Statistical data proving internet poker is rigged

[HeavilyArmed]

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I have no idea to believe that the people who do win online are all props of the poker site. Are they just really lucky?

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They are, at a minimum, props for themselves.

Not a single soul on this board can state with anything near to certainty that any site is 100% honest. Can't be done.

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What about the guys with 1 million hand PT databases? That seems to me to be approaching near certainty.

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You are enjoying the comfort of your statistical ignorance.

Site cheating can not be tested for with a PT database except for the most obvious and brain dead ways.

[HeavilyArmed]

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I suggest everyone go through and look at their all-in situations. Calculate the EV of the best hand going in and compare it to the actual wins/losses after the fact.

Try to say the sites aren't rigged then. You'll be convinced they are.

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1) It would be quite unlikely to have the EV equal the amount won, except over the very long term. (Imagine doing 100 coinflips. Actually, I recommend trying it. See how many come up heads, and the longest string of heads in a row. You may be surprised that if you do 100 flips, you are quite likely to get strings of >6 in a row, and quite unlikely to win exactly 50 flips.)

2) If you are doing this study over youor poker database, then you likely have been unlucky in the recent time period, and you are probably winning less than your EV in this time period. Players that have been recently winning these flips do not bother to look back and examine these stats.

3) The comparison of winning % and EV, no matter what the finding (greater than, less than, or equal to) is not "evidence" of riggedness. Do you see why? What does it prove exactly?

4) People that think it is rigged can never agree how it is rigged, thus it is difficult for people to prove otherwise. Some claim sites juice the flops, others claim sites love when you deposit/hate when you withdrawel, others claim that the site is simply rigged against them. It's hard to take any of these claims seriously, since there are clear incentives for a site to provide a clean, fair game.


As a last thought, just ignore this post. The sites are probably rigged in favor of people who deposit, so just keep depositing and you should never lose! Then they'll rig the games for you!

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If you collect data going forward then you eliminate selection bias. I have done this. It has been normal and at other sites it has been shocking.

If you graph EV vs realized and they are criss-crossing lines over time then you likely have a clean site. If you find the lines diverge, never crossing, you hav reason to investigate further. Or in my case, you just stop playing there.

There is no way I know of to compute SDs from such a data set. I simulated it to get some ideas. I had one sample set that was maybe 4 SDs away from expectation. That's a site I don't play anymore.

[magoo]

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How come none of the "online poker is rigged" people have never come up with any evidence? It doesn't seem like it would be that hard. Just set up a Poker Tracker-like program to data mine a hundred million or so hands (maybe not even this much, I'm not a statistician) and prove that there are more paired boards, flushes, quads, etc. I am sick of arguing with losing players that feel that they are so smart that they only lose because (insert site name) is rigged.

To all these people: Provide the evidence or shut up and admit you suck at poker.

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Figure it out, for yourself.