I hope this post will put some thought on the alleged criminality and collusion going on at PokerStars and other online poker sites, unproven as it will be I still hope you keep an open mind and make your own assumptions. They are opinions, they are my thoughts and you do not have to accept them. I am exercising my 1st Amendment right and this is what I have to say.
I quit online poker several months ago and was a high stakes ring game player at all the sites, I played daily and have seen success but there was always a feeling that something was not right. I questioned the RNG that Stars was using, I questioned the collusion aspect and I questioned the fact that maybe Stars might just have it rigged to get their 3% off the top.
The one thing that I kept seeing was that when I was heads up in a ring game with an opponent who had more money than I did and I clearly had the best of it the river card would magically give my opponent the win. It would award the win to him, I would be busto and hence go re-buy. This happened all the time in too many situations where I should have won and it just got to be too much. I poured over the data and hand calculations and just felt although still within the realm of possibilities that something just didn't feel right. The great author Malcolm Gladwell calls this feeling intuition and in his book "blink" talks about how those feelings are usually right.
It got me thinking.....
So I quit and I devoted myself over the last few months to investigating this topic of collusion, cheating, RNG's, the industry of gaming etc. Here are just my thoughts on this topic and they are open for discussion and I have so much more to show you all in more posts as to the proof of criminality in poker.
First of all PokerStars uses a company called Cigital, which provides security for the online gaming industry, one of their clients is the good people at World of Warcraft. In case you didn't know WOW has 8,000,000 members all paying $14 a month, so this is big business. There is cheating there as well. PokerStars allowed Cigital to test the randomness of their RNG but does not publish the results only saying it's above board and fair using some US born testing method. The head honcho at Cigital is Dr. Gary McGraw a very smart cyber security expert who is the Chief Technology Officer there who oversaw the RNG testing, I want you all to watch an interview from this man telling you that collusion in online poker happens and is unavoidable and I will let you come up with your own ideas about the rest of the interview. The point is he is smarter than you, knows more and is directly involved in the gaming industry. I think he would know. Focus on minute 2:20 of the interview.
The link is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkeWG...eature=related
Other things I think I know at this point which I can't prove ofcourse are the following (once again just a thought, don;t shoot me):
1. PokerStars, FullTilt and others need the 3% rake; to achieve that people must continually be buying in not cashing out. This is why you see strict cash out maximums. I truly believe they target players who have shown a willingness to re buy and bust those players, the players who get all in with not alot vs the opponent who has 4 times the money more often than not loses. Remember if the amount of money coming in to PokerStars is less than the money getting cashed out the model doesn't work. I would imagine Stars pays out 5% of what they take in and I'm certain they have a formula for keeping it at that number.
2. Would you play online blackjack if they said it was just as random as playing at the casino? The answer is hell no! But think about it, that's what your doing now. 99% of people regard online blackjack as some crooked rigged game that they would never play but that's what your already doing.
3. You cannot achieve true randomness in online poker. You have to program a computer to shuffle the cards and although you can get very very close to random you can't achieve it. It is not possible.
4. PokerStars and FullTilt are not subject to US laws, they do not operate their servers on US soil, they do not publish their P & L reports and you will have a very hard time finding out much about them. PokerStars probably makes as much as some Fortune 50 companies do, I mean WOW makes 1.3 billion yearly, don't you think Stars makes that much? Knowing that don't you think a company should disclose who the board of directors are? Where they are? How much they take in? Nope.....you'll never know because what they are doing is already illegal. My point is if they are already commiting a crime why wouldn't they go a little further? I mean christ the President lies, Enron goes under, we attack a country without weapons but ole PokerStars is all legit? Greed is there and present and people and companies and goverments lie all the time, they do too.
5. I think they produced without the person knowing online superstars like Sahamies and Tom Dwan. I think the sites need spokesman like that to sell the dream to all the fish out there. I mean Tom Dwan went from playing small SNG's to the highest stakes in a years time. I think they said hey this kid is young and would be a great poker ambassador to sell the dream to all the other 21 year olds. It would not be hard to push some pots Tom's way and allow him to become who he is today. Now that being said I think he is a great player and did get 2nd in a WSOP event, I think he is great. But if I had millions of dollars in the bank I would certainly play without fear in the tourneys and the genesis of all that began when FullTilt allowed him to become who he is. I maintain that Tom would have no knowledge of this.
