Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged
 

My thoughts are that there must be enough data collected to determine the legitimacy of poker sites.

I am interested in organizing the effort. However, I need your help, since we have to start collecting and analyzing data, and reaching a conclusion.

Preferably, I would like to leave it up to the mathmeticians, statisticians and computer geeks to make this determination. I have spent the last twenty five years as a financial and operational auditor; so perhaps I can contribute in some form to this.

So let's chat on here to discuss its feasibility.

Please don't start with the sarcastic comments. I am a winning player too, so I believe that most sites are legit, if they want to stay in business. However, I have my suspicions about this industry as well, so I think this sort of study may produce some surprising results.

Any thoughts? We have some of the most intelligent people here, so let's hear it...

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

I like the idea to a certain extent. It would be nice to put together all of the numbers and either shut up the naysayers (although sadly this probably wouldn't work), or discover if there is anything odd going on anywhere.

The big hurdle, though, would be that people won't want to give up their HHs. The only thing I could see working would be to decide on some key stats, and have players submit just those stats.

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

don't forget there are a lot of people out there with a lot of datamined hands. no reason for people to be worried about submitting those to the project. i have a couple million or so i can send.

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

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don't forget there are a lot of people out there with a lot of datamined hands. no reason for people to be worried about submitting those to the project. i have a couple million or so i can send.

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Yes, but there's still the issue of one person now having in their possession the data of tens (hundreds?) of millions of hands. If we all have datamined hands on one another, are we excited about one person having all that data? Plus, if the project were to become that huge, would PT be able to handle a big enough database?

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

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I like the idea to a certain extent. It would be nice to put together all of the numbers and either shut up the naysayers (although sadly this probably wouldn't work), or discover if there is anything odd going on anywhere.

The big hurdle, though, would be that people won't want to give up their HHs. The only thing I could see working would be to decide on some key stats, and have players submit just those stats.

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I do not think the hand histories would be the problem at this stage.I think the problem is to estimate the scope of the work. The sample size would have to run into hundred of millions of hands, from all of the poker sites. However, I am not a statistician, so I could be off a few google hands or so...

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

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don't forget there are a lot of people out there with a lot of datamined hands. no reason for people to be worried about submitting those to the project. i have a couple million or so i can send.

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Yes, but there's still the issue of one person now having in their possession the data of tens (hundreds?) of millions of hands. If we all have datamined hands on one another, are we excited about one person having all that data? Plus, if the project were to become that huge, would PT be able to handle a big enough database?

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I can still only multi table five games at a time, so I figure I can't get too much info about how to play better from your hands, I am just too damn busy...

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

Well, let's see what the general reaction here is (if there is one). I could be wrong, but I suspect the majority of posters will not want to be sending their hand histories in to just anybody. At the very least, this will likely be the case more often with the big winners (no I'm not one of them [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]), which will skew your data somewhat.

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

The biggest obstacle I see to this is that for people who believe the sites are fair there is no upside in working on this. The people who think the sites are rigged are too dense to do the math.

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

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The biggest obstacle I see to this is that for people who believe the sites are fair there is no upside in working on this. The people who think the sites are rigged are too dense to do the math.

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The people who believe the sites are fair (as I do for the most part) have a great incentive. That is, to ensure that the sites do in fact offer a game equivalent in all aspects of live poker except for showing up at the casino.

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

You also have the problem that there is nothing to compare it to. The only thing to compare it to is statistically info. I would imagine if you took a million hands from a B&M it would be off INSAINLY LARGE from what it should do to human error. That being said the randomness is thought of as perfect there.(by the people that dont like online randomizers)

In short this is a decent idea however ill keep all my HH to myself.

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

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You also have the problem that there is nothing to compare it to. The only thing to compare it to is statistically info. I would imagine if you took a million hands from a B&M it would be off INSAINLY LARGE from what it should do to human error. That being said the randomness is thought of as perfect there.(by the people that dont like online randomizers)

In short this is a decent idea however ill keep all my HH to myself.

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Again, we would not be analyzing HH to see how you play. It is to view outcomes of hands to determine whether or not the site is rigged in any, way, shape, or form; or whether sites have biases over one type of player or game to another.

