If online poker is rigged, why do you continue to play?

i dont think the sites are rigged but i do believe cheating goes on. many collude with other players and tell there hands via ims or on the phone to get an advantage. others will use multiple accounts and play on the same table. this happens alot online so real poker is much more legitimate.

I do not think that the online game is rigged so that any particular person gains advantage. I do think however that it is possible and in many of these onlne casino’s best intrests to make all of the hands on average slightly better than random. I do seem to see an abnormal number of really good hands in online play. I saw pocket aces go up against each other 3 times in the course of an hour once. If an online casino were to give better hands on average it would cause people to put in more money to the average pot, hence more rake money for the casino. The better hands that i think i see however could merely be the result of chance or the fact that more hands are played in a smaller period of time online.

It is rigged. People continue to play because they are addicted and have hopes of getting lucky. The odds are stacked against you at every game in a casino and still people continue to lose their shirts. Why? Because they’re addicted. I tend to believe that winning players and players who are so convinced that online poker is not rigged are playing at levels higher than $1/$2. I have played at all the low levels and on up to $10/$20. One thing that I’ve noticed is that all the rigged bullshit doesn’t happen above $1/$2. My theory is that they don’t use the same code in those rooms because more experienced and solid players would see immediately what is happening.

You might argue that the players are worse in the lower limit rooms and therefore the suckouts and bad calls are more frequent. However, the rigged activity I am talking about consists of action flops where both players (or multiple players) have very solid hands before and after the flop. The action flop entices both players to bet big or go all in. Usually the person with the shorter stack goes broke and has to rebuy.

Also, if you withdraw only a portion of your money the remainder of your bankroll seems be lost within a few hands , again enticing you to rebuy.

The problem with on line casinos versus a face to face local poker room game is that there is actually a GAMING COMMISSION that regulated the play. These on line poker room in the carribean have ZERO accountablility. To use a poker term, no one keeps them in “check.” Theoretically, they could do what ever they want to gain an advantage. Not so in a regular face to face poker room. Occasionally, you might have a dealer that has a friend who plays that they are “in cahoots” with, but that is really an isolated incident. I believe that on line poker is not legitimate if you play with MORE than 2 people at a table. 1) because the poker room has an incentive to deal better hands to make more rake. 2) The more players at a table, the more chances they have to collude/chip dump. I just play “heads up” poker. I’m really not even sure that is legit….but i’ll take my chances over that then a full table. LOL

bobostonepony hit the nail on the head. anyone who claims that it is not rigged either doesn’t know much about poker and pot odds, or they are speaking on behalf of the sites. i’ve played real poker and i watch “poker at dark” on tv and the hands i see online are much more wild and have way too many good hands being tossed about. it’s too uncanny. and you ask why would a “legitimate” site risk losing their reputations by rigging games? well, that’s because they can. oviously, whatever regulating committee exists isn’t that stringent or is in on the the action, too. if it’s not government regulated, then there’s a good chance there’s shadiness involved. and do we really think that a gambling site of all sites will resist the temptation to screw over its customers? i know human nature and i know that many people will try to get away with as much as they can. the people who run poker sites aren’t known to be the touchstones of ethical behavior, so yah, i’d put my money on the sites being rigged. i’ve tried at least six sites and i feel the same way for all of them, including play money facebook poker (which is just straight pathetic that they rig play money, but not surprised).

Well I do believe that it is rigged, but I am not completely convinced because I do not know for sure (lack of published empirical evidence). The reason why I continue to play is because it is still profitable, just as not as profitable as it would be if they didn’t manipulate software components of the RNG to alter conditional variances to ‘even out the playing field’ so to speak (although this is still just speculation). And yes I am aware of the gaming commisions and the high-school level statistical tests that confirm that IT IS FAIR (right…) because the deviation for specific card frequencies and hands is infinitessimal with an adequate sample size (yet no one questions the validity of the tests themselves or considers the view of the long-term as a set of many adjacent short-terms that can easily be manipulated in and of themselves). Anyway, I paid my way through grad school playing poker, and although I have made respectable money from the game, I believe that I could have made considerably more if it were more legit. Oh and don’t bother calling me an idiot because my IQ is ridiculously high :P