Originally Posted by dacy
Now, my impression is that in all these forums, most of the participants are fairly good players and they make money out of online poker. The average fish who complains about bad beats and bad luck is quickly hushed by the sharks, or shills, or by representatives of the poker sites. In any case, fact of life is: to have winners, there must be many, many losers. Right? The big winners are the poker sites via the rake first; there are also other winners and my conspiracy theory is these other winners help the sites to make much more on top of the rake (shills, red pros etc.?). I mean rake is OK, but they want it all, do not they? Cause if they do not get your money fast enough, you will run away and try elsewhere... So they want to keep you at their site and what would they do? Well, they are going to give you some rake back, they will set up a bunch of meaningless bonuses, or a Bad beat jackpot; they are quite inventive when it comes to make a site attractive. But nothing compare with the scientific approach to the deep psychology of the gambler.
Here is my story: I have deposited over $400K over 5 years of playing at Party, Stars and Full Tilt. I play almost every day, sit and goes, NLH and PLO cash, and tournaments. I never withdrew any money (except once, 10K from Party, but I deposited back and lost $28K within a week of my withdrawal). I have played various levels, rarely too high; cash, usually $50-100 buy-in, same with tourneys; probably my sng average is $30-40 buy-in. Now, what does it take to lose $400K at that kind of play level? Bad luck? If so, I should be in the history books. By the way, I have read poker books, I have a university degree in mathematics and computer science, and long gambling experience dating back about 20 years; I only played poker for about 7 years. I have been in Vegas six times for 4-5 days each time; played there live and returned home a winner every time; played $1-2 NLH 4-5 hours a day and was up between $700 and $2000 for each trip. This is just to try to persuade the reader that I am not that a desperate fish as my online results show. But, at the virtual tables I am a big and very consistent loser. I clearly gamble, because it is interesting, and because I am stuck...
The reason I started this post is to just ask if you have had a similar to my observations. I think (and this is my main conspiracy theory) that all of the above mentioned sites use some kind of strategy that strip off pretty much every player off his money while keeping the player coming back and depositing again. The strategy seems to be a simple one, based on Pavlov' stimulation theory: Here are two scenarios:
1) A (bad?) player, A, deposits $1000, goes immediately on a losing streak and loses it all.
2) Another player, B, deposits $1000, starts with an upswing rush, makes say, $1500, and then ends up like in the first scenario losing it all.
Now, think about each player doing this over and over, every time with the same scenario.
Which one is more likely to return and deposit again? I guess, player B is the obvious answer. Player A will probably get really disappointed and he will quit sooner or later. Now, B might quit as well, if he is smart enough, but it is quite likely that he will continue depositing, hoping to stretch the good rush a bit longer and build a better size bankroll.
Now you guessed it perhaps, I am the ultimate player B, and I think the sites are doing it to me somehow. I hope I will not give them the wrong idea, but it is not difficult for them to achieve the state where almost every player is B, rather than some A's and some actually winning players. Here is how it works: You deposit, they give you like 5% higher than average starting hands, or let you win 5% higher than average showdowns (note that they can still use their random generators, just narrow down the range from all possible hands to something smaller, or give more weight to strong hands as opposed to weak ones). You start running well and you are up. Then they turn the switch (based on the size of your deposit, I guess) and you start getting like 10% worse than average starting hands or you start winning 10% less than average showdowns and in no time you are broke and think about the next deposit.
That is what happens to me on a regular basis, striking regularity, maybe 95 out of 100 times: I deposit, run well until I double or even triple my deposit and then boom - quickly down. The good run lasts one or two sessions, and the bad streak is very steep, it usually takes much less time to go down; that is why I think they increase the percentage of below normal for the downsizing. In the rare case where something else happens, is either I play very bad or the cards go in such a way that in spite of the help I still go down directly, so I become player A..., or, I manage to keep my money a little longer than one or two sessions, but the end result is the same.
The careful reader might object: Now, if everyone is a loser where does the money go; money minus rake remains with the players, right? Well, here is the connection with the first conspiracy theory: There are players of type C (shills, pros, who knows what else; bots?) who always stay in the +5% mode and are consistent winners.
OK that is my story; I wonder if anyone else has similar observations.
I suspect this is not the best forum to talk about it and I will probably get flamed, but so be it. The moral values behind any kind of gambling are not that high; there is a competition, money is involved, and people are known to do things much worse than rigging a program for money, so what I am talking here is quite feasible, I guess...
Player B (-$400K so far online and going)