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

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The people who believe the sites are fair (as I do for the most part) have a great incentive. That is, to ensure that the sites do in fact offer a game equivalent in all aspects of live poker except for showing up at the casino.

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I don't think that is sufficient to motivate most people. Given a finite and very limited number of hours in a day for someone who is already 99.9% sure the sites are not rigged I can't see how this would be a priority.

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

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You also have the problem that there is nothing to compare it to. The only thing to compare it to is statistically info. I would imagine if you took a million hands from a B&M it would be off INSAINLY LARGE from what it should do to human error. That being said the randomness is thought of as perfect there.(by the people that dont like online randomizers)

In short this is a decent idea however ill keep all my HH to myself.

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If there is enough interest in this process to get rolling it won't matter whether or not you keep your HH to yourself. There'll be enough HH provided by others that contain your play that if someone want to analyze your play you withholding your personal stash won't matter.

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

If you get the hands and get people to analyze them then I think all you will is a bunch of people arguine back and forth whether the data proves the cards are 'off' or not.

This kind of started happening when some people were looking at onlinepro's stats in that big thread.

Also, FWIW, I suspect you could just take 200k of your own hands from a given site and mostly be fine.

Myturn2raise evidently believes he found some problems with NL all-in hands across 2 or 3 different sites. I already have some theories on the errors he might have committed in coming to his conclusions if indeed he really did do a study and isn't just leveling everyone.

I won't go into great detail on how silly I think the project itself is. Just pointing some other issues with it if you seriously want to go about doing it.

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

seriously, does this really take 100 million hands? it seems to me that most likely this test could be run just on the data i have. i just want to see someone run the same test MT2R did on some set of data and see if they come to the same conclusion. or perhaps identify what about the testing process itself is flawed.

in any case, we need someone to step up and offer to do the statistical analysis on a set data. then, we need specific instructions on what kind of data that person needs (i.e., should we filter out all in confrontations from our HH? etc), and where to send it if we have it.

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

if it helps, i'm currently collecting a bundle of HHs for some absolute poker stuff.

i have 3million hand histories before that, so i suspect we can use that as a start.


i'd also suggest using holdem manager, since it seems to handle bigger databases easier and more comprehensively.

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

ryanj - I really don't think it should take that many zillion hands to do a study.
The bigger issue imo is in trusting that the people who are interested in taking on such a project can do so competently.

The fact that there isn't even agreement on something as basic as how many hands should be required for such a project kind of goes to my theory that various parties are going to come to vastly different conclusions from the same data anyway and such a study is likely to end up not proving very much.

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

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You also have the problem that there is nothing to compare it to. The only thing to compare it to is statistically info. I would imagine if you took a million hands from a B&M it would be off INSAINLY LARGE from what it should do to human error. That being said the randomness is thought of as perfect there.(by the people that dont like online randomizers)

In short this is a decent idea however ill keep all my HH to myself.

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If there is enough interest in this process to get rolling it won't matter whether or not you keep your HH to yourself. There'll be enough HH provided by others that contain your play that if someone want to analyze your play you withholding your personal stash won't matter.

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There ain't nothing so special in my personal stash that can't be found in 2+2.

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

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seriously, does this really take 100 million hands? it seems to me that most likely this test could be run just on the data i have. i just want to see someone run the same test MT2R did on some set of data and see if they come to the same conclusion. or perhaps identify what about the testing process itself is flawed.

in any case, we need someone to step up and offer to do the statistical analysis on a set data. then, we need specific instructions on what kind of data that person needs (i.e., should we filter out all in confrontations from our HH? etc), and where to send it if we have it.

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I wouldn't know exactly the extent of testing.

I assume that there would be some sort of process that could be developed that would indicate that there was some sort of rigging that was built into a site that would in fact be conclusive and used as valid info.

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

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ryanj - I really don't think it should take that many zillion hands to do a study.
The bigger issue imo is in trusting that the people who are interested in taking on such a project can do so competently.

