Organizing a project to determine which sites are legit or rigged

[Sciolist]

[ QUOTE ]
I haven't really given it much thought but there must be a few behaviours that are different for a player who can see hole cards vs a player who can't. I'd need coffee first before I can come up with some.

[/ QUOTE ]
I imagine that their won money at showdown and % of time going to showdown will be skewed. However, both of these stats need a pretty huge sample size and I suspect would have to be correlated to VPIP or even perhaps ptbb/100 (which needs an even huger sample size). So I don't think you'd catch anyone on smallish (say 50k?) samples.

[Henry17]

[ QUOTE ]

The average online player is a LOT LOT LOT better than the average live player these days. You can't even compare.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've been mostly playing underground for the last few years but the few non-Vegas trips I've made to B&M casinos I found the players much better then online. The exception being the temporary poker room in Toronto. My experience might be effected by the fact that the two B&M casinos I usually play at are destination poker rooms and over an hour away from any major city. I'll be playing Turning Stone this weekend so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

[Sciolist]

[ QUOTE ]
I've been mostly playing underground for the last few years but the few non-Vegas trips I've made to B&M casinos I found the players much better then online. The exception being the temporary poker room in Toronto. My experience might be effected by the fact that the two B&M casinos I usually play at are destination poker rooms and over an hour away from any major city. I'll be playing Turning Stone this weekend so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

[/ QUOTE ]
Perhaps this opinion is formed in the same way that the "online is rigged" opinions are formed. You started out and found that online players were way worse (which was the case 3 or 4 years ago), and now you notice when you see a bad online player but not a good one.

I think it's also the case that due to larger number of hands, it's easier to spot if someone is good or just OK online as you see more play. Therefore that guy you played with for 8 hours last night might have seemed good, but if you'd have seen one more hand you'd pick up something that demonstrates a fatal flaw in his thought process. Here's a good column that talks about this some:

http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazin...007_07_072.asp

Perhaps I have a bias in the other direction, but I've found that the winners in live games are a lot worse than the winners in the corresponding limit online. I say this from talking to the winners to figure out their thought processes. The worst players are just as bad either way. Anyway, this is a tangent.

[ibluffoldladies]

I haven't read every reply in this thread fellas. I'm just going to make a logcial statement and leave. Do you think that buisnesses who put up false fronts like the khawnawakee(sp) gaming commission are going to be completely honest? I mean, the organization who is supposed to look after you is fake, and then you're going to assume that online poker is on the level? Give me a break guys. THINK!!!

[nineinchal]

[ QUOTE ]
I haven't read every reply in this thread fellas. I'm just going to make a logcial statement and leave. Do you think that buisnesses who put up false fronts like the khawnawakee(sp) gaming commission are going to be completely honest? I mean, the organization who is supposed to look after you is fake, and then you're going to assume that online poker is on the level? Give me a break guys. THINK!!!

[/ QUOTE ]

I know I don't. The problem is just how dishonest are some over others.

[WhitePanties]

By way of introduction: I have been an online pro for 5 years, and a live poker pro for 15+. My first four years i won 6 figures playing 30-60 limit, and 5-10 and 10-20 nl on party and stars. i was playing about 20 hrs. per week. this last year (since neteller went down) i am break-even. Many players that i know, top professionals for many years, have done the same or far worse. You will hear the opinion from some that this is because the games are tougher. I don't believe this is the reason. I like playing tough games, and have always beat them. I know the difference between getting outplayed, and getting cold-decked. I have been getting cold-decked relentlessly in the last year, and am now convinced that stars and full tilt are rigged.

Here are my contributions to this discussion, in no particular order:

1) Top pros are now, and have always been, in direct competition with both B&M and online poker sites. If we break their fish fast, which we surely do playing nolimit, then they lose that fish's business and future rake. They also are able to spread fewer games, and less attractive games, and lose critical mass.

2) It is therefore in the site's best interest to help fish win pots vs. the top pros. (Note: this is an objective statement. I am not using it to prove that it happens.)

3) Sites probably don't cheat in a way that is analyzable with database analysis. Since they can cheat in non-analyzable ways (see 4 below), they would have to be exceedingly stupid to put themselves at risk unnecessarily.

We all know that hand distributions and flop distributions are right on the money. To tamper with those would be suicidal to a site since they are so easy to analyze.

More interesting are all-in situations. These are easily tested by doing equity analysis. But what this means is that if a site is cheating in all-in situations they will eventually get caught. Too many pros will add up their db's and get to a statistically significant number, and then put that site out of business. That's why i believe a dishonest site would be foolish to do this. (That being said, my all-in results at both stars and full-tilt this year have been laughable... far below my equity.)

