[trader01]

Look, I am not saying that I personally think that the sites are rigged, and I am not complaining about bad beats that went against me. Having said that, the link I provided in the first post comes from a guy that claims to have done analysis against 1.3 million hands and shows that there is a HUGE statistical discrepancy (to the tune of 10% in some cases) in certain situations that occur at Poker Stars.

So if you don't want us to advertise that sites are rigged because it will discourage fish, then I understand that. However, wouldn't it be good to do our own analysis to prove that they are not (if that is the case), because this guy is advertising that they are anyways - and that isn't helping the fish situation. I don't see how doing our own analysis and publishing it on this site is going to hurt the image of online poker more than what he is doing. Anyone who goes to google and types in "poker sucks" is going to find his site before they find a post on 2+2 anyways.

The strongest practical argument against rigging is simple dissemination of information - in order to rig a site, you have to get a programmer to do it, and that is typically someone who has no real incentive to keep quiet about it after he leaves his job. The fact that we haven't heard of any programmers talking about how they were personally directed to rig a site by this point is the strongest evidence against it, IMHO. But that is still just conjecture, and not proof.

I find it amazing that this guy can publish an article claiming that he analyzed 1.3 million poker stars hands and noted a huge problem there, and nobody here seems to even care enough to try to prove or disprove it.

EDIT: One other thing - even if a site is slightly rigged (even as much as 10% in certain heads up situations), a good player will still be able to make money. Anyone who complains about losing money solely because of rigged sites is obviously just a bad player... but that still isn't proof that it isn't happening.