The fact that there isn't even agreement on something as basic as how many hands should be required for such a project kind of goes to my theory that various parties are going to come to vastly different conclusions from the same data anyway and such a study is likely to end up not proving very much.

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Here, here.

I would want to conduct this in a way that any conclusions would prove whether or not a site is rigged. This information would serve our community by guiding us towards quality gaming sites and away from fraudulent operators.

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

Asking how many hands we need for such a study is the wrong question. First we should ask what kind of checks we would like to do on the data. When we know that, then it can be calculated how many hands we need for those checks to give a statistically significant result.

For instance, some people say that they get sucked out too many times by people who go all-in. One possibility how a rigged site could try to accomplish that, is by filling up a possible straight - or flushdraw on the river in an all-in situation whereever that is possible and regardless of the hand of the all-in player.
This is easy to check and we would definitely not need millons of hands for that. A couple of hundred of relevant hands could already be enough to produce a significant result.

This was just an example, I am sure there are much more interesting checks to do.

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

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The biggest obstacle I see to this is that for people who believe the sites are fair there is no upside in working on this. The people who think the sites are rigged are too dense to do the math.

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QFT

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

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If you get the hands and get people to analyze them then I think all you will is a bunch of people arguine back and forth whether the data proves the cards are 'off' or not.


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This is pretty much what happened in the Absolute Poker threads.
Bog-down city.

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

OH - let me get it ....

you actually realy think that a site can be rigged ?
cause when i suggested that in early post i got bashed
all over the place ...

nice to see some people chage their mind from time to time

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

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you actually realy think that a site can be rigged ?

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Obviously it is possible.

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cause when i suggested that in early post i got bashed
all over the place ...

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Because you make stupid posts, with poor logic, create false facts, and provide no evidence to support them. Like, seriously, look through your posts and think critically about the crap that you spew.


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nice to see some people chage their mind from time to time

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???

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

i can tell u right now that stars is rigged 100%.

ask lilholdem if u want a second opinion. there is no need to do any data analysis

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

If you were asking me this... I think there is a massive differentiation between the Absolute threads and the usual "poker is rigged" stuff that makes appearances.
Perhaps a better word to use for the Absolute stuff is "compromised".
I believe Absolute has been compromised in some way- whether from the inside or out.
What leads me to believe that is actual data and a strange convergence of happenings.

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

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Asking how many hands we need for such a study is the wrong question. First we should ask what kind of checks we would like to do on the data.

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That's a good point. What are you wanting to check?

If you want to know if the cards come out of the deck in the right "odds" as they are meant to that would be easy enough to do sample size wise.
However if you wanted to make sure certain players weren't "Rigged" then that would almost be impossible because you would never get a large enough sample size (unless they were silly enough to upload their HHs)

If someone was really worried about a person/group having all this "important" data then you'd just need to obscure the information before sending it The players names aren't important. So someone can write a really simple program that just replaces player names with UTG UTG+1 SB BB etc. People then run their hand histories through that parser. Then upload it to the central database.. Really does player names matter?
All you want is one HH file of every hand ever played that's gone to showdown right? people seem to usually complain about the showdown riggedness when there hand doesn't hold up. All of this information is available when observed.

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

the difference is that the Absolute Poker allegations are based upon credible evidence.


the morons in here who claim that online poker is rigged - without providing evidence - have no credibility.

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

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the difference is that the Absolute Poker allegations are based upon credible evidence.


the morons in here who claim that online poker is rigged - without providing evidence - have no credibility.

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The only moron here is you, Aussie.

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

this thread made me think of this:

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6668/popdiszn9.jpg

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

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this thread made me think of this:

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6668/popdiszn9.jpg

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Decent at 18% is much too high...

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

i never made up facts .
and the logic is something you might not understand but it is perfect logic.

it all comes at the end to RISK ASSESMENT ... how much money will it be worth for someone to break into this system.

this is all i ever claimed .

if you admit it is possible, then we think the same .
the problem is that everybody ask for the proof that it is rigged while they should try and get a proof it is not !

and also for facts , the same way you dont know it is rigged for a fact , you also cant know it is legit for a fact.

