Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

This is not a post about anything that players do (bots, collusion) but whether or not the site provides a fair game (fair shuffler, RNG, a site’s own bots, etc.). Please keep your replies focused on this.

Now before I begin, let me say that I do not think for 100% that it is rigged. But I do think that there is a reasonable possibility that something is going on and the games are not completely on the level. There is enough uncertainty about these online poker entities that I can’t personally see how a reasonable person would not, at a minimum, acknowledge the possibility.

Let’s take a very careful approach to this question. Look at it how an investigator looks at whether or not a crime has been committed. To commit a crime you need two things.

1 – Motive

2 – Opportunity

<u>MOTIVE</u>

Let’s discuss motive first. The most often cited argument for a lack of motive is:

“The sites make so much money off rake, why would they want to risk that by rigging the games?”

(Ignore the idea that they might get caught for a moment. We’ll discuss that when we get to opportunity.)

I do not agree with this statement. The sites could obviously make even more money by rigging the games. Ignoring whether or not they would get caught for a moment, their motivation to rig a game is there. The more games going on, the more money a site makes in rake. The longer a site can keep each player playing and depositing, the more games they’ll have going on. Therefore, don’t let the fish get cleaned out too fast. Keep them around, allow them to think they’re good players. As for the sharks, they’ll mostly equate their losses to variance, bad beats, etc. As long as they see bad play, they’ll keep coming back regardless of the outcome.


<u>OPPORTUNITY</u>

Look at the second half of the sentence above, “why would they want to risk that by rigging the games?” Assuming a site had made the decision to offer a less than fair game, the next step would logically be to assess their risk of getting caught, the opportunity to commit the crime. If the risk of getting caught is high, then the statement above (“The sites make so much money off rake, why would they want to risk that by rigging the games?”) is 100% true and all online poker should be fair. But if the risk of getting caught is low, which I think it is, then the environment is ripe for a crime (rigging a game) to be committed.

I think the risk of a site getting caught rigging the games is low for the following reasons:

1 – Who polices/audit the games on these sites? I know some of these companies are audited by some of the big 4 accounting firms. But remember, that is only the Company’s financial statements that are audited by the firm. The auditor is checking to see if their financial statements are materially accurate only. It is unlikely that a financial statement auditor would expand the scope of that audit to include operational items like a RNG unless specifically engaged by the Company to do so. (Aside: interesting how party gaming is audited by PriceWaterhouseCoopers for UK listing purposes but Itech labs verifies the RNG. Why not have PWC perform all the work? PWC is an international firm that undoubtedly has subject matter experts in this area)

Most of the sites have contracted other parties to assess the integrity/fairness of the games. First off, I have been able to find very little information on these companies. For instance, Itech labs issues a certificate on a somewhat official looking letter verifying party gaming’s games. Has anyone been able to find out any detailed information on Itech labs? I spent a half hour searching for information on the Company and all I found were links to their website and party poker’s website.

And what work does Itech labs perform as a basis for their opinion? This is also something that I have not been able to find. Is their audit adequate? What qualifies this Company to know enough about this industry to issue their report?

How is a certificate from some Company I have never heard of and I can’t find any information on supposed to give me, the player any kind of comfort level?

2 – How hard would it be to fool an auditor? Trust me, it isn’t as hard as you think. The frauds committed at Enron/WorldCom/Healthsouth/Tyco were not near as complex as rigging a RNG and they went undetected for years.

For example, say you have a not so random number generator. Then you hire a Company to come in and verify that RNG. How hard would it be take the rigged RNG out of production during the audit and replace it with a real RNG, then put the rigged RNG back in place after the audit is over and you have your clean certificate?

3 – No way they could keep the rigged games a secret for long. If a game was rigged, why would more than a very small number of people within the Company know about it? The only people that would need to know would be the development team and maybe 1-2 very high level execs. Probably 10-15 people tops. Letting any more people know would be unnecessary and would only increase the risk of getting caught. Also, at the Enron/WorldCom/Healthsouth/Tyco frauds, a very small number of people were aware of the fraud. That is a big reason why it was able to go on for so long.


