvers,
what what I was trying to point out or was shocking to me is the extend of it and the popularity.

Soon we might get to the point where people don't learn/use strategy and go straight to cheating instead, if we are not at this point already.

@Bobofett: The issue you describe can be easily solved by using definitions. We can decide that the algorithm that take a random integer and change it to a card index is, by our definition, the piece of code that gives "the final cards" (it's the meaning of "card index"). I understand your point that you can always insert an another algorithm that take a card index from the CIA and change it to a new card index. But the definition of the CIA here is not respected as we want it to be. In other words, if we respect the definition, the Fish Equaliser is necessarily part of the CIA.

Now that we agree on the definitions, I think it is possible to make a CIA that's verifiable by everyone. But there is other things that could be done. A pokersite could opensource their CIA. Even if you dont know that's the piece of code that runs on the server (or like you mentionned, if it's all of it), it's better than nothing, and you can start to do things like reverse engineering to get more information. The more they gave, the more they gonna be cornered not to cheat.

If we go out of obscurantism, there might be light. The piece of code that's interesting to us is the CIA and we ought to know if it is tampered and contain a Fish Equaliser.

I think it is important for the context to know ukChuck is responsible for https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...98/?highlight=

Lol, now they're rigging play money games.

Some kind of crrrrrazy

You don't need a RNG that is just focused on fish.
You could put in some hands that just generate rake.
Like coinflips or other hands that basically play themselves.
Also you can increase the overall hand strength.
Anything that limits the decision making would be good enough.

But on the other side why would you take that kind of effort and risk if you could just increase the rake.


Either way it is undeniable that there is more gambling/luck involved that it use to be if you credit it to a overall tougher player pool or a rigged game.
Considering the fact of an increase of cheating by a strong A.I. there is pretty much no future in playing online.
It is already close to impossible to make a living just due to the decrease of action higher stakes.

Also I wonder if there is a market in play money home games.
Like there is one in Chinese Poker and Pineapple, where the payout is regulated by the players.
This way one could avoid the rake.

Player who can't make a living playing high stakes anymore, wonders if there is a market in play money home games.

I mean that there is a good decrease in the player pool what should make it really difficult to find some good action on higher stakes, because there are not just tougher tables but also overall less tables available

The second one is if you already know the people and trust them why not create a home game instead and avoid the rake.
I mean if the potential pool of opponents is already that low and the rake is waging so heavy, then why not just make private game and place a bet on the result.
Somehow the main reason people are willing to pay rake is because of the accommodation which provides them with opponents and security.

Hand number 3675009559 on ignition poker
Guy completed the sb with 5555 for his hole cards in 100 plo. Where are all these better players you guys day exist that make the games tougher which in turn makes the winners have smaller win rates. I can give u hands like this all day everyday.

If it is rigged then it's rigged. They don't rig certain limits and not others. If the cards are being dealt with some type of rig then it would apply site wide.

That's no surprise since you play in them. You're like someone that says everything smells like piss when he wets his pants twice a day.

Good one

He could be mixing it up.
Either to bluff later, get you on tilt or to get opponents to think he is a absolute fish.
You see often really tight players making horrible calls occasionally to confuse their opponents.

I want a good day for everyone. With this post, I want to show my impressions by playing poker for the past 4 months on the J88 poker server.

I can immediately say that I made a profit this time, but I left the server 2 times in this period and today I will be the third time.

J88 poker server is not a poker we all know. Poker software is desperate in the sense that it is not nearly realistic.

We all know about the existence of up and down swings, but do you know that on the J88 poker server over 50,000 hands down sving, the blue line at the poker tracker goes over $ 10,000 below zero! And by playing nl 20 to nl 100 levels.

In my life I played over 10 million hands and there is no sequence in which the blue line on PT4 is negative at 50,000 hands. The J88 is linearly negative. You wonder how it's possible. Simply. The percentage of winning at showdown WSD is less than 20% on over 50,000 hands.

Not to mention that the real earnings is a half less than that shown by EV.

