Yep, the casino always wins, but do you think this is good enough to survive and keep the client base? I do not think so, they want it ALL and they want it FAST. They do not want you to withdraw money and go to another side; they do not want you to withdraw money and spend it in any way, withdrawing money is absolutely bad for the business. So once you deposit, your money is pretty much gone, kiss it goodbye before you do so.
Yes, swings, variance - part of the game; not to the extent many posters here wants us to believe. You do not lose like 10 big pots in a row EVERY TIME you are far from a deposit. There is no variance here. It happens every time after you are far from a deposit. It happens for a reason. It happens due to manipulation, and the manipulated one is you.
They do not have to rig the random generator, the random generator works as it is supposed to - chooses random numbers. The software is rigged and there is no way to check what kind of crap they are running at their servers at every particular moment. The software can tell the random generator: Choose a random pair of cards, just not from the range of all pairs, but only from a certain subset of the set of all pairs. Same goes for the development after the initial cards are dealt. Not unless their entire business is audited by a team including skillful programmers at random times. There are so many ways to rig software; these differ in details, but the idea is the same - profiling. You are aware that every business does some kind of profiling - in poker that would be your depositing habits. An easy function takes this data into account and decides when to throw you a bone (immediately after a deposit - as a reward for making the deposit) and when to skin you completely (some time after a deposit or after some number of hands, probably randomly chosen within a range specified by the software).
The rest is a simple network theory. A site is a network, with nodes (players) and money traffic (flow). In a non-rigged state this network will function in some random manner. Some nodes will collect more of the flow (winning players; these might withdraw money from time to time), others will be depleted and deposit more and more (losing players). In a rigged network, all the depositing players are losers in the long run, or SOURCES, in network terminology. What are the SINKS then, in network terminology; what are the accounts that drain all the cash? Well, these are accounts associated with the site, site employees, fictitious accounts, props/shills, bots; there are many ways to create these "collecting" accounts, with the feel that we are seeing a normally functioning site. So, in short, the depositing players are the sources, the winners (or sinks) are the site accounts. You, as a depositing player, you have a zero chance to be a long term winner. Your graph will be just like mine and like any other losing account: Deposit, slightly up (the "throw bone" mode); then down to zero ("doomswitch on" mode, "skin you up" mode, whatever). Simple Pavlov's dog theory in action. Come again for some more beating; you liked the feeling of going up initially, did not you?
I mean this can be seen in any player pattern, any player that I know of. If you are winning player, feel free to come to my place and demonstrate it; you will be playing on my account though. I am yet to see long term winning happening. I am an awfully stubborn depositor, probably lost a thousand+ of those at 888 and PP and PS and FT; the pattern is the same everywhere; they picked on that somewhere around 2006 and online poker has never been different since... My reasons for depositing is - well, I can afford it, I consider it entertainment, albeit very expensive for the value I am getting, which is basically beating the sht out of me every time I deposit. I have extensive statistics, mathematics, and computer science background; read the books, played over 30 years, and am successful live cash player; like 9/10 winning sessions live, including Vegas, and many major rooms all over the globe. If I cannot beat online, what are your chances?
