Do we really know that online poker is on the level? I.E., not rigged

[oober]

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It would be impossible to mess with the RNG and not have multitabeling regulars notice when they're looking through their PT records.

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Well, you should play so many hands that it is almost impossible to prove that RNG is rigged. My guess is that it would need 5 or 10 million hands, maybe more to prove it. So no... regulars won't notice it.

But if you think that RNG is rigged, it is rigged same way to everybody. Just learn how to beat it.

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Completely agree with this statement. A good player will still beat a bad player over the longhaul.

[Dima2000123]

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I don't know if sites are rigged or not, but I'm hoping someone more intelligent than myself can explain it to me.

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I've already explained it using a very simple Stats 101 approach, and received some very bad replies. Let me explain one more time.

FOR ANY PROCESS WHICH INTERFERES WITH THE SHUFFLE OF THE DECK, that is, where the 52 cards that come out are not random, and interferes some non-neglible amount of time (that is, more than a few times), you are going to see results. How?

Imagine that we are playing a coin flipping game. After 100 million flips of the coin, what interval will it come in over 99.999% of the time? Between .5 - e and .5 + e percent heads, where e = 0.00022086 . That is between 49.9977% and 50.0221%, 99999/100000 of the time.

So say you play your friend Pokerstars and he gets a result of 50.023% percent heads. Then you will notice, because this will be a "significant" result. If you were betting tails, he has a win like that or better much less than 1/200000 of the time.

You can't use tampering together with "averaging" techniques because tampering one statistic ruins other statistics. You can't store data on people's rushes and change river cards both on the good side and then on the bad side so that they average to the same deck, because it is detectable. And it becomes pointless if you are going to make the deck tend toward the mean anyways.

Now notice that places like PokerStars have dealt over 12 billion (12000 million) hands.

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I'm not arguing that poker sites are cheating, but I don't see how your conclusion must be true from a statistical perspective.

Let's say that that some poker site has 1,326 pre-set fixed decks, corresponding to each combination of hole cards. The poker site somehow identifies the player they want to shaft, and keep randomly dealing him one of the 1,326 fixed decks. Obviously not every one of those 1,326 fixed decks would be a cold one, since most of those decks would not entice the mark to get into the pot. However, once he gets a playable hand, like a pocket pair, he'll get into the pot, and of course run his set against someone's higher set.

How do you use PT analysis to spot this kind of hypothetical deck fixing? The mark keeps getting fixed decks, there is no random shuffling at all, and yet the probability of getting any two hole cards is not affected. I don't think you can figure out the probability of a cooler happening to you post-flop, because that depends a lot on how other players play, so there is no theoretical number to compare against.

[SEABEAST]

party poker is and has been rigged in my favour for some years now. thankyou pp [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[eljizzle]

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I don't know if sites are rigged or not, but I'm hoping someone more intelligent than myself can explain it to me.

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I've already explained it using a very simple Stats 101 approach, and received some very bad replies. Let me explain one more time.

FOR ANY PROCESS WHICH INTERFERES WITH THE SHUFFLE OF THE DECK, that is, where the 52 cards that come out are not random, and interferes some non-neglible amount of time (that is, more than a few times), you are going to see results. How?

Imagine that we are playing a coin flipping game. After 100 million flips of the coin, what interval will it come in over 99.999% of the time? Between .5 - e and .5 + e percent heads, where e = 0.00022086 . That is between 49.9977% and 50.0221%, 99999/100000 of the time.

So say you play your friend Pokerstars and he gets a result of 50.023% percent heads. Then you will notice, because this will be a "significant" result. If you were betting tails, he has a win like that or better much less than 1/200000 of the time.

You can't use tampering together with "averaging" techniques because tampering one statistic ruins other statistics. You can't store data on people's rushes and change river cards both on the good side and then on the bad side so that they average to the same deck, because it is detectable. And it becomes pointless if you are going to make the deck tend toward the mean anyways.

Now notice that places like PokerStars have dealt over 12 billion (12000 million) hands.

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I'm not arguing that poker sites are cheating, but I don't see how your conclusion must be true from a statistical perspective.