4) It is IMPOSSIBLE to analyze a database for cheating in NON-ALLIN situations. If, for instance a site habitually selected a bad-beat turn card in a not-yet-all-in pot between a top pro and a fish, you would never be able to prove it. That's because in every pot the pro wins without a showdown, we cannot see his opponents' cards. If we can't see his opponents' cards, we cannot test whether the pro is getting bad beat according to the percentages, or something worse. It's as simple as that.

If sites cheat by selecting bad-beat cards before the players are all-in, as i suspect they do, no one will ever be able to prove it. If any of you math guys can figure out ways to disprove this assertion, i would love to hear it.

5) There is I believe very strong, and very simple, anecdotal evidence that poker stars, at a minimum, is rigged. I played on stars, as i said, every day for the last 5 years (I have now quit it for good). I played chiefly 5-10 and 10-20 NL, and occasionally 25-50. Here is my evidence: when i go back to look at who is now playing in those games, I can't find more than one or two players that i used to play with. How is that possible? Ok, the games got tougher, but there are always winners in games, and wouldn't the guys who were still successful continue to play at the site? Yet every single one of the super-tough, very successful players that i played with every day is gone! All of the names in the bigger games are new. How is this possible? I would be interested to hear opinions on this issue.

[DavidNB]

I have really studied on line poker at party poker and have found out how they cheat.
Please folow the link

http://www.billrini.com/archives/001169.html

[Henry17]

[ QUOTE ]
4) It is IMPOSSIBLE to analyze a database for cheating in NON-ALLIN situations. If, for instance a site habitually selected a bad-beat turn card in a not-yet-all-in pot between a top pro and a fish, you would never be able to prove it. That's because in every pot the pro wins without a showdown, we cannot see his opponents' cards. If we can't see his opponents' cards, we cannot test whether the pro is getting bad beat according to the percentages, or something worse. It's as simple as that.

[/ QUOTE ]

This makes it harder but certainly not impossible.

The most obvious way to test for this would require an actual experiment. You would simply need to get a group of people to play sufficient hands together. After the experiment is done you would all return each other's funds and split the cost of the rake. Since this effectively circumvents the inability to know the weaker player's cards testing would now be simple. This is basically something that could be done over a weekend and would be conclusive.

If you don't want to bother with an experiment you can still test for turn issues by simply doing a statistical analysis of the board. You would need a very large number of hands but it is do-able. This would not be as conclusive as doing the actual experiment and it would actually be a lot more work but it is possible.

[Sciolist]

[ QUOTE ]
5) There is I believe very strong, and very simple, anecdotal evidence that poker stars, at a minimum, is rigged. I played on stars, as i said, every day for the last 5 years (I have now quit it for good). I played chiefly 5-10 and 10-20 NL, and occasionally 25-50. Here is my evidence: when i go back to look at who is now playing in those games, I can't find more than one or two players that i used to play with. How is that possible? Ok, the games got tougher, but there are always winners in games, and wouldn't the guys who were still successful continue to play at the site? Yet every single one of the super-tough, very successful players that i played with every day is gone! All of the names in the bigger games are new. How is this possible? I would be interested to hear opinions on this issue.

[/ QUOTE ]
1. Traffic in Limit games is a lot smaller
2. People switch sites all the time
3. People move up
4. People move down
5. People quit poker
6. People stop improving their game and start losing

How many people in live poker remain at the top over 20 years? That's pretty similiar to a year or two online. The reason the lineups are not the same live is the same that they are not the same online. Are you suggesting that live is rigged too?

If you ask the winning players at the big games whether the games have got tougher in the last two years, they'll say they have. Try asking any of the current crop of winners. The fact that the games are harder means that people who used to win will now break even or lose.

The fact that you aren't winning now means one of four things:

1. The site is NOW rigged
2. The games got harder
3. You got worse at poker
4. You are experiencing variance

I don't know what your User ID is, so I don't know what your sample size is. Perhaps one of the high volume winners at highstakes could comment on how you play?

[Jussurreal]

I agree, I know that most online poker is rigged at the vast majority of sites. I have always claimed this. In fact if you look under my username it says "ACTION PACKED" which is something a moderator put under my name to make fun of my point of view.

It is very simple. Why do poker sites rig games? BECAUSE THEY MAKE EXPONENTIALLY MORE MONEY. They put house players in games and allow them to win. There is no regulation there to stop them. Think people. Why would they NOT do this? No, they dont have a house player in all games because that would really skew the stats. In the big poker sites, there are enough games going on that they can put house players in here and there and it just looks like a bad beat when you lose.

I believe what whitepanties said in #4 is dead on. And what Henry17 about testing it may or may not work. First you would need the group of people to do it over a much longer period than a weekend. Also, the poker rooms probably make the games fair to groups of people who play together all the time.

The bottom line is that I know these poker sites have sophisticated methods of getting more money and not getting caught. Its just commom sense guys.