The server is full of some players from various countries around the world, who have terrible statistics of throwing cards in all segments of the game and over 90% (fold BB on SB open, Fold to c bet, Fold to bet). It's perfectly clear that these players play only on their cards and it seems like a great opportunity for a great deal of profit, but it's not like that. Simply everything you take (steal) from those players you loose into the set up because yours AK in 3 bet pot loose 90% time from A6 for example on board A62 or something like this.

So i think that this players are a bots ho have to little knowledge but too much LUCK...

I am on this server like I said from beginning of jun 2018. No one regular player dont stay to play poker on this server more than me...All regular players leave this server after few weeks... Every poker server have players who played for years. But J88 no, every regular player leave this server.

So to conclude. J88 poker server is not real on line poker. This is some kind of game but very very bad game...I dont think that have a future if they keep up this way.

It is wasted of your times to play poker on this server, because this is not poker...

It looks rig when I seem to get second best hands or get sucked out up to all week even when I try to note when my opponents run similarly. It is not about the way I play (ending in 2nd best situations) and I am fully educated for my levels.

I know the best players score from 10 to 20 bb/100 from 2 to 200! The hope-for-expectation is 5 bb/100 with or w/o rakeback. I have seen many success stories. Considering how tough the games are (to my skills and brain) those scores indicate it isn't rigged, and I don't see it is just the select few as there are other players under that curve also scoring. I also see some skill levels just below me that lose at some level and I don't wonder why. I don't see why the better players score better than I do, but I don't wonder that either.

I see non-optimal play up to 200 (additionally to that I have investigated the best players at high limit and see they play more optimally). So, I don't wonder why it can be possible to win 10 bb or even more there.

I can only think it is my mind and variance and that I am not good enough, it taking more time/brain to lift the win rate up at some level -- even if it is just the 2.

Live games sure making it easier, but it clearly shows that one can do well online also.

If there is some reason to "juice" the deal, it is not a problem for the best players. Underestimating the variance as one sees it seems like a huge reason why one might see it as a rig, and when that combines to one's short or/and long run scores, and if one thinks one is better, then it must be rig.

U don't think the players should be winning more the 5bb-100? Translate that to live l. U plays bout 25 hands per hour live. So in 4 hours u see 100 hands. If u played even 2-5 and won 5bb per 100 hands u would be winning $25 every 4 hours.its laughable. People are brainwashed to believe online games are so much tougher. Maybe they are a little but not enough to makes these numbers true

My statistics are more or less missing for live games. There are some regular players who have tracked their results in live cash games, and that's the best I can know. Getting live tells could increase the win rate there but not much mentioned. There are a couple of ATMs at every table; it is a better game than what one has online most of the time; counting out some micros. The live games can play bigger.

I have been thinking the 20 bb/100 number being like what good players expect to make in live games, and that can happen shorthanded in tougher games online but one needs more skill online, so it is more like 5 bb/100 online and possibly more than 20 bb/100 in live games for the best player. Maybe there are players scoring more than the 20 bb/100 in really good micro online games also, and in top good live games also, depending on the rake.

The rake in the USA live games is lower than at about anywhere else in the world (in Scotland it is also low). So, it is possible to score better in the USA live games than in online playing 100 or 200 that have relatively the same level of rakes than some more or less lower raked live games in Europe at 400, 500 (2/5, 5/5) and/or 1k levels; many of those live games even at those limits tend to have up to much weaker players (some 500 or 1k is regularly easier/looser in Europe than in the USA or Vegas).

In Europe, the best game is PLO, just the rake can be a problem there, depending on the place and rake. One can play higher than 200 NLH at many places in Europe and the European more or less higher rake hurts less when it is NLH. In the USA, the PLO must be really good.

For what ever reason the games are ruined these days.
Right now the gaming experience is like putting coins in a slot machine and waiting for a hot streak.

This......well the game has changed huge, people just sitting all day waiting for the nuts grinding it out. I dont have time for that, so I gamble it up and this is how it feels for me too. Omaha on acr is this exactly, bots and rake race grinders make it boring and well robotic.....