Again, I’m not trying to say that online poker is rigged. What I am saying is that I can’t say with any level of confidence that it isn’t. I have been surprised at how most of the posters here seem to dismiss out of hand any idea that a site is rigged. As I said above, how can one not, at a minimum, acknowledge the possibility?

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

PokerStars will offer to send you your entire hand history at any time for personal auditing reasons in PT-compatible text files.

If there is statistically valid deviation from the mean in ANY respect, you will know if there are problems.

I can't say if Party makes the same offer (lol), but I've had my hand histories sent to me from PokerStars a few times (well over 100,000 hands).

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

party will not send more than about 300 hands or so i belive.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

If a site had nothing to gain by rigging would that make you feel better?
Regardless if there is rigging or not.Would it make you feel better?
Somehow WPEX would fit into that category no?
Or any other site that would have no advantage to fix the deck in favour of any kind of particular player.

I do not believe however that rigging is taking place.However I do believe certain sites for the moment are turning a blind eye to obvious problems,bots comes to mind.I mean they do pay rake do they not?
But if a site had nothing to gain only to lose by not keeping everything squeaky clean I know I would feel better about playing at that site compared to a site that just tries to maxamise rake at all costs.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

WPEX could rig the games in favor of the losing sports betters. The fish clean up in poker and lose the money right back to W*EX in the sportsbook.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

It would be impossible to mess with the RNG and not have multitabeling regulars notice when they're looking through their PT records.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

And you call me an idiot? LOL

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

So you admit there is at least a 0.00001% chance that any site that is not PT compatible is rigged?

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

[ QUOTE ]
And you call me an idiot? LOL

[/ QUOTE ]

First off, I never called you an idiot.

Second off, you are an idiot. My post was looking logically and critically at a true issue/concern. Your moronic posts are inane babble and rantings.

Big difference.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

I feel a little guilty putting in such a short response to your obviously well thought out post.

Do we know On-line poker is not rigged: NO.
I belive it is not, but I will never be 100% sure. That's good enough for me right now to continue playing.

There are very few things in life where we are 100% certain we aren't being cheated.
- Did our grocer change the 'Best if Used by Date' on the bread
- Did the Casino add another couple 5's to the deck when a drunk highroller was playing?
- Are the other players at the table signalling each other in my live game?

We hope not, but the truth is we can never be 100% certain. So we either go through life realizing sometime somewhere we will probably be cheated and do our best to prevent it as much as possible.
Or we put on our tin-foil hats and assume everyone is out to cheat us.

I don't think that we can EVER be sure on-line gambling is not rigged. It doesn't matter WHO is regulating it.
We can look at the numbers and come to the conclusion it's not. But say Party creates players and gives them AA at an opportune time, or has them catch with 57 vs. AA. They could do it unoften enough that it would never be caught, I don't care who is regulating them.
Would they? I personally don't think so. Then again I think Arthur Anderson was pretty stupid to risk the collapse of their company by signing off on Enron stuff. So it does happen, even rich people can be greedy and make dumb Catostrophic mistakes.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

I am almost SURE that online poker is rigged in MY FAVOR.
Seriously, I always hit my draws, and the past 2 years, over maybe 1 million hands, i've consistently had extreme luck. It's statisticlly improbable that this happened by chance, so only explanation is that online poker is rigged to make me win..

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

even the billion hand thing, was totally rigged. i knew my chances were like 10% of winning it..

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

I really don't know why I even bothered. The mods moved this thread to an area where it was sure to generate less traffic and it wasn't taken seriously by most of the 2+2 degenerates anyway.

Ban me, I'm done with 2+2.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

[ QUOTE ]


Ban me, I'm done with 2+2.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bye.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

tl;dr

Sorry you won't see this. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
I really don't know why I even bothered.

