This is totally and completely inaccurate. There are numerous chess servers today and as you said - popularity is at an all time high. Many tournaments feature cash prizes and have for years. Chess has done an infinitely better job than poker at controlling online cheating.

As for online poker being "rigged": It basically doesn't even matter whether it is or isn't anymore. Software, bots, and collusion are just so rampant that the games are totally unbeatable. Ever notice how you never, ever see an American post a winning cash game graph anymore? Ever? Anywhere? it's because there are none. Every pro on every site is from ROW. You can go all the way down to the lowest nanostakes and it's the same accounts on there 20+ hours a day, every day. It's just absolutely loaded with bots. With the problem this widespread and so little done about it by the sites themselves, it's pretty obvious to most that the sites are complicit in this. As another poster said: Outside of 2p2, I haven't met anyone "on the street" in literally years who isn't 100% convinced that online poker is rigged. To the point that they stopped playing forever ago and refuse to deposit even a nickle today.

Pretending that online poker isn't on life support really doesn't help matters at all.

Umm...even 5nl is just filled with bots now. Filled. Same accounts on there 20+ hours a day, every day, playing overly aggressive poker and being more patient than a saint in picking their spots. Massive, massive volume for rakeback.

There is bots, but there isn’t nearly as many as you think.

Is there a wager available for this?

Should it really require a wager? They used to be all over the place on here and other forums. Now? Where are they?

Yatahay Network - $0.05 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: $5.34
SB: $5.63
BB: $1.90
Hero (UTG): $5.00
CO: $5.77

SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has 9c Jd
fold, CO raises to $0.14, BTN calls $0.14, SB raises to $0.66, fold, CO raises to $2.29, fold, SB raises to $5.63 and is all-in, CO calls $3.34

Flop : ($11.45, 2 players) Td 7s 4h

Turn : ($11.45, 2 players) 6c

River : ($11.45, 2 players) 3d

SB shows Ks Kd (One Pair, Kings)
(Pre 78%, Flop 75%, Turn 79%)

CO shows 4s 3s (Two Pair, Fours and Threes)
(Pre 22%, Flop 25%, Turn 21%)

CO wins $10.88
Rake paid $0.39

This same account that called a 5b shove with 34s at 5nl plays 20+ hours a day. Every day. Dozens of other accounts just like it. Whether 5nl, 50nl, or 500nl - this is what you see out of accounts putting in *massive* volume. No human is sitting there playing thousands and thousands of 5nl hands every day of the week and then catching rivers like that repeatedly lol.

Hey - Maybe I'm wrong. The thing is that as you see here: The overwhelming consensus by anyone who's not a 2p2 regular is that the games are terribly crooked and not worth playing. I desperately wish this wasn't the case as I do love the game but what's obvious is obvious at a certain point. Every US facing site is like this today.

SB in this hand was the only other USA tagged account at the table (other than me) and this was the 3rd beat like this he took in about 20 minutes. Naturally, he just complained about the games being rigged and left the table.

I posted this in another thread:

Yatahay Network - $0.05 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: $5.34
SB: $5.63
BB: $1.90
Hero (UTG): $5.00
CO: $5.77

SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has 9c Jd
fold, CO raises to $0.14, BTN calls $0.14, SB raises to $0.66, fold, CO raises to $2.29, fold, SB raises to $5.63 and is all-in, CO calls $3.34

Flop : ($11.45, 2 players) Td 7s 4h

Turn : ($11.45, 2 players) 6c

River : ($11.45, 2 players) 3d

SB shows Ks Kd (One Pair, Kings)
(Pre 78%, Flop 75%, Turn 79%)

CO shows 4s 3s (Two Pair, Fours and Threes)
(Pre 22%, Flop 25%, Turn 21%)

CO wins $10.88
Rake paid $0.39

Same account sits there playing 20+ hours a day, every day, and there are dozens of others just like it. Weird, bizarre lines that constantly result in them winning by the river. No matter what they do - they crush. 20+ hours a day. I regularly see the same 3-4 guys sit out and back in at the exact same time on the same tables. Who's really playing that kind of volume at 5nl and consistenly winning by calling 5b shoves with 34s, A3s, KJs, etc? What human? lol

Extracting value at even 5nl and 10nl is excruciating. These must be the most patient and disciplined human beings on earth. Huge, long, drawn out tanks on every street while playing on 5+ tables at once. 20+ hours a day. Dozens of accounts like this at every stake. What's that? Call a 5b shove with A4o? They win. 34s? They win. JTs? They win. Post flop on hands that don't go all in preflop? The most maticulous and patient players on the face of the earth lol.

