Online Poker Isn’t Rigged . . . Again!

Hiya, Bill!

This an example where I think Ed is serving the greater good, whether or not everything he says can be supported. I’ve thought about posting on this myself, but whether I do or not, I think Stars is in clear error here. One reason is technical and the other is philosophical.

Reason 1: There are clear guidelines for how triple draw is supposed to be dealt. I disremember if that game is in Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky’s “The Rules of Poker” (that’ll be 50 cents, guys!) but I’m absolutely sure the printed rules are out there somewhere. So the “because we can” argument as stated by Stars is meritless.

Second, Stars needs to -not- do things that give any sort of mathematical credence to the “online poker is rigged” crowd. Mathematically, the effect of the change made will involve a very slight juicing of the results and will result in something like one extra player being in the pot maybe every thousandth hand in triple draw, and maybe a little more frequently in badugi. It therefore increases rake by some tiny, all-but-imperceptible amount. When it’s measured statistically, it’s probably down in the four- or five-decimal-point range regarding its effect on play. It’s negligible in triple draw because there are almost never enough players in a hand to bring a reshuffle into play.

But even if it’s an unnoticeable juicing, it’s still a juicing that exists in the mathematical sense, and can therefore be used as a mathematical “proof” that the game is rigged to increase rake or whatever. It’s the wrong tool to hand to the wrong crowd.

I have no clue which big-name pro came up with the idea, but famous players can still have bad ideas and this one should have been deep-sixed. Was the unknown player on any of the rules committees that have sprung up to promote rules standardization, like Jesse Jones’ WPA? I’d guess not. Hachem’s been on that board, IIRC, so he’s probably not the pro that floated this one.

I’ll skip the rest of the tinfoil hat portion of the discussion.

Stars’ handling of dead blinds is wrong, too. That’s a much greater issue in terms of play because it can affect strategy at the table, but it’s not a “Rigged!” issue that can be used against the site and against online poker in general. That’s the key difference.

I think it would be trivially easy. You just 1) figure out which players you want to shift money from and which you want to shift money to, and 2) Shade things a small amount that will avoid detection.

For 1) there are many ways to figure out who you want to get the money. Simplest might be to rank order a given table based on who has the highest ratio of money in their account per big blind at the table. You maximize rake if no one ever goes busto

For 2) Everytime one of the richest players gets dealt AA-QQ, you simply redeal everyone else at the table to not get dealt AA-99/AK/AQ. Or verytime the poorest players see a flop with 2 suited cards you specify the first flop card must be one of their suit. Fine tune things are there are a thousand things like that to try.

You don’t need to worry about them misplaying hands, or statistical metrics catching things. Just given them a small, difficult to detect edge and let the law of large numbers work its magic.

of course poker is rigged

sites have been caught

people always cheat for more profit

look at the stock market and bushs elections

to say it isnt rigged, must take a lot of cash from poker companies. i hope u get paid well bilL!

Terry – Side note: I think it really detracts from taking your argument seriously when you somehow try to connect Bush and Absolute / UB. It makes you sound like a paranoid, tin-foil hat wearing, lunatic who when he isn’t going around and posting on internet websites is down at the mall talking to himself.

Much better to keep your argument to the facts being discussed.

quote” it is far, far more complex to rig the game in favor of thousands of poor players.”

Do you know how much money Full Tilt have ???

Full Tilt is obviously rigged. If you havn’t lost big yet im sure you will do soon. Im sorry but there are way to many suckouts. Read the forums. We know when weve been had and the only way is to not play because you can’t beat their system whatever it is !!!

Full tilt makes a joke out of people who want to play real poker

You’re not thinking straight, especially not in light of the UB scandal (perpetrated by the previous owners, who by some accounts — see 2 + 2 boards — remain the current owners, behind the scenes. The past owners, specifically Russ Hamilton, reportedly cheated players out of millions.

The argument should actually be this: THE BEST WAY TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS is ultimately to maximize the rake. The problem a poker room faces is that its customer base can never be large enough (there’s always more money to be made), and that in poker the reality is that the big fish eat the little fish. At each level, eventually, large chunks of the customer base get eaten up by other players, and as these players attempt to ascend the betting structure ranks, they in turn “donate” to the bigger fish in the ascending levels. The money keeps moving up the food chain, and at the lower ranks — where the greatest number of players are — the fish keep getting eaten up and eventually busted (or at least beaten until they don’t want to buy in again).

The most profitable strategy — not taking ethics or fairness into account — would be, then, to assist the weaker players in some way, or if you prefer to assist the LOSING players in some way, so that the maximum number of players are in action at any given moment, and so that the rake is maximized at all times.

This is simply the math of it. The customer base is not unlimited, as sites are finding out, and they have to compete for customers. This is, for example, WHY SITES ADVERTISE (duh). The size of the rake does not vary in any given ring game according to the amount of chips any given player has; it varies in the cardroom according to the number of players in action. So, again, the most profitable situation would be one where as many players as possible are in action. This is why THE PROFITABLE MOVE (in an unregulated industry) would be to automatically assist losing players so that more players stay in action longer, maximizing the rake.

Kahnawake, as their UB handling has proven (if you don’t already acknowledge that they’re not a legit regulatory agency, since no legitimate regulatory agency would depend for its own income on providing services to the businesses they regulate, so that the regulatory needs the businesses to prosper for its own success), cannot be seriously considered a presence that makes the gaming industry deserve to be considered anything but unregulated.