Let's say that that some poker site has 1,326 pre-set fixed decks, corresponding to each combination of hole cards. The poker site somehow identifies the player they want to shaft, and keep randomly dealing him one of the 1,326 fixed decks. Obviously not every one of those 1,326 fixed decks would be a cold one, since most of those decks would not entice the mark to get into the pot. However, once he gets a playable hand, like a pocket pair, he'll get into the pot, and of course run his set against someone's higher set.

How do you use PT analysis to spot this kind of hypothetical deck fixing? The mark keeps getting fixed decks, there is no random shuffling at all, and yet the probability of getting any two hole cards is not affected. I don't think you can figure out the probability of a cooler happening to you post-flop, because that depends a lot on how other players play, so there is no theoretical number to compare against.

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This was EXACTLY what I was trying to convey. Well done sir. Whoever I was arguing with above was using the coinflip analogy that had only 2 possible outcomes. Obviously, even a shorthanded game has almost infinite outcomes and the "coolers" could not be easily tracked. I had a few hurdles in explaning this as well as you did, not the least of which was that I don't use pokertracker and didn't know if it had any sort of "equity over the long run" feature. I know if tracks how many times you get a certain starting hand, but that has NOTHING to do with action flops, and rigged turns and rivers. If it had a feature that kept track of your equity when the money went in and then how much you actually won and lost over the long run, I can definitely see how you MIGHT be able to call shenanigans over the long run, but with a simple "starting hand" database, I don't see how it's possible.

Excellent post!

[Topset72]

Another thing to consider is that not every person who thinks on-line poke is rigged is a nutter -- based on their experience.

With million(s) of people having played poker on-line, some of them are going to see a run of hands that would convince most people it is fixed. Some people do experience the bad tail of the bell curve.

In one of Russ/gca's posts he talked about playing in games in S. California with his whole pack in the game. His packs always made their money but Russ said there were a very few regulars who still managed to win despite all the cheating going on. Some people do run incredibly good.

And some people will see runs of cards that convinces them cheating is going on.

[DING-DONG YO]

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I think you can find your answers here:
http://www.billrini.com/2004/11/30/p...ker-is-rigged/

ps There was a research on this subject involving over a million hands a couple years ago. I think on flop turn river. But you have t o google it yourself.

pss I did science most of my life and I slept through it of course.

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closest thing I could find was a non-scientific study on the FT boards that measured PF all-ins. Hardly conclusive, non-scientific and only focused on FT.

And why am I supposed to google it? You're the one that said it was out there, you're the one using it to support your arguments, you google it and post the link. Do some of that science, yo.

[As armas]

Yeah there is a real possibility that online poker is rigged. My personal opinion is that there is nothing to worry about thought. I picture that possible riggedness as giving a new account an initial good run of cards. Not by redistributing preflop hands odds, but say instead laying them 5 to 1 odds on hitting a set, 3 to 1 on the turn card making their flush, etc. Counter this by giving longer odds for a winning reg in those same situations, so the overall probabilities dont change summing up the hands overall.
Datamining would not detect this, and now the fish would keep coming back with that allure of the initial good run of cards. I dont think a more pervasive riggeness of the bad players consistently getting skewed odds is realistic, too tough/risky to get away with it.

Back on party the 4 times I started up playing there again after a hyatus I always ran really good in the beginning. Of course I'm not claiming PP is rigged from this, but it seemed like it.

On FT, my initial 600 was met by a immediate downswing/ long breakeven stretch. I actually didnt mind that since it was a good sign of true randomness. Any rigged sight would not wipe out an new customers initial deposit.

The bottom line is in the online poker economy the money does indeed flow from fish to sharks, and any riggeness would have a negligible impact on that process. So whatever go make that money [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[CHAx]

You guys are not focusing on the more probable risk to us as players.

1)The real risk is that a few individuals have access to the code that is truly a "pattern mapper". I use that loosely, but just understand that I mean a program that knows what cards will be generated "randomly".

2) Someone who works at the site is colluding/can see hole cards.

These would not show up in any database. These would be hugely profitable, you could snap off all bluffs and value bet every situation without error. I think the greatest risk for these items would be at the high stakes level.

[AMT]

can we fetch lee jones for comment since he no longer has any obligation to pokerstars? (I would expect, since hes no longer employed by them...)

[RichardHurtz]

Without online poker, live poker would be half the size it is now. Would Lee Jones risk that?