Hey, I'm just saying.

Play 10nl blitz. I didn't notice many bots, mostly crappy regs and fish/whales.

always play rags theory is prevalent among veteran poker players (especially suited connectors) one day you will learn which hands win huge multiway pots. There are many here that will flop bottom pair and continue to build the pot only to steal it on the river especially at low stakes

Be sure to let us know the next time you win a a lot of money in a chess tournament.

You're either in complete denial or totally misread his post. It was HU pre-flop after the BTN folded. SB has 3bet vs a raise and a call. That's not a spot you want to be getting your stack in with 34s (as the equity values clearly show).

You've actually made his point for him though. Just trying to explain this stuff away as run of the mill is actually a big part of the problem. People just don't play like that.

I have noticed this as well. Paired flops seem to be the thing on PB. When I saw your post, I did a manual count in my database with a super humongous sample of 100 hands and found 28 paired flops. That's more than whatever it should be iirc 17% or somewhere around there.

If I knew how to analyze a DriveHUD database I could come up with a better number, but I suck at databases, odds, and poker in general, so.........

i would imagine the maths guys you are talking about that analyse for the potential rigs professionally use dedicated APIs to the FBI to report any discrepancy they detect when doing their full analysis.

not at all! ive always enjoyed reading about your insights into this industry!

The "math guys" do not set out to look for rigs, because if those silly rigs existed they would have been found long, long ago and would be quite evident. What they do is analyze population tendencies and create approaches in different situations assisted by that research. The programs and information available today (all within the rules) is magnitudes better than years ago, and that is why some rooms are actively trying to shut down that part of the game with minimal or no HH saving features (which of course create other potential problems).

I know none of you will believe this, but if you spent a week really looking at what is done in this area, it probably would put some "I see quads and action hands all the time" beliefs into some perspective, and an analogy I could think of would be asking what riggies are good at in their lives (they have to be good at something) and then tossing newbie style declarations about that area to them in an arrogant/prove me wrong way and perhaps then they would understand how silly they are here. Odds are not, but you never know!



I would say he made no point at all rather than proving what the guy is suggesting about it being a bot, unless he was doing a weird BBV style fold river type comment. As for "people never play like that." Dude, it is 5NL. People play like that all the time at that level, because - 5NL. The funny thing about the good ol SNE days was this, at the lower limits (like 5NL 10 NL) you saw lots of bad play. AT the SNE grind limits (100 or 200NL) it was a much, much tougher game, because many of the people were doing a SNE grind. Go further up and you started seeing more splashy, crazy play. I guess I would ask why you believe people do not play like that at 5NL.

Additionally, it is a pretty strange hand to show to prove the 34 player is a bot and plays that way to extract value from the games because he gets a lucky river. That seems to suggest more that this "bot" is a superuser that also knows what the runout would be or something. Not quite sure what that specific hand is supposed to prove, other than if it is a bot that it needs a lot of re-programming, and this hand it got lucky, which whatever.

Seriously, does anyone look at that hand and immediately think the 34s player is a bot?

Now, if there are accounts that are on for 20+ hours a day, that is something, and creating a list (with appropriate screenshots) and documenting it to post is what others have done in that situation. A person posting a weird bad beat (for a bot to be involved) and simply saying an account plays 20 hours a day without evidence cannot be taken as seriously, because if it is then literally any comment made by anyone needs to be investigated deeply, and safe to say - good luck with that approach.

Online chess is extremely popular, and that has gotten a boost from the pandemic, but it is an entire different industry than online poker, so other than both being online (which will benefit from the pandemic) - they have little to do with each other. Another poster was correct when he said that bots are not nearly as bad in this industry as alarmists tend to suggest, though again they are more common on certain networks and games. As well, the bots are not the best players - they are just better than the dacy's and other donks of the world, so the problem is they extract money from the ecosystem and never need to sleep/eat etc. Good players can beat the bots, especially badly programmed ones, but that is not anywhere as profitable as playing against weak humans.

