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

[Double Ice]

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I don't know if sites are rigged or not, but I'm hoping someone more intelligent than myself can explain it to me.

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I've already explained it using a very simple Stats 101 approach, and received some very bad replies. Let me explain one more time.

FOR ANY PROCESS WHICH INTERFERES WITH THE SHUFFLE OF THE DECK, that is, where the 52 cards that come out are not random, and interferes some non-neglible amount of time (that is, more than a few times), you are going to see results. How?

Imagine that we are playing a coin flipping game. After 100 million flips of the coin, what interval will it come in over 99.999% of the time? Between .5 - e and .5 + e percent heads, where e = 0.00022086 . That is between 49.9977% and 50.0221%, 99999/100000 of the time.

So say you play your friend Pokerstars and he gets a result of 50.023% percent heads. Then you will notice, because this will be a "significant" result. If you were betting tails, he has a win like that or better much less than 1/200000 of the time.

You can't use tampering together with "averaging" techniques because tampering one statistic ruins other statistics. You can't store data on people's rushes and change river cards both on the good side and then on the bad side so that they average to the same deck, because it is detectable. And it becomes pointless if you are going to make the deck tend toward the mean anyways.

Now notice that places like PokerStars have dealt over 12 billion (12000 million) hands.

[Double Ice]

That being said, I do agree that there is no real security as to whether or not the games are safe.

However, I don't think it really matters. Why?

Sharks are going to continue playing as long as they continue to win. When they get bled for a while, they will quit.

Fish constantly lose, so it is just a matter of time for them too until they will quit.

If you are a losing player, it really can't hurt you if the game is rigged, since the only reason to rig games that the site takes a fixed fee, is to make fish win to continue the rake-trap

If you are a winning player and you can't profit in games anymore, you will quit.

[Dima2000123]

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[ QUOTE ]
I don't know if sites are rigged or not, but I'm hoping someone more intelligent than myself can explain it to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've already explained it using a very simple Stats 101 approach, and received some very bad replies. Let me explain one more time.

FOR ANY PROCESS WHICH INTERFERES WITH THE SHUFFLE OF THE DECK, that is, where the 52 cards that come out are not random, and interferes some non-neglible amount of time (that is, more than a few times), you are going to see results. How?

Imagine that we are playing a coin flipping game. After 100 million flips of the coin, what interval will it come in over 99.999% of the time? Between .5 - e and .5 + e percent heads, where e = 0.00022086 . That is between 49.9977% and 50.0221%, 99999/100000 of the time.

So say you play your friend Pokerstars and he gets a result of 50.023% percent heads. Then you will notice, because this will be a "significant" result. If you were betting tails, he has a win like that or better much less than 1/200000 of the time.

You can't use tampering together with "averaging" techniques because tampering one statistic ruins other statistics. You can't store data on people's rushes and change river cards both on the good side and then on the bad side so that they average to the same deck, because it is detectable. And it becomes pointless if you are going to make the deck tend toward the mean anyways.

Now notice that places like PokerStars have dealt over 12 billion (12000 million) hands.

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I'm not arguing that poker sites are cheating, but I don't see how your conclusion must be true from a statistical perspective.

Let's say that that some poker site has 1,326 pre-set fixed decks, corresponding to each combination of hole cards. The poker site somehow identifies the player they want to shaft, and keep randomly dealing him one of the 1,326 fixed decks. Obviously not every one of those 1,326 fixed decks would be a cold one, since most of those decks would not entice the mark to get into the pot. However, once he gets a playable hand, like a pocket pair, he'll get into the pot, and of course run his set against someone's higher set.

How do you use PT analysis to spot this kind of hypothetical deck fixing? The mark keeps getting fixed decks, there is no random shuffling at all, and yet the probability of getting any two hole cards is not affected. I don't think you can figure out the probability of a cooler happening to you post-flop, because that depends a lot on how other players play, so there is no theoretical number to compare against.

[SEABEAST]

party poker is and has been rigged in my favour for some years now. thankyou pp [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[eljizzle]

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I don't know if sites are rigged or not, but I'm hoping someone more intelligent than myself can explain it to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've already explained it using a very simple Stats 101 approach, and received some very bad replies. Let me explain one more time.

FOR ANY PROCESS WHICH INTERFERES WITH THE SHUFFLE OF THE DECK, that is, where the 52 cards that come out are not random, and interferes some non-neglible amount of time (that is, more than a few times), you are going to see results. How?

Imagine that we are playing a coin flipping game. After 100 million flips of the coin, what interval will it come in over 99.999% of the time? Between .5 - e and .5 + e percent heads, where e = 0.00022086 . That is between 49.9977% and 50.0221%, 99999/100000 of the time.

So say you play your friend Pokerstars and he gets a result of 50.023% percent heads. Then you will notice, because this will be a "significant" result. If you were betting tails, he has a win like that or better much less than 1/200000 of the time.

You can't use tampering together with "averaging" techniques because tampering one statistic ruins other statistics. You can't store data on people's rushes and change river cards both on the good side and then on the bad side so that they average to the same deck, because it is detectable. And it becomes pointless if you are going to make the deck tend toward the mean anyways.

Now notice that places like PokerStars have dealt over 12 billion (12000 million) hands.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not arguing that poker sites are cheating, but I don't see how your conclusion must be true from a statistical perspective.

Let's say that that some poker site has 1,326 pre-set fixed decks, corresponding to each combination of hole cards. The poker site somehow identifies the player they want to shaft, and keep randomly dealing him one of the 1,326 fixed decks. Obviously not every one of those 1,326 fixed decks would be a cold one, since most of those decks would not entice the mark to get into the pot. However, once he gets a playable hand, like a pocket pair, he'll get into the pot, and of course run his set against someone's higher set.

How do you use PT analysis to spot this kind of hypothetical deck fixing? The mark keeps getting fixed decks, there is no random shuffling at all, and yet the probability of getting any two hole cards is not affected. I don't think you can figure out the probability of a cooler happening to you post-flop, because that depends a lot on how other players play, so there is no theoretical number to compare against.

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This was EXACTLY what I was trying to convey. Well done sir. Whoever I was arguing with above was using the coinflip analogy that had only 2 possible outcomes. Obviously, even a shorthanded game has almost infinite outcomes and the "coolers" could not be easily tracked. I had a few hurdles in explaning this as well as you did, not the least of which was that I don't use pokertracker and didn't know if it had any sort of "equity over the long run" feature. I know if tracks how many times you get a certain starting hand, but that has NOTHING to do with action flops, and rigged turns and rivers. If it had a feature that kept track of your equity when the money went in and then how much you actually won and lost over the long run, I can definitely see how you MIGHT be able to call shenanigans over the long run, but with a simple "starting hand" database, I don't see how it's possible.

Excellent post!