You can't look into someones thoughts or feelings. You can only look into stats and HH. When people bring stats and HH to the debate they are treated with far more respect even if those stats are questioned.

What do you want people to look into when they bring no evidence except their feelings?

I have discovered that posting in capital letters is regarded as "shouting" in forums. I apologize that I did this, and I will not do so again. (Unless I want to shout!)

I understand that I have different views to many of you. I wish to discuss these in a civil manner and again hope that we can all make a clean start in this regard.

I think most here would be willing to discuss your concerns with you, but your next step is to bring in some real data.

Another Golden Tee regular has tried to reasonably alleviate my fears.

Perhaps you missed this part of my post:

You see, most of us sceptics like to base our conclusions on hard data. Right now, the only hard data we have is our own. If we thought there was a problem revealed by this data, you can be sure we'd be posting about it. So since we are happy with our own data, what else is there for us to look into? No one else ever provides us with data!

Wow, I said data a lot in that paragraph. *Cue TNG picture of Data*

First of all, it's not that I don't support people who say online poker is rigged. The people I don't support are those who:

1) Don't provide any evidence.
2) Have their minds made up and refuse to listen to reason.

Support the insulting and abusive behaviour? No, I wouldn't say that, although I see where you could infer that from my posts. I try to stay clear of the abusive language most of the time, although I might be guilty of slipping now and then. It's not very conducive to a constructive debate, but so often the rigged posters aren't looking for a constructive debate anyway. These are the people that should expect, and perhaps even deserve, some abuse.

And just to be clear, I'm not a moderator of this particular forum.

You spelt Stephen wrong.

I love that the first reply uses "WALLA". LOL.

Spelling is rigged.

Also, it's like a tribute to him. Escape isn't called "Journey;" that would be copyright infringement.

That is absolutely hilarious. It makes me wonder how many of our rigtards are just leveling.

an annoying thing (for me, anyway) is that on non-poker forums, no one knows what leveling is. I kinda take it for granted it's internerd speak, but it's poker internerd speak. most everything else works though.

take frequent screenshots, cause the fun won't last forever!

True, comes from the levels of strategic thinking in poker. What I think, what I think he thinks, what he thinks I think, what he thinks I think he thinks....

sick level, spade.

I'm claiming this



is proof that people are interested in the topic because it's the most active subject in the forum, even though it's just MY most active subject. when someone points that out to me I'll accuse them of being shills.

edit: 5 minutes after delivering the truth, a reg says:

I tried to rephrase your question it to see if he would answer but they never do.

tk - take a second to look over this thread:

Stars Stud---Low limit collusion concern---Data provided

That would be a pretty good example of someone bringing their theory to The Zoo in a professional manner with some supporting evidence. Note how people treat OP there with respect and even start looking for more data to put nails in the coffin.

If you want folks to take you seriously, that would be a good template to follow for starters.

tk - good approach. Mark has a good suggestion above too. I've been around here a few months and I don't think most people here are at all opposed to discussing the possibility of rigged poker sites. What they are opposed to is the silly way most rigged threads start with these premises:

A bunch of surprising bad beats = rigged.
or
I know I'm a better player than this = rigged.
or
Live poker has way fewer suckouts = rigged.
or
I can see patterns that aren't statistically provable = rigged.
or
A bad apple superuser on site X cheated = rigged.

All of those statements have been shown to be false so many times over and over that they have become jokes.

Please don't take this as condescending if you already know it, but one thing that fools many players is that you will often see many more bad beats online than live, but not because anything is rigged. Some of the reasons are you see more hands, there are many more beginning or bad players betting on draws (or on nothing), players take more chances online since they are anonymous, players take more chances at low stakes found online, most players have selective memory about the frequency of bad beats, and on and on. One thing I did early in my education is learn all about poker math and odds and the luck factor. I'm still not a very good player but I know how much luck can happen in online games, and I know what's normal. You just have to get over it and learn how to beat online players.

You also may know that better players will suffer many more bad beats than donks, because the better players aren't calling down with weak hands or longshot draws all the time, they are on the other end of idiots doing it.

Lastly, you had the misfortune of starting this thread the day after the rigged thread of the year was deleted and the poster banned because he got so outragous and delusional, accusing everyone on 2+2 of being shills and poker site employees covering up and trying to silence him, and he finally went too far. We had much fun mocking him. So you got some of that left over.

Best of luck (pun intended).

Last two posts are excellent IMO.

Here, or on the Golden Tee Forums?

.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Nobody's addressed this in this thread but it reveals you basic problem, Sooper. You think you know what you're talking about but you really only have a bunch vague "feelings" and some misunderstood rumors that only remotely resemble the real story.

Here's what you're talking about, since you obviously don't really know.

The following applies to TRIPLE DRAW and only TRIPLE DRAW. It does not apply to Hold'em, Stud, Omaha, Razz or any other game.

In Triple Draw players have three rounds of draws and discards. In any draw game, if the deck runs out of cards then the discards are shuffled and become the new deck. This can't happen in a single draw game because there are plenty of cards in the deck. In Triple Draw, it can occaisionally happen if a lot of players draw multiple rounds.

On Stars, if you are playing Triple Draw the software is set so that if the discards are reshuffled you will never redraw a card you've previously discarded. I believe that if the card you would normally be dealt is one you previously discarded then it is skipped and you are given the next card in the deck (I'm not 100% sure this is the mechanism but I am 100% sure they do not manipulate the RNG in any way).

Again, this only applies to Triple Draw and Stars is totally upfront about this. Their goal is to improve the quality of the game. However, even so, when this came to light it caused a pretty big controversy and a lot of people were not happy about it. There was a sizable thread about this here on 2+2, I believe in this forum if you want to find it.

ZOMG! My first meme!!

I put out you.

[X] math fail
[X] odds fail
[X] shaving before news vid fail
[X] sunglasses on news vid vail
[X] news vid fail
[X] hat fail
[X] t-shirt fail
[X] analysis fail
[X] dentist fail

Edit - the video has been made private now and can't be viewed.

what's the matter, don't they want people to know THE TRUTH??!!

http://www.rollcall.com/news/31788-1.html

This is from the Pokerplayersalliance website.... I'm gonna quote a few....

"While business leaders and politicians debate how much, or how little, we should regulate the business community, the online poker industry and the millions of Americans who play on the Internet have been crying out for regulation and taxation. The absence of government regulation, and in fact the quixotic efforts to ban Internet poker, has left U.S. consumers vulnerable and left billions in potential tax revenue on the virtual poker table."
"As conservative columnist George Will aptly pointed out, laws that attempt to block Internet poker are “Prohibition 2.0,” and, as Mr. Will explains, history has shown that prohibitions do not work. Rather, they exacerbate and even create problems, especially among vulnerable communities, by driving the prohibited activity underground where unscrupulous operators can easily, and without fear of prosecution, take advantage of consumers for their own gain."

Did you hear what the chairman of the PPA said?! "...where unscrupulous operators can easily, and without fear of prosecution, take advantage of consumers for their own gain."
So is a former Senator a rigtard? Are you guys gonna write him emails tellin him he's and a rigtard? just curious.