All the best.

FWIW, I've seen plenty of clueless players at my tables accuse a fish of being a "bot" after the fish gets it in bad and gets there a couple of times. I think they might mean it as "superuser house bot" or something.

It feels like I am looking at my graphs. Running that deep below AIEV is easily explained by the existence of some "lucky" (read "site") accounts which run well above AIEV; guessably, with the friendly help of the software.

Here's the contradiction that I struggle with. Online is supposed to be a lot tougher than live. Isn't that the general consensus? Yet we see numerous examples of online players calling off 100BB stacks with absolute garbage. Even the worst live players don't do that.

It does happen, but not very often. And those players will bust and not rebuy (unless they're Paisting), so they won't be around long enough to bring the average skill level down.

Much easier to log on for 5 mins and call off 100bb than travel to a casino and do the same. People who make the effort to go to a live game probably want to make their buy-in last a bit. Plus the behaviour you are describing is typically at stakes where 100bbs is 50 bucks or less, which is just not a lot to most people.

Anyway, I play exclusively tourney online, so my experiences including the one you replied to are not from cash games.

What actually happens in the real world is that people have examples they can point to, which quickly dispel the myths.

What we have for online poker, is the word of you and a few others. If these silly rigs are so easy to find, then just take an example and prove it incorrect. Exactly as experts do in the real world when challenged with silly ideas. Post the results here and it's job done.

You've been here long enough to know all the riggie theories. Just pick a couple of the most popular and end the debate.

I have noticed this as well. Paired flops seem to be the thing on PB. When I saw your post, I did a manual count in my database with a super humongous sample of 100 hands and found 28 paired flops. That's more than whatever it should be iirc 17% or somewhere around there.

If I knew how to analyze a DriveHUD database I could come up with a better number, but I suck at databases, odds, and poker in general, so.........

Funny you should mention... I posted about this else where several days ago.
I counted EIGHT CONSECUTIVE Paired flops on Bros.
In Live games I cant remember the last time I saw more than 3 ( 4 tops)
such incidents.
I have played on a few online Apps And They are ALL designed for Action Flops.
This in turn increases Rake for the Clubs and or the Site there is Zero doubt about it.
Sorry but I have yet to see an Online app where card Distrubution is Truely Random.

That's the theory but according to OP it's not reality.

I agree with Monty that we need more evidence and then I stop and think, what sort of ****ing mess is online poker if this is how it has to be policed?

I'm glad to see you sticking to my advice and posting silly gifs.

Only if you're certain there are no winners there.

Not sure posting that hand is evidence for your argument of no US winners.

Bots are an issue though and a database of players logging 20+ hours a day is good to build and share. Do it if you have them and start a thread for it.

I would suggest not putting too much weight on a guy with 2 posts that posts a couple 5NL hands that he lost as a true indicator of how this industry works. Again, if you say something you happen to be good at, I will be happy to hurl equivalent statements (assuming I am a newbie at it) that this guy does about something you have skill at to give you some perspective on it. You seem to trust newbs in this industry a lot more than people with actual experience, so could be fun to reverse directions on you. So, what are you actually good at?


Not the way riggies ask for proof. Riggies follow the first riggie commandment - they ask for others to disprove a negative, and that is not the way it works, so when a riggie says too many pocket pairs are dealt, and I say how trivial that would be to prove if true, that riggie (or you) will then say prove it does not exist.

Well, in every database that has been analyzed to date properly it has not been shown to exist. spadebidder literally did a study of over a billion hands and it did not exist in those. Did not matter, riggies still wanted proof that it did not exist. You tell me, if a billion hand study showed it did not exist - what additional proof is required - and be specific.


I have linked you and riggies several links which show how some research is done to find collusion, softplay and bots. They looked at stats people like you never knew existed to discover this stuff.

These rigs would be silly easy to find if they existed. They do not exist, which is why they cannot be found. They do not exist. The proof is literally nobody has found them yet, and I got news for you - "too many pocket pairs" aint that hard to prove if it were true.

