Comments on: Online Poker Isn’t Rigged . . . Again!

By: Cj

Cj — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:20:26 +0000

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.

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:19:48 +0000

Who is poker rigged for? No one. Its even spread. I’ve got a slightly above 50 percent ace ace all in preflop over 2 years. Nothing is more even spread than that. Go check an established pros wins and losses. Notice how most of them record better rois at higher levels. Why? Seems like the exact opposite should happen. When you have to play the cards you can only hope to break even. The less folding there is the less of a chance you have to win. those higher quality opponents at higher levels aren’t chasing one outers as often. I challenge anyone to go find a consistent winner down at the lowest of levels. I looked around at all the stats. Everyone is losing. I mean everyone. Haven’t found a winner yet. All in the negative. Who is winning? Who is capitalizing on all these losses? I’ve got a slight win percentage at five dollar games, better at 10, better still at 20 but lose my ass on the dollar games? they always say the players who craft their skills on the net are uber aggressive. I think they understand. The ones that can get the most folds take the most cash. Simple as that.

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:04:48 +0000

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.

By: Bill Rini

Bill Rini — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:24:13 +0000

Bob,

Nothing really to respond to. His examples are typical rigtard-speak. All talk and no proof. Getting sucked out on 60% of the time with a flopped boat? Come on, no room would be stupid enough to rig the game like that.

When you flop a boat and lose to runner runner boat 60 percent of the time or you get dealt qq 108 times and 100 of those times someone else at the table has aa or kk something is definitely wrong.

Anybody can claim any wild results but where are the hand histories that prove this? Oh . . . they don’t exist. And that’s the problem with 90% of the rigtard posts everywhere on the internet. They make some outrageous claim like the one above but when you say “Great, show me the hand histories,” they either disappear or tell you they don’t have them but you should just trust their memory.

You’re asking me to respond to something that hasn’t happened.

As for his assertion about fish needing to win . . . that’s how the business works. The attrition rate in the industry is crazy. Most rooms lose 50% of first time depositors within the first 30 days and the slope stays pretty steep after that.

So if some room was rigging the game to keep the fish in then they would be experiencing insane growth because the attrition numbers would be flatter thus their Poker Scout stats would show little player attrition while they kept adding new players. Sorry, no room fits that profile.

Bill

By: Bob Valks

Bob Valks — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:50:21 +0000

Hi Bill,

Please respond to the arguments of Jim Smith..

Bob

By: Darryl

Darryl — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:29:03 +0000

The question is asked, “who is OL poker rigged in favour for ?” and “how do sites rig OL poker for some and not others?”. well that’s pretty basic. OL poker is rigged for the site and for no-one in particular (on the software side of things), but the fish do benifit from this in the long run. “Action pots” do this. by creating action pots ie. top pair Vs flush draws post-flop, bigger pots are played (benifiting the site in rake) and making the game statistically more “luck”, which definitly benefits fish. In a game where no-one hits the flop, generally a top player has the advantage and will slowly win a game.
Reason for sites to do this – Well….. If a site could double the rake on every table increasing profits %100……mmmmmmm, well lets think about that.

By: anon

anon — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:40:01 +0000

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

By: anon

anon — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:21:12 +0000

There absolutely are sites that are rigged, and running bots, etc. Sunshine-Poker was one (I think I’m remembering the name correctly, it might have been Sunrise-Poker), for example, with almost no through traffic, but that always had some full tables that played like the biggest fish imaginable, and then if you had the poor judgment to deposit funds and play they suddenly turned into the biggest rocks on earth, and played as if they could see your cards.

That is a documented one, if you go back through RGP threads.

There absolutely have been rigged online sites. But it’s not a question of whether there’s one type of rigging or another, but of what one would expect reality to dictate. Reality tends to argue for the existence of some form of “rigging.” Belief, of course, is a function of desire, however, for most people

By: anon

anon — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:14:02 +0000

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.

By: Tet

Tet — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 12:35:17 +0000

Online poker is definitely rigged. The customer base is not infinite and many site will even give away money to gain players. It is a must for any site to keep the money spread around and the action constant. If not, the good players will eventually win all and the rakes and business will die. Any player who have played both live and online know it is rigged. I don’t get how you can HONESTLY say you believe it is not. They have lied over and over saying how its impossible for someone to see your hole cards and “superuser accounts” don’t exist. Obviously they do. What else are they lying about? In an industry where money is king and deceit, bluffing and trickery are the order of the day, the possibility that online poker is completely fair and random are worst than the odds of winning a lottery. How can you so strongly defend that position? Unless….