Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

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What is this huge motive?

In your previous post you said it was to keep fish from going bust and thus maintain more tables. I have seen other people claim it is to increase rake. Neither of those make much sense for a major site.

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By keeping fish from going bust you automatically increase the rake. You could have a huge increase in revenue by keeping a fish playing 2 or 3 times longer instead of losing all his money in no time to a pro. This is a FACT. The belief that a site is or is not engaging in this is an OPINION. Whatever you believe yourself can't deny it is a fact that they would be/are making way more money if this balancing was present in their software, which it could be, than if it wasn't.

Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

While I'm not much of a believer in the "poker is rigged" theories, I'm also not foolish enough to dismiss the possibility. If any site(s) is rigged, I would think something along the lines of a "balancing" scheme would be most likely...unfortunately, it would also be one of the harder ones to detect.

I'm not saying I'm a believer (far from it), but I think any study would need to include a way to detect balancing-type systems.

Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

The way I see it is this -
If you analysed allin five hands to see if there was balancing you would calculate the EV for each hand and add it up to give your EV result - say your EV calculation says you should be up $3000 from these five hands.
Then you deal the cards and calculate your actual result - say you got $2000.
So you are up 2/3 of what you should be.

Now obviously that means less than nothing because the sample size is miniscule. But if you did it for a couple of million hands from several winning players if a result showed up that the actual winnings were only 2/3 of what they should be well then that would be extremely daming evidence. I don't get why some people are proposing complex statistical anaylsis, all that is need is an EV-Actual result comparison from a big enough sample of hands from winning players. If there is a big discrepancy then there is a problem.

Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

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Correct in that more fish means more players calling down and being able to suck out. However, it's fairly widely believed around here that live play is MUCH softer than online play at the same stakes.

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I would disagree with this outside of major tourist areas but then it has been demonstrated before that I have very different views of things then a lot of the people on here. I played 4 years underground before going to a B&M and I found the B&M players softer then the underground players. I find the online players to be much softer then both.

Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

Damn! Where and what do you play?

Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

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In your previous post you said it was to keep fish from going bust and thus maintain more tables. I have seen other people claim it is to increase rake. Neither of those make much sense for a major site.

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By keeping fish from going bust you automatically increase the rake. You could have a huge increase in revenue by keeping a fish playing 2 or 3 times longer instead of losing all his money in no time to a pro. This is a FACT. The belief that a site is or is not engaging in this is an OPINION. Whatever you believe yourself can't deny it is a fact that they would be/are making way more money if this balancing was present in their software, which it could be, than if it wasn't.

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The extra revenue is simply not worth it to a major site. We are talking about over $400M in profit a year. Keeping fish around longer would increase that by less then 5%. No one risks $400M to make an extra 5%.

Esp since the sites know how easy it is to detect. I have no vested interest in proving sites are rigged but if I was a B&M casino owner who felt I was losing revenue I could hire an audit firm to test the fairness and destroy the industry. The lack of such a report is indicative that the B&Ms know the sites are not rigged.

Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

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The way I see it is this -
If you analysed allin five hands to see if there was balancing you would calculate the EV for each hand and add it up to give your EV result - say your EV calculation says you should be up $3000 from these five hands.
Then you deal the cards and calculate your actual result - say you got $2000.
So you are up 2/3 of what you should be.

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You shouldn't use EV at all in this type of analysis. It adds a lot of errors that can be counter balanced but requires a lot of extra labour.

Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

I would like to know where you are getting this $400M figure from, I can't find any info on pokerstars financial affairs on the net.
Anyway whatever profit they are making, if they are using balancing they would be making a significantly smaller amount without it. If as you say they are making 400M and they have balanced software who knows how much of that 400M is due to keeping the fish in the game longer. Alot more than 5% I'd expect as if a fish is around twice as long (or more) he will be paying twice as much rake to the site.

And it is not easy to detect, as has been explained, to investigate and come to an agreement on this you would need millions of hands from winning players, no-one is forthcoming with this data. You would obviously need separate data from different sites as each site would be looked at independantly. Then you would need a group involved in the EV calculation, that includes respected longtime 2+2 posters, so that the result cannot be discredited by claims that it is biased.
As for a B&M casino owner, why would they want to go up against the online sites? The online boom has helped the casinos no end, I know loads of people who have travelled half way across the world to play in Vegas that wouldn't have done so, or even have taken up poker, if they hadn't started playing online. Both B&M and online compliment each other they are not in competition.

Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

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You shouldn't use EV at all in this type of analysis. It adds a lot of errors that can be counter balanced but requires a lot of extra labour.

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What is wrong with using EV for this, what errors does it bring? It seems like the most obvious and easy method to me.

Re: Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

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I would like to know where you are getting this $400M figure from, I can't find any info on pokerstars financial affairs on the net.

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I'm extrapolating from Party's profit. Since they Party is a publicly traded company they have to publish annual reports.

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Anyway whatever profit they are making, if they are using balancing they would be making a significantly smaller amount without it.

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Not really. If you had spent any amount of time in poker rooms you'd know fish never quit. They may run out of money but as soon as they get paid they are right back at the tables.

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And it is not easy to detect, as has been explained, to investigate and come to an agreement on this you would need millions of hands from winning players, no-one is forthcoming with this data.

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Nope. It is very very simple to test. It does not require anyone to share their hands. The whole process would take less then 2 days.