It is entirely possible to generate completely random deck shuffles, and then distribute cards in an unrandom way (favoring, for example, weaker/losing players over stronger/winning players), so that aggregate data on cards distributed show random card patterns, but where actual distribution isn’t in fact random (or is in reality “rigged”).

The strongest argument for the games being rigged is (1) that rigging them (to help weak players) is the most profitable way to run an online cardroom, (2) programming the software to do it is not difficult, (3) there is no effective regulatory agency in place to prevent such a manipulation of the software program, (4) and that the industry is populated by the types of personalities who would not avoid an ethical breach if there were not accountability in place to prevent it.

As far as “4″ goes, there is a certain type of person who tends to gravitate toward starting an online gaming site. Russell Hamilton isn’t unique in being a person of that type. There was Dutch Boyd, there are many others. There is honor among thieves, on occasion, but it’s the honor of…well…thieves.

The most rational analysis argues FOR the likelihood of games being rigged, not against. It’s EMOTION and DESIRE that make it FEEL like the opposite holds.

Apologies: those last two posts were mine, and were directed to the original article’s author, not comment writers.

Hi Bill,

Please respond to the arguments of Jim Smith..

Bob

I hate it when people come out with the assumption that people will walk away if a site is rigged. Absolute had its issues and seems to be doing fine. Everyone knows the slots are rigged for a specific amount of payout and they seem to do alright. Ever notice that the ones screaming rig always keep playing. I used to be one of them. I’ve got 3 years of aces 30 percent off from accepted preflop all in win percentage. Corporations like mcdonalds can sell poison because people don’t care, they just want their fix. I’m sure the guys that own the companies are aware that they can get away with murder. Why not skew it a little. I certainly would. In fact the sites that have the american market sowed up, thanks to some coincidentally helpful legislation pushing out competitors, can pretty much do whatever they want. Monopoly anyone? That argument that a site wouldn’t risk it is based on the lie that their is any risk involved. There really isn’t. When you’ve got a monopoly on the game and can spin perception any which way a guy could show up with a legitimate hand history and be laughed away. Believe me I’ve tried.

I quit playing online poker myself because it was driving me insane. I kept noticing the same patterns. When I tried new games/tournaments, I usually did very well. Then I would go on these losing streaks that seemed to defy logic. When I first went to the .50-$1 NLHE cash game, I made a hundred a day for about 20 days straight. Then after cashing half of it out, I lost a hundred a day for about 10 days straight losing it all. I even noticed that when my account was almost finished, when I was all-in with the worst of it, sometimes the cards would start to go my way… The interesting thing is that I was playing the same way. It’s just that when the board was 9QQ, instead of being the guy with pocket nines, I was the guy with AQ. Of course, these things happen. But when improbable hands like that happen on ten consecutive days and all in the same direction, something is awry. So I kept my focus on tournaments… Everyone who has played tournaments on Pokerstars knows that a ridiculous number of aces and flush draws hit the flop. It happens way too often that the flop hits multiple players in one way or another. Profit reason? Simple, end the tournament as quickly as possible to obtain more rake. It seemed that I could almost never bluff on Pokerstars because someone always had it. Even when I was playing heads-up cash, which I seemed to beat pretty quickly, which at my stakes meant profitting a hundred or so after half a day of play, I would lose to players who just shoved it all in with ridiculous aggression, and, sure enough, got sucked out on again and again. But it wasn’t the suck-outs, it was the fact that they happened so frequently in such a short period of time. My experience playing in person has been totally different. Suck-outs are not the norm, but happened at the expected percentages. Everyone goes on losing streaks, but how many live players playing 8 hours a day get hit with a cold deck consistently for 10 days. How many internet players? I lost five out of six flushes that I made during one losing streak online. And everyone who I personally know who has played online poker agrees that it’s rigged. Statistics are so easily manipulated it’s ridiculous. Here are my observations:
1) Top pros are quickly bought out by the sites so that they won’t speak out against them
2) Chip leaders are at a huge advantage statistically speaking in tournaments; some people know this and play accordingly; I once played with this guy who once he became chip leader just kept throwing it in with 37 off or whatever he was dealt and just quashed everyone; also, more experienced players stay out of the chip leaders way for the same reasons.
3) Statistics can be maintained in creative ways; if a system is going to go your way when you first play a game, it’s going to go against you later to even things out; if the system works for you when you’re chip leader, it will work against you when you’re not; it the system rewards you for depositing, it will punish you for cashing out.
4) Statistics are manipulated more at the lower stakes. When I have played in higher stakes tournaments, the flops and the action are different. At lower stakes tournaments, there is too much action because the flops are juicier. Why? Hook the fish.
5) The profits clearly make it worth it. Doubling the amount of return players nearly doubles the rake. Creating flops at the cash tables where two players feel compelled to throw all of it in does better than double the rake. Keeping the money going through the site without players taking too much of it home does better than double the rake; in essence, it makes it like a casino game that you can only beat to a certain extend.
6) The statistics should level out in the long run. In live poker they do. On internet poker they do in the skewed way that I and countless others have mentioned. How many live players cringe when they hold KK and are risking their tournament life against AK? How many internet players do?
7) There must be a certain level of manipulation that can be obtained that can not be mathematically proven. For instance, if 10 trillion coins are tossed in a row, what’s the highest percentage of tails that can be observed for nothing to be considered awry? 52%? But what’s 2% to a billion dollar company? I don’t care how much you have. 20 million is 20 million.