The problem is people like you create an assumption that these rigs actually exist (like Lizard People) and then demand others prove they do not exist (prove Lizard People do not exist). When I say that no example of a Lizard Person has ever been documented, that does not count to riggies as proof that they do not exist, I somehow need to prove that a Lizard Person does not exist to them in a world where they simply do not exist. So, how does one do that?

The silly idea is "Lizard People exist." Same thing with "too many pocket pairs are dealt." The good thing with the second one is that there are billions of hands to research to prove it easily if it existed, and if you and riggies do not think it can be discovered easily (if it existed) via statistical means - well, go ahead and ask some math guys is what I say and they will take you through it step by step, and then you never do that, and come back and say prove Lizard People do not exist.




OK, I looked at my databases of hands and the amount of pocket pairs dealt were basically correct (99 was the one I got the most, not sure if that means anything). You look at your database of 340,000 hands (which also has 340,000 hands of one opponent, heh) and break it down by hands dealt and you tell me if pocket pairs overall were dealt statistically as they should be.

Let's assume they were - next tell me how we use this data to prove that pocket pairs were not dealt too often that will satisfy riggie concerns.

All the best.

You're ruining your image making some credible posts the last several days. Everything ok?

Online players use software like HUDs that enables them to review I formation that is not instantly given to live players. Due to the constant use of this, they tend to have better grasp of the math and such. This makes the players more equipped to make decisions amd they are making them vs a table full of players that typically have the same info available

At the penny poker stake level, I dont see the big deal of someone getting loose and fishy with a whole $5 at a time, 100 BBs at 5NL. For many players, it is actually just $5. There are some players that do it at much higher levels. There is one excellent splasher that does it at $3/6 and up. He is down several hundred thousand, long term net depositor, and when he gets felted, several times a day, he congratulates the winning player with niceties like....burn in hell *******, hope you fall into a vat of acid, etc... Nice guy and anyone can feel free to pay me to call me names all day and night.

Some players try to chip up out of the micros. Personally, I think they'd be better off with a minimum wage job then struggling to make 20 cents or so an hour.

this is not going to work. first of all monty has seen with his own EYES how these things are. what you are suggesting is like doubting he is telling the truth about what he has seen, but secondly in his mind the lousy phrase "proving a negative" means "proving any statement containing a negation". therefore disproving anything is always impossible because it involves something NOT being true. and he is aware enough not to walk into that trap voluntarily! but nice try!

it is better to stick with the topic of omnipotent analysis software that does detect all possible rigs (even the omnipotently undetectable ones), and the FBI* that the maths guys in the probability forum report to when they have more serious matters than calculating the probability of 3 coin tosses all landing on heads.

* i noticed how he gets all so excited when the FBI gets mentioned, he is more willingful to expose his honest thoughts about the industry! otherwise he usually falls back to the boredom/etc riggie routines

If he says IT or software development I'm gonna die laughing.

Riggies do the EYES test. I do the database analysis test. Tell you what, you tell me - how do you prove that too many pocket pairs are not being dealt? All I can say is that it has never shown up in any databse that I have looked at, that my players (hundreds over the years) have looked at, or for anyone who does this type of research all the time ( I linked a bunch that riggies ignored). So, to date no verifiable significant database has shown this rig. If that does not prove it does not exist - what does? You tell me . Seriously, do you think doing a statistical breakdown of pre-flop dealt hands is that hard that requires omnipotent powers to research?

Feel free to report whatever you like to the FBI as that other riggie if it makes you feel better. Perhaps you think how he emotionally handles his stuff is the correct way - if not, go ahead and give him some advice based on your experience, that could be fun to read!

By the way, I obviously see the trolling bit you are trying to do here. As with all things, its been done before (in better ways), but you are putting more effort in so all the above is to play along to see where you go with it, because frankly its an area that Boredom riggie needs a ton of help with, since unlike you - he actually has some of these riggie beliefs at his core, so let's see what we can do in that regard to help him! Don't worry, I know you will not answer any of my direct questions above in a direct manner. That is one quality you genuinely share with riggies, and frankly you don't have the trolling chops to answer stuff directly but still get the job done .

All the best.