[/ QUOTE ]

I couldn't agree more.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

i dont know but i cant win anymore so it must be rigged

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

fwiw, wpex is def. rigged

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

This is pretty hilarious. He told you guys!!!

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

Of course its possible and attempts were probably made.
But there are two things that dont fit into "riggidness" theory.

First, how is is possible to rig a game with all this tracking software that we have today? I am no specialist in this area, but I am sure there are many people out there with 2, 3, 4 years of datamined party/stars and a few gozillion hands in their DB. I am also sure that some of them asked themselves the same question and had the knowledge and time to answer it. Even a 100k sample I believe would show significant inconsistances if there were any imbalance.

But second of all and most important, do you understand the risk the company is taking by rigging the game in any way? I am not even talking about potencial law suits, that would be catastrophic. I am talking about some smart kid getting a huge DB on his hands and figuring out the imbalance. He would be able to clear the entire high stakes community before anyone knows what hit them.

ps And why is it every time I read about riggidness, I read it from someone who posts exclusively in NVG, BBV and OOT? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

First of all, never use those three forums in the same sentence.

Second- riggers, please.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

You guys have two options:

1. Play online poker.

2. Don't play online poker.

Personally, I don't think online poker is fixed, simply because there is too much at stake. They don't want people walking around saying online poker is rigged, it would hurt their business.

Accept it or don't.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[x] OP has last laugh

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

I don't know if online poker is rigged or not, but I LOL when somebody uses the "database" defense. Online poker can be rigged and the data wouldn't show anything unusual.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

How exactly can it be rigged in a way that a DB would show nothing unusual?

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
How exactly can it be rigged in a way that a DB would show nothing unusual?

[/ QUOTE ]

They could preset varience. Like when a bad player gets his account really low, he'll often go on a rush for a few days. If a good player starts taking too much money out of the games, he'll often go on a downswing. All the probabilities could remain the same, but the site could make more in rake by influencing when and to whom the "natural" swings of the game occur.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/985/levelus8.jpg

obviously

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How exactly can it be rigged in a way that a DB would show nothing unusual?

[/ QUOTE ]

They could preset varience. Like when a bad player gets his account really low, he'll often go on a rush for a few days. If a good player starts taking too much money out of the games, he'll often go on a downswing. All the probabilities could remain the same, but the site could make more in rake by influencing when and to whom the "natural" swings of the game occur.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree completely.

I remember the first time I started to think it was rigged. I had just taken a ridiculous beat in a 1/2 NL cash game. I was super pissed and wanted to be done with online poker altogether so the next hand I made a big raise with 99 and got a couple callers. I decided I was going to push regardless and either double/triple up, or be done with online poker. The flop came JJT and it was checked to me. I pushed with my nines and got called by JT. There was a slight "delay" before the turn and river and it came running nines for me to make quads and not only stay alive but keep money on the site. I obviously can't say for sure that its rigged or its not, but let's suggest for just a moment that that particular hand was rigged to keep me in the action a few more days/weeks... How could any tracking software possibly reveal that? It was "variance" I was a .03% favorite to win that hand on the flop or whatever, and that is the ONE time in my life that I will win it, end of story. I'm not as articulate as most of you, but I really don't understand how the "datamining" argument holds any weight whatsoever. The skeptics are not suggesting EVERY hand is rigged, just a few key turns and rivers here and there to put certain people on good runs and/or keep them on the site. I don't see how datamining could ever prove that.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
How exactly can it be rigged in a way that a DB would show nothing unusual?

[/ QUOTE ]

What if I decided to deal a staged hand? I will deal AK to somebody, and pocket 7s to somebody else. I also want the flop to be K 7 A. You can't say the hand was rigged by looking at the numbers.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
It would be impossible to mess with the RNG and not have multitabeling regulars notice when they're looking through their PT records.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, you should play so many hands that it is almost impossible to prove that RNG is rigged. My guess is that it would need 5 or 10 million hands, maybe more to prove it. So no... regulars won't notice it.

