Pokerstars Is Fixed

[Shandrax]

Actually the fact that experts don't have much of an advantage in Hold'em is the reason why the game is still around. If the sheep would get skinned whenever they play, then the game would be dead. That's the reason why Mason wrote a couple of years ago, that NL would never become popular.

Every game with a small edge is beatable in the long run. The question is if you want to go through that roallercoaster to accept swings of 20k or more to make $1000 a month.

[kazana]

[ 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...

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
The question is if you want to go through that roallercoaster to accept swings of 20k or more to make $1000 a month.

[/ QUOTE ]


I hope you are exaggerating and don't really believe this.
Lots of players make significantly more than $1k/mth without ever having had a downswing anywhere near $20k.

Did you mean a swing over 20k hands?

[Shandrax]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The question is if you want to go through that roallercoaster to accept swings of 20k or more to make $1000 a month.

[/ QUOTE ]


I hope you are exaggerating and don't really believe this.
Lots of players make significantly more than $1k/mth without ever having had a downswing anywhere near $20k.

Did you mean a swing over 20k hands?

[/ QUOTE ]

It was an exaggerated assumption made on the basis of one of DS' comments about the big game. He said:

[ QUOTE ]
If you make 1/10 of a big bet per hour you will occasionally have a 4000 bet downturn.

In a 900 hour year you will expect to make $360,000. Plus or minus about 5 million.

[/ QUOTE ]

About Hold'em in particular there is not only the statistical variance that leads to downswings, I also think that people tend to overestimate their edge on the game in general. With all the books out, there is so much information available that the bad players don't play as bad as they used to. It's tough for a real donkey to produce a lot if he strictly sticks to a starting hand chart that makes him fold 80% of his hands. They also see when they make top pair and bet it and they recognize a flush draw also and will take it to the river. Lot's of automatic plays in limit don't offer much scope for the pro to play that much better.

Don't get me wrong, of course good players have an edge in limit, but it's not as gigantic as people want to believe.

There is a funny experiement going on at a german pokersite atm. They got a high stakes pro ($100/200) trying to build a bankroll from scratch to show the n00bs that it's a piece of cake. He started with $50 about 40+ sessions ago and his bankroll made it barely above $100. Everyone would expect him to crush those microlimits, but he didn't.

[ZKoeske]

[ 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?

[tom10167]

I made 1k in June playing no higher than $1-$2 LHE... and that was with an incredible 300BB downswing in four days.

[A_C_Slater]

Zkoeske,

Can I have your Pokerstars name so I can look into this riggedness issue in more detail? I have a compiled a database on possible rigged sn's.

[Punker]

[ QUOTE ]
I obviously don't have the data to attempt that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Email PokerStars and ask them for your hand histories. They will provide them and you'll have all the data you need.

[Ray Of Light]

"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. "

--When I read this, I had to laugh. I am sorry, normally I am not patronizing in my replies to posts. But a dismissave refusal to accept ANY statistical evidence answering your worries about the legitimacy of the online poker game, makes you come across as a person who is simply too stubborn to even consider the possibility that you may be wrong.

You ask for proof of the online games legitimacy. Someone offers to show you statistical proof of the online games legitimacy. And before you have even seen the proof, you accept that it is correct, then you disregard it as being completely irrelavent.


"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."

--- So, in your opinion, the ONLY WAY to prove that poker is not rigged, is if there were never any winning or losing streaks more extreme than say, 100BB to around 150BB?!? Whether online or offline, poker players go on streaks of 150+BB (and in the extreme 300BB+) all the time. And your bankroll has to be around 200-300BB to be able to absorb those swings, (did you think poker pros just threw out the 300BB number for laughs and giggles!?).

What you need to try and understand is that there are two key facts that make online poker different from live poker... 1) More hands are played, and 2) When you play bad, you play bad over more hands.

Too many people on two plus two, who play online, fool themselves into thinking they are the Doyle Brunson of the online game, and ridiculously over-estimate the profitable edge that they have over their opponents (myself included).

Its like they read a couple of poker books, and suddenly they don't need to study the game anymore because they're are beating the $2/$4 game for 3BB/100 over 10K hands?!?

But the truth is, they are nowhere near as good at poker as they think they are. Just because you can outsmart a donkey, doesn't mean you aren't one as well.

And with the amount of hands that you play online, if you are making a mistake in your game, such as you are playing scared or you are playing too tight or too passive... you are going to be making that mistake up 10 times more often online than if you were playing offline (online 300 hands per hour/offline 30 hands per hour). When this happens, downstreaks (or winning streaks) seem to last longer, and your bankroll ends up weathering an El Nino type poker storm as it gets tossed and turned about by your own glaringly incompetant understanding of the game.

[Bill King]

you do realize, that with the amount of effort you took in writing this post, you probably could have read some others, and actually improved your game.

wow



RIGGED!!!