6. How much do you think FullTilt Pro's get from FullTilt? They get something and I would imagine it's hefty, enough to have no fear and buy into every tournament, play any ring game they want and push everyone around. You think that's fair? I know people are going to have more money than the next guy but if these are the best players in the world and these are the people we see on tv marketing this machine than you should know that they are staked. They are selling you an idea of wealth through great tight/aggressive poker pay and yet they are staked. I mean let's talk about unfair advantages and I think that's one of them. If a baseball player get's accused of taking steroids than he's crucified because it creates an unfair advantage, I feel that when Tom Dwan gets a rebate check from FullTilt for $1,000,000 it creates an unfair advantage. Don't you?
7. How do Pro's make these incredible side bets like the one against Tom Dwan to win a bracelet at this years WSOP? Most people may not know but alot of pro's put up million dollar wagers of their own money that Tom would not win a bracelet. It makes me wonder how Daniel Negreaneau can make that million dollar side bet when his results over the last 2 years playing poker have been horrible. No tourney wins, hardly any tourney cashes and boundless blogs about how bad he's running. Yet he threw his money in. My point is that because he's in commercials for Stars, on tv, wrote a book and gets a check from Stars that that is what fuels his play. He's really just a rich poor player who can buy into anything. Once again the people that make these huge side bets got the money not from their stellar poker play but from endorsements and that is misleading to the people who are not in the know.
8. The style of play on shows like Poker After Dark, the PokersStars Big Game, GSN's High Stakes Poker is unlike anything you'll ever read in a poker book. I read Phil Hellmuth's Play Poker Like The Pro's and in it he talks about premium hands, his Top 10 hands. Pre flop play, post flop play and generally creating a tight/aggressive style. All other poker books mirror this in some way but check out an episode of one of those shows and you'll see a different game. Now I know they aren't goint to play like Phil say's but calling with any two cards? Raising with nothing, getting called and getting busted on tv is just gambling. My point is that you have 8 rich staked poker players endorsing the poker sites and all you see is gambling in essence. It's a fabrication. It's like watching arena football, amusing but not the real thing.
In closing I feel that the industry of online poker and where we are at with it today and what it sells to the young kids is an outright scam. I think young people should know that the landscape of poker is alot like Hollywood, you see Tom Cruise on tv but you just can't drive out to LA and make a movie no matter how big your dreams are. You might but most fail and lose thousands. The online poker world is comprised of criminal offshore companies making billions of dollars yearly sellling something illegal in the US. They do not report anything and you know nothing about them. They have created an almost cult like following by staking and paying young good looking men and woman to sell the dream. They make you think you can be Tom Dwan when in reality Tom Dwan was created and you'll only be depositing, never cashing out.
I know people will have rebuttals about this post and say I'm just mad but I am mad. I'm mad that I tried the best I could, deposited all I could, always got my money in right but lost. I cannot sit here and say I'm a horrible losing player because I don't think I am. I think people need to really look at the online game and ask themselves is it possible this is not entirely random? Is it possible there is collusion at my table? Is it possible I'm getting cheated by the house? The answer is you don't know. But in a casino the answer is no, the cards are random, the people are real and the house cannot screw you.
It's the only way to play poker.
I think Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan are great poker players but I think they recieve so much money from the sites that it allows them to play in manner that the average joe can't. I think side bets are a product of endoresments and staking and not the result of saving money from poker wins and that is misleading. There is a fear factor in cards, the entire game's foundation is based on bluffing and when your heads up with a guy who get's a million from Stars and is on tv he really isn't thinking about the money. My point is makes a difference, it's an unfair advantage and these unfair players sensationalize the game on TV and sell this bull**** to the masses only to line the pockets of the online poker sites.
It's a great business model.