But if you think that RNG is rigged, it is rigged same way to everybody. Just learn how to beat it.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

DB is significant. From wikipedia, "The coin is tossed 12000 times with a result of 5961 heads (and 6039 tails). What interval does the value of r (the true probability of obtaining heads) lie within, if a confidence level of 99.999% is desired? Ans: .4766 &lt; r &lt; .5169" Obviously if you had a million hands instead of very few, you could find a stronger trend.

Anyways, on big sites it isn't rigged, because even a very small rigging, in any way, shows up in the long run, as the standard deviation shrinks to next to nothing in comparison with the expected value.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
DB is significant. From wikipedia, "The coin is tossed 12000 times with a result of 5961 heads (and 6039 tails). What interval does the value of r (the true probability of obtaining heads) lie within, if a confidence level of 99.999% is desired? Ans: .4766 &lt; r &lt; .5169" Obviously if you had a million hands instead of very few, you could find a stronger trend.

Anyways, on big sites it isn't rigged, because even a very small rigging, in any way, shows up in the long run, as the standard deviation shrinks to next to nothing in comparison with the expected value.

[/ QUOTE ]

Couldn't the software determine when and when not to rig a hand so that it didn't show up in the long term analysis? Or for every hand it rigs involving a lot of money and/or to keep a player in the action (or whatever the site's hypothetical motive is in the first place) it rigs an irrelevant hand in the opposite way so as to "appear" random?

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
DB is significant. From wikipedia, "The coin is tossed 12000 times with a result of 5961 heads (and 6039 tails). What interval does the value of r (the true probability of obtaining heads) lie within, if a confidence level of 99.999% is desired? Ans: .4766 &lt; r &lt; .5169" Obviously if you had a million hands instead of very few, you could find a stronger trend.

Anyways, on big sites it isn't rigged, because even a very small rigging, in any way, shows up in the long run, as the standard deviation shrinks to next to nothing in comparison with the expected value.

[/ QUOTE ]

Couldn't the software determine when and when not to rig a hand so that it didn't show up in the long term analysis? Or for every hand it rigs involving a lot of money and/or to keep a player in the action (or whatever the site's hypothetical motive is in the first place) it rigs an irrelevant hand in the opposite way so as to "appear" random?

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. What if every "software update" were designed to reverse a trend so the numbers look good? You just can't look at a bunch of numbers and declare "online poker isn't rigged, see". I'm not arguing if online poker is rigged or not, because I have no idea.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
DB is significant. From wikipedia, "The coin is tossed 12000 times with a result of 5961 heads (and 6039 tails). What interval does the value of r (the true probability of obtaining heads) lie within, if a confidence level of 99.999% is desired? Ans: .4766 &lt; r &lt; .5169" Obviously if you had a million hands instead of very few, you could find a stronger trend.

Anyways, on big sites it isn't rigged, because even a very small rigging, in any way, shows up in the long run, as the standard deviation shrinks to next to nothing in comparison with the expected value.

[/ QUOTE ]

Think of it this way: If you flip a coin a million times, you're very likely to get heads 10+ times in a row a few times. If someone could control when (not how often) these 10+ heads in a row come up, how is that feasibly detectable?

I'm sure it is theoretically detectible if it doesn't happen at random, but you'd probably need a sample size in the 100's of billions (or more) to be able to say the 10+ heads in a row sequences don't occur at truely random intervals.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

You guys are really this stupid?

Running quads happen as often as they are dictated to happen by the probability. The reason you usually see this ridiculous suck outs performed by the fish on someone on tilt is because they put money in behind all the time. Hence the suck outs and hence the fish. This is what makes the freaking game work.

Of course your gonna see running quads and other crazy stuff happed way more often when your on tilt or playing badly simply cos you presumably will not be putting all your money in this spot under normal circumstance hence will not have a chance to see the suck out.