Online poker sites has been abusing my intelligence for over 10 years already. Are they kidding us? I mean, here is what is happening; I am sure, you have seen it and felt it yourself (if you are as stubborn depositor as I am): The pattern I am talking about is: I will round the numbers here to make it easier to follow: Deposit $1000 after some absence, play a day or two, go up a thousand or two, then steeply down to $0, no matter how you play, how good your cards are etc. The pattern occurs with striking regularity, I mean REALLY striking, 100%, to be more precise, no variation thrown here and there to make it less obvious. What is the probability of this pattern repeating 1000 times? What is the probability of losing 10 coin flips in a row on showdown to get to $0? It is 1/1024; let us round it to 1/1000. Because that is what is happening in order to get me broke after the initial short good streak. Now what is the probability of this happening 1000 times over the ten years I played online? The probability is (1/1000) to power 1000. Kind of small, right? It is like 0.00...01, where the number of zeros is 2999. This is the probability of impossibility, and so is a number much bigger than that, like 0.00...01 with just 60 zeros, say; which corresponds to "only" 20 losing sessions in a row. Then, what is the probability of the same thing happening to all other non-site accounts? To use the term I just introduced, it would be like "probability of impossibility" to the power of 100,000. You can do the math, and count zeros until dizzy. Anyway, you will probably say something about variance at this point, and hope someone believes you; or you will say that variance kills my bankroll; I have heard it all. How would variance kill my bankroll, if I deposit continuously, no interruption; it is not like I am playing with $1000 and quit; it is the same as having a $1,000,000, and play with it. Or something you are about to say - like why would a publicly traded company do that? Well, there are many explanations why - like why not? Big industries, banks, financial services have become rogue for much less than the hundreds of millions online poker makes... The list is quite long. Why would they let their marks withdraw some money and go elsewhere, for example? They just want it all. And there are easily programmable ways to do so; I am sure, their highly qualified programmers can do it and do it. I know pretty well how it can be done - worked in areas such as optimization and network flow - just introduce a function based on the player's profile and history, and distribute the cards accordingly, drain the excess cash in site's accounts (props, bots, whatever works, I cannot be very precise here - there are many ways to rig the software against all marks' accounts). I am not saying RNG is rigged - there is no need to rig it, so please save the explanation that the RNG is checked. I unconditionally believe it:-) The SOFTWARE is never checked; not in the way it should be, namely open to public scrutiny at ANY time, exactly the copy they run at the moment. The question is what in that software is - how the RNG is used by the software. The RNG can pick cards out of 52, but it can also pick randomly from a smaller selection, if programmed to do so; same with combinations of cards. The result as one can easily predict is: There are no winning recreational players. The only winning players are the ones who work for the site - real players, like prop players (or fictitious accounts); they get the enhanced cards all the time (as opposed to the marks who get good cards and can win at showdown only after a fresh deposit), so the money gets drained by the rake and also into the accounts that belong to the site. I see this all the time - some accounts just do not lose, no matter what cards they are playing, at the showdown, they have the goods. Some accounts just do not have the ups and downs according to the pattern I described; they just have the ups, every day. Do not tell me these accounts are just lucky players. For example, at PS, I rarely (I mean only after a fresh deposit) win a pot against accounts like TraderYao, Gay_On_Tse, abtklo420, vladfromUA, KRCNO, em949, LuckyTwin10, NinoPino, MetballsPls, I_Mr_U_Bean, book1225, Superpokemon, Inexorable, kisgali, 0BadbeatsPlz, LOLZOROFLMAO, j240585, falco_lucky7, puska_zg, Sh0rtGamma, MrM!zz1, KIsuKe_7, Grapedrink07, Mr.Andersen5, and others. My hands history shows a dismal bias toward these players, they are winning every coin flip, sitting there with many thousands of $ on a 200 or 500 buy-in table, every day. I usually play PLO, at the stated limits. Every all in goes their direction. The ending of sessions some time after a deposit or a series of deposits is absolutely the same every time I play; same group of "paid killers" ends up with the money every time. You want me to believe that the site has nothing to do with the situation, pure luck and variance? I do not consider myself to be an idiot; well, perhaps I am - for playing online for so many years, definitely; but not otherwise. I know math and stat and know when I am cheated. I might be off on small details here and there, there are many way to rig the software, keep some randomness to make it less obvious, but the idea is clear. Their way of operation is visible in my own losing pattern, but it is absolutely the same with the players I know. There is no ounce of doubt in my mind that I am cheated, 100%. Very simple: My aces hold, my flushes come, my sets hold nicely - only after a deposit. Several hours and a couple of hundreds hands later everything gets switched - aces and sets never hold, flushes and straights rarely happen, and if they do it is on a small pot. If all the money goes in the pot, their boys, those on the above list and more, they collect pot after a pot; always getting the goods on the flop or later; painful, boring and predictable. I have to really dig deep to find a pot played against one of their boys, where they went all in with a flush draw and did not get it, for example. This is not entertainment, not a fair game, they are providing destruction and nightmarish experience. Losing is never pleasant, no matter how much money people have; unless one is some kind of twisted masochistic type, I guess.
So my advice is: there is a countless number of posts focusing on things like RNG, on how outrageous is to assume that a site is rigged given the fact that they collect rake, on variance, etc. The defenders of non-rigged have their well-oiled machinery, their own set of arguments that they will generously throw at any attempt to expose rigging. My advice to those who are looking into nailing one of those online robbers: Look at your hand history, but in the light of your deposits; add the times of your deposit to your graph and you will be amazed by the correlation.
