I firmly believe online poker rooms ARE NOT rigged. There have been some cases of outright cheating, but those cases had nothing to do with the randomness of the cards.

Send me your PT stats. I don’t believe your results.

Your accusation proves my point. Because others have taken samples from millions of hands and the one thing everyone seems to agree upon is that starting hands hold up as statistically expected. Now, others might tell tales of action flops and such but the cold hard truth is that starting hands hold up as expected. So your claim is a fabrication or you are talking about a sample size too small to be statistically relevant.

So offer up your PT stats or we have to conclude your statement isn’t accurate.

Bill

Nice one Joe!
And by the way Bill, the debate IS endless.
But facts are facts.

Fact is that poker sites (like so many other things in life) are made for profit. Not for people having fun, not for great poker players to make money with their skills, or wannabepro’s or rookies to get broke on. They only make it to get as many people hooked to the feeling of winning so when they loose they will come back for more…losses… And how to do that best? Keeping things really random and honest how it should, or making the game more intens, so more action will come from any direction of the tables? Seriously, the amount of straights, flushes, full houses etc IS really much higher then in real life games. And it IS NO coincidence.
It is also no coincidence why broadcasted poker only shows those exciting hands, but almost never the more boring parts. While that is an imported part of the game, patience and aggression. Sure big laydowns and lucky draws too, but that doesn’t happen too frequent.
I even know some guys who know a few gaps in the system and exploiting them.

Fact also is that there are no clear laws or independent companies or services who can keep things clean. So if some (probably all) of theses sites are in fact rigged somehow, we will never know for sure!! AND no-one can prove it! And the funniest part (which comes in handy for the online pokersites) no-once can prove the opposite! As I said, the debate is endless…

Casino’s (not online) are not rigged and will do anything to keep cheaters out. They make enough money with fees and rake, and drinks, slots, roulette, etc etc. But for the online casino’s it is my believe that it is not enough profit. Especially for the small ones. The biggest ones have a reputation to keep up and allready making enough money so they want to keep things just as good as possible.

Oh, one last thing…
[quote]
See, the problem is that nobody of any real significance or trust has asked. You claim that requests for 10 million hands have been denied but who was asking? What was in it for the poker room to spend a man-month of effort to deliver scrubbed (removing personal information) data? Would the requester be able to get national/world headlines with his findings?
[/quote]
The CAN spend millions of $$ for advertising campaigns but they CAN NOT deliver prove that their software is 100% legit and save??? Putting for once and forever an end at the accusations and discussions whether or not theirs something funny going on… What’s that about??? Can you explain that to me please???

Then their are those cheaters…Collusion for one, but also guys who have databases recording every player habbits, strengths en weaknesses. Is it cheating? I don’t believe it says so in the policy of the sites, but to me it is.

Actually, I can go on for a while, unfortunately. But for me it is clear. I still play online though, but only because it’s the only place I can play whenever I want since their are not many games in my area. I’ve made some strict rules for myself for playing online though so I won’t loose too much money. And you know, It’s still nice seeing that your AA stays alive about 50% of the time, online that is…

Koen