How often you can say "omfg if I only did not fold this pocket pair on the flop i would hit a set now" or "if i just payed off this gutshotdraw i would now stack him". Well guess what, for a fish - this a way of life. The suck outs are there, the variance is there, you want the glory - go for it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

If you say that a hand can be staged against a winning player, then CTS and durr must have thousands of hands to prove it. How do the sites balance this off?

They dont? Then there must be a DB to prove it where cts gets more suckouts than he is supposed to.

They do? Then wtf is the difference. If I loose the amount of money that strictly abides by the probability laws (this means in a long run i loose and win as often and as much as i am meant to by the poker mechanics) - then i rather be loosing this money to a fish on tilt who will further donate this money back to the table economy, than some rival good player who is going to cash this out.

IE if some player is statistically "due" for a suck out, he should loose his money to some donkey, not to a good player. This is good for the fish. This is good for the poker economy. This is good for you. This is good for the poker site. What are you upset about? If such mechanism exists that controls it, its only for the best for all the parties involved.

If sucks outs do happen against the odds, there will be proof. If suck outs do happen and the odds abide, I rather see the moneys go to the fish.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How exactly can it be rigged in a way that a DB would show nothing unusual?

[/ QUOTE ]

What if I decided to deal a staged hand? I will deal AK to somebody, and pocket 7s to somebody else. I also want the flop to be K 7 A. You can't say the hand was rigged by looking at the numbers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let's use the above example. Let's say that sites DO rig on OCCASIONAL hand to keep someone in the action. Let's pretend I played the hand from above, and I was the one holding the AK. Let's assume this is the only hand of my whole online career that has ever been rigged at all. We'll say that I'm a regular who plays thousands of hands a week for a living. The guy with 77 however, just made a deposit last week and the site wants to keep him playing. So they "rig" they flop to not only hit his set, but give me a big enough piece of it that I double him up. Instead of letting "random probability" determine the outcome, the site rigs the hand to keep the fish playing thus increasing their rake in the long run. Plus they figure I won't notice because "these things happen."

So my question to those of you saying that any riggedness would show up in the database is...

At what point? If I showed you my hands for that day, you surely couldn't prove that hand was rigged. I could show you my hands for the week and you couldn't prove it was rigged. So at what point would someone be able to go back and say "yep...now that I've played X million hands, I can safely say that that hand was rigged...I mean look at these numbers, they prove it!?"

edit: I realize this scenario is VERY hypothetical, but it should not be dismissed just because of that. It was basically a simplified (for my sake) way of asking the question. Because I still don't see how databases could reveal any rigging if it was happening here and there. This was my attempt at that answer. I don't know if sites are rigged or not, but I'm hoping someone more intelligent than myself can explain it to me.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
If sucks outs do happen against the odds, there will be proof. If suck outs do happen and the odds abide, I rather see the moneys go to the fish.

[/ QUOTE ]

there will not be proof. There will be data that looks suspicious. It would take someone with a background in statistical and data analysis to actually examine a database with X million hands and provide a confidence level that (percentage) there are no statistically significant deviations. So, even a PHD could spend months examining this data and still not be able to tell you 100% everything is OK.

I find it funny that players with no background in statistics can say "I have a DB with 3M hands and nothing looks out of place". o rly? Where is your analysis? Where are your credentials?

A BBV thread from back when we had srs biz threads about variance.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

[ QUOTE ]
[x] OP has last laugh

[/ QUOTE ]

[X] MUAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rig
 

Calm down corsakh. Am I arguing that online poker is rigged? No. I'm saying you can't look at a DB and claim it's not. You sure did get defensive though.

Re: Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged
 

[ QUOTE ]
http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/985/levelus8.jpg

obviously

[/ QUOTE ]

not rly, believe it or not. My purpose with this post was to inject some doubt and much needed skepticism into this community at a time when it was nonexistent.

I still marvel at how posters on this site can be so suspicious of the US government and at the same time assume online poker sites based in loosely regulated third world countries are on the level. Not saying either view is correct or incorrect, but I am always amazed at what people choose to believe.