I’m new here – is online poker is fixed?

[Rek]

Hi Guys and Girls

Thought I would finally join in with you 2+2’ers after lurking for a long time and hoped the heading would draw you here to flame. Just briefly, I started online poker with PartyPoker in 2004. Very small cash games – won for a while then a downswing and lost it. Put in a bit more and same thing. So there I was thinking “oh yeah, its online must be fixed – terrible beats”. But hey it was pin money and I was enjoying it.

Here in England we have a very respectable bookmakers called William Hill who have been around for at least 50 years and I found out they did online poker and switched to them thinking (no, knowing) it would be an honest game. And guess what? The same thing happened. Then it dawned on me – I was actually no good at online poker; I was tilting at bad beats and so played worse and spiralled down.

If I had stayed at PartyPoker I would not have accepted it was me but at William Hill I honestly trusted the name. So I started to study the game and started to play exclusively S&G’s because I enjoy the structures. There is a beