Pokerstars Is Fixed

[uninformedposter]

This one seems like a good one to jump in to...

ZKoeske, You asked for some advice on how to test what you are trying to claim. Here is a suggestion (already been made, I'm sure)

1. Get Poker Tracker (or any similar statistical tracking software)

2. Play about 150K or 200K hands and track them.

3. Analyze the results.

4. Come back and let us know if they differ from the documented odds for various hands like AA or KK, or JT soooted.

Until then, this is what is most likely happening to you.

You're suffering from the same stinking variance that everyone goes through, no worse, no better, and it has nothing to do with PS being rigged - it's not. You're just remembering the all those bad beats and over emphasizing them. You aren't recalling all those thousands of times that your two pair held up vs that flush draw, because those memories fade quickly. Bad beats hurt. Pain lingers. Good feelings are fleeting.

That's why an orgasm lasts 30 seconds, but a heartbreak lasts for months.

[CORed]

Cliff Notes:
College kid with absolutely no understanding of poker or probablility concludes that Pokerstars is rigged because he has swings.

[DING-DONG YO]

OK, if we can all act like adults here, I got a weird idea. What is a site could "rig" the cards and still have the long-term win rates for hands like AA, KK, etc. not be statistically significantly different from what they should be?

I'm talking about "action flops". Let's say you flop set AA on a dry board. 3 players, all-in, bunch of money in the middle and bam, suckout, runner, two outer, whatever. You lost a big hand.

Then you have AA a bunch of other times and win those hands, but just small pots.

The point I'm making is that action flops could be created while still maintaining AA's (or any other two cards) long-term win percentage.

Once again, I don't think poker is rigged.

But what I do know is that the vast majority of posters on here know about jack sht about statistics, probability and fraud. I can blow 12-gauge size holes through every argument someone comes up with on how it isn't "rigged".

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
OK, if we can all act like adults here, I got a weird idea. What is a site could "rig" the cards and still have the long-term win rates for hands like AA, KK, etc. not be statistically significantly different from what they should be?

I'm talking about "action flops". Let's say you flop set AA on a dry board. 3 players, all-in, bunch of money in the middle and bam, suckout, runner, two outer, whatever. You lost a big hand.

Then you have AA a bunch of other times and win those hands, but just small pots.

The point I'm making is that action flops could be created while still maintaining AA's (or any other two cards) long-term win percentage.

Once again, I don't think poker is rigged.

But what I do know is that the vast majority of posters on here know about jack sht about statistics, probability and fraud. I can blow 12-gauge size holes through every argument someone comes up with on how it isn't "rigged".

[/ QUOTE ]

3/4 of an inch holes? Is that large when it comes to rhetoric?

--Zetack

[DING-DONG YO]

Sorry, I should have specified spread rounds.

[Kuso]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
No one said that Hand Histories have been used to actually prove it's not rigged.

[/ QUOTE ]
There has been a publication though of a poker player with a couple 100k hands in his DB where he compared the actual winning %'s with the theoretical winning rates.
All percentages were very close to the theoretical values.

Can anyone remember who this was? I've got to search around to see if I can find that article again...

[/ QUOTE ]

I would not at all be surprised that over 100k hands the win % of any given hand would be close to their theoretical values. However, this does not prove in any way that the sites are not rigged. My main contention was that the streaks are so extreme that it would be more beneficial to do an analysis of short runs of streaks, even though this would obviously be more difficult to prove statistically significant. I think it all balances out in the end though. With these extreme streaks occurring, not just sometimes, but seemingly always back to back to back continually, addicts are created and people can't stop either because they are always winning, or always losing (with hands that should be winning more often than not. So they continue playing instead of quitting. Does anyone know of such a statistical analysis done for multiple short hot and cold streaks in succession?

[/ QUOTE ]

http://www.pitt.edu/~pittssw/faculty/koeske.html

i assume this is daddy?

anyway, this sounds much more like a research project on statistical falacies than a genuine post.

if you really want to know the answer to this, why don't you ask your dad. i'm sure he'll be kind enough to rip you a new sphincter for being such a dumba**.

anyone who has gambled at and/or run simulations for games like craps, roulette, and BJ know that the streaks can be ridiculous. what you described in your post is simply what i would call "normal variance" for a poker player.

go to wizard of odds and run some of your own sims if you want to play around. or deal yourself a few thousand hands. or roll the dice a few thousand times. it seems to me that you really don't have any kind of decent understanding of typical statistical variance.

[MicroBob]

I've addressed the idea of 'action flops' before actually.

1. Not sure why they would want these in tournaments.

2. I think the idea that they would generate extra-rake on the higher-stakes tables is false.
On a 10/20 limit game for example, the rake will usually reach the max anyway.
But the action-flops would actually make the hand take longer with more action, thus less hands per hour.

So the incentive for a site that actually wants to rig the game to generate more rake would be for NON-action flops on the higher-stakes tables. The deader the hands the quicker they get through them.


The OP's contention that they make you lose a lot on all your tables OR win a lot on all your tables thus somehow encouragring you to play more because of the greater-than-normal swings is a new one on me.


I have every confidence that we will hear from someone else in the future who will come up with an even more creative observation about his variance and why the site has it in for him but obviously wants certain other players to win.



I'm waiting for something like, "I've noticed that every time I get A5o on one table I see an A and a 5 on the flop on one of the other tables I am playing. This is happening a hugely disproportionate amount of the time.
Reason: Because the site wants me to get angry that I 'hit' a flop but that I hit it on another table.
By ALWAYS putting my winning flops on other tables I end up always tilting away my winnings. PokerStars set this up against me because they saw where I said that Lee Jones book is overrated."

[funnymunny]

If u think it's rigged, don't play. (Is that such a hard concept to comprehend).

Seriously, could be @rsed reading your long thread, but we've all heard the same argument about one site or another at thousand times.

Stop wasting your energy trying to convince people to believe you...think of it as a bad beat...move on.

[infinite_loop]

Join Scientology. They're looking for you.

[MicroBob]

yes. absolutely mind-boggling why someone would continue to play at a site that they believe to be rigged (thinking of the -$500k Party 18/11 guy who most certainly had the thought cross his mind BEFORE he blew away all his winnings).