This... is not the word I'd use.

You are officially insane. Just trust me. Seek help. You'll thank me someday.

From Prof. Nelson Rose @ www.GAMBLINGANDTHELAW.com [has a good article on this]

So what you're saying is it's rigged?

lol @ PokerStars using a system time 32 bit value to seed their RNG. of course this is not what they do.

There are many people here playing in excess of a million hands / year. not to mention PTR gathering hands almost as fast as they're dealt. in all that data do you think no-one ever noticed there's only 200K possible deals instead of the real amount?

I'll do it now. Thank you for your concern for my mental health and welfare. But I do not understand your reason for calling me insane. I mean, maybe you have to approach some "conspiracies" with a certain point of view to get what they are about and understand the importance of the details, but when someone states a verifyable fact, what is insane about education? The seed needs to be changed in order to maintain the gaming commission (of where ever they are from) approval that the site uses an rng that is randomized enough to not catch on to it. In order for a seed to be changed, if it is based on a system time, then the seed needs to point to a new target, ie; the new sytem time. In order for all the hands to be based on the new seed, then they must be dealt AFTER the seed is found. If the seed is changed during the progress of any hand, the remaining cards to be dealt have to be based on the previous seed. So they stop the hands, with a message, reset the seed based on the new system time, and deal the cards based on the new one.

I just don't understand your calling me insane over stating a fact, especially when I backed it up with a full explination of what I was talking about. Why do you think I would offend someone? Or do you think the whole concept is irrelevent to the case, because it is based on what Ashcroft said and not what the law states? Because I did think of that. And that is why I said that I hope they don't convict based on it. I do hope they base it on the law that is written and the fact that poker is a game of skill.

I took action, joined as a paying member and facebook "liked" poker related comments on the FB Obama townhall.

The biggest problem with his idea, I believe, is the math. There's no reason as a programmer to shuffle the whole deck. Randomness can be achieved just fine by leaving 52 cards in a pool and then randomly select one whenever you need a card.

I applaud you for seeking help.

I am not sure how the poker sites generate random numbers for dealing cards. But I do know computers work VERY fast. So, there would be no need to "stop the hands" in order to generate a new seed.

And (I am hesitant to just focus on the facts of the situation further, since I still think professional help may be your best bet long term), the sites usually have scheduled downtime every week or two. If your hypothesis was correct that sites needed to pause every week or two to generate a new seed, this would be the time they did it.

Yes its rigged, in a sense. I mean its not like anyone believes that the deal is always completely random, as it is dealt by a computer. Its the old War Games principle. A computer cannot choose random outcomes, because it is intrinsically following a set of commands. Maybe and most probably, all the sites are using 64-bit seeds and not 32-bit. But I was just using that as an example to explain the concept. But they all used to when the servers were 32-bit. The level at which the seed is generated is irrelevant to the fact that computers CANNOT make "random" decisions, no matter how they are programmed. And the possibilities are limited based on how fast a deal can be generated, the bit level of the seed generator, and how many possibilities there are to the variable the seed is based on. What I am NOT saying is that is rigged against one player or another, but I AM saying, the deals themselves are predetermined. And yes, its been noticed before. And in answer to the PTR gathering hands, they change the rng seed often enough that only the data created within one change of the rng is valid. Each time the rng changes seeds, the data is a whole new set of hands and mixing it with the data from the old seed invalidates the data already collected, making it further look random to the player collecting the hands. I do not claim to be a mathematician or a computer genius. I read up on it, understood the concept, verified the math (based on other's research,) and reported it here.

yes, very LOL. Because RNGs with > 2^32 period are unheard of.

Wrong again ...

Please to be explaining how a quantum based HW RNG is less random than a human (or machine) shuffling a deck of cards in a casino. Or perhaps you mean to have the philosophical argument that all of life is rigged (predetermined).

Yes, I am pretty sure that it is [OBV] rigged... good point feller!

CAN maybe, but that is not how the rng works and an rng is what the sites all say they use. ASF Software, Inc. posted their shuffling algorithm years ago to try to prove it was fair and in doing so exposed some flaws that were since changed, but all the current rng's are based on their software. Picking each hand from a pool of 52 as the deal is occuring, no matter how fast a computer is, cannot do that in a comfortable amount of time for a player to actually play, with all the hands that are going on at once. 2,000 hands at 12,000 players playing at the same time with the skin software integration, chats and stats, reporting and recording, sound and visual commands and more, for each hand, is WAY to much for any server to do within comfortable playing and response times.

I work for a company that makes servers for video (mpeg) playback. We use servers that are somewhat modern and very powerful running on a scaled down version of Linux, and even that can get laggy based on higher bitrates and such. And the video card does much of the work. Its not because of buggy software (everytime,) but just because the hardware can't do it. Same here with online poker. Picking the next hand in a predetermined set is a lot easier on the server than randomly choosing the next card or 3 for every table simultaniously.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/quadjacksmonday

TheEngineer live on Ustream.

+1

sweet thanks

The below link discusses the firms/lawyers being discussed for representing the sites.

I am in no position to judge the quality of the listed people/firms but am hoping some of lurking lawyers or anyone else who is familiar with the legal 'scene' can give their two-cents about these guys.


http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawd...dictments.html





mods can remove the typosin title...........if you want

thx.

Direct link:

http://www.gamblingandthelaw.com/blo...ohibition.html

this guy seems to be alright

First off, I was talking about the prng, not an hardware rng. Secondly, your article on wiki proves that both hardware and software based rngs are or "may be" deterministic. Plus, the rng does not get a new seed for each hand, but for a session of hands until a new seed is introduced to the rng. So the whole session is still predetermined based on the seed for that session, which is ussually a week or 2 weeks, based on the site's policies. Anyway, way late and going to bed, plus I can't believe I opened my big mouth and started another debate that has NOTHING to do with the subject at hand. Maybe I should seek help... to keep my mouth shut whenever off-topic things come to mind.

"Elie was arrested on Friday in Las Vegas, married a former Playboy Playmate on Saturday, and is scheduled to appear in a federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday."

somehow this cracked me up - hedging his bets?

Try to focus your therapy on the RNG stuff ... that's the real issue here. Off-topic stuff is cool (within reason).

Nice job TE!

Thanks!