Your reasons are much better:

1. they make much money without rigging...
2. they would not do that cause they might lose their buisness etc...

my answers:
1. guess what - they can make more if the rigg it.
2. people like you make them belive they can get away with anything...

so - here comes a story about absolute poker and instead of taking actions you all chat about it....

keep on chatting , it probably saves your weekly visit to the shrink


got that ? or should i explain ?

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

oh no - again -

I D I O T on the floor !!!!

yOU DONT LOOK FOR EVIDANCE IT
IS RIGGED -> LOOK FOR THE EVIDANCE IT IS NOT !!!

this is ABC rule for online security !

and BTW - you will not find it !

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

You are all way way way out of focus here...

there is no way to know if a site is rigged or not from
the hand history. You are all thinking in one direction which is viewing a persons hole cards. this is not the only way to rigg a site.

how about - open the source code ? let you compile the source code yourself ... and have a 3'rd party company check the server side of the software....???
and have the clients decide which comapny will check it ...

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

It's like with God. There is no proof that he does exist, but there is no proof he doesn't either. Basically it's down to your own personal opinion/beliefs. Although unlike with God you could actually prove that the poker sites are fair/unfair by through compiling and analysing the evidence that is out there in people's databases.

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

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You are all way way way out of focus here...

there is no way to know if a site is rigged or not from
the hand history. You are all thinking in one direction which is viewing a persons hole cards. this is not the only way to rigg a site.

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Actually yes there is. Just because you don't know how to doesn't mean it can't be done. It is actually quite easy.

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

I started reading along with the post until people started bashing back and forth so I’m not sure how much of what I got was legitimate, and how much of it was just common internet forum junk.

From what I got nineinchal was talking about starting a type of statistical internet database to determine wither or not a said internet poker site was legitimate or manipulating players into forking over cash.

It sounds like a good idea, but I think his scrutiny was a little diminutive. I’m not trying to under mind nineinchal in anyway; I just think that putting tougher an online database to give players that know about the database an edge over players that wouldn’t know where to look for the database is a little unjust.

Wither or not online gambling is legit or not is a topic we could bicker about in forums for life times to come, or we could just all around say [censored] it and really do something about it… That’s just what I think.

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

It has been said a few times already. There is no need to share hand histories. For the questions I think most people would want tested any regular player will have enough hand histories that there is no need to merge them.

The reason I see this as a waste of effort though is that the people who believe sites are rigged are exhibiting an emotional reaction. They are losing players and don't want to face the fact that it is their fault so they blame the site. No amount of statistical evidence is going to convince them.

I also don't see why anyone would care enough to want to put the effort in to convince them. I find their form of craziness entertaining.

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

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It has been said a few times already. There is no need to share hand histories. For the questions I think most people would want tested any regular player will have enough hand histories that there is no need to merge them.

The reason I see this as a waste of effort though is that the people who believe sites are rigged are exhibiting an emotional reaction. They are losing players and don't want to face the fact that it is their fault so they blame the site. No amount of statistical evidence is going to convince them.

I also don't see why anyone would care enough to want to put the effort in to convince them. I find their form of craziness entertaining.

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Yes there are some idiot donkeys putting forward the opinion that the games aren't fair but there are also winning players with that viewpoint. It's only natural that this side of the argument will attract more disgruntled people but that doesn't mean the argument in invalid. I've already said why I as winning pro for the last 3 years think the sites aren't fair, check my previous posts, I'm not gonna write it again. I would really love someone to compile all the data and run an analysis on it and find out once and for all if the games fair. And even if they weren't I would still be playing as this is my job and if I'm making money that's good enough for me. But I am just very curious as to what could be going on in the software and it annoys the hell out of me the way some people don't even consider what could be happening, dismissing it out of hand when there is huge motive for the sites to balance the cards.

If you took 10-20 winning players lifetime stats and ran an EV calculation on their all-ins to compare actual winnings to the winnings they should have made in theory, this would be enough imo to put end to this argument once and fora all. I think you'd need this amount of data as you don't want people to be complaining about small sample sizes like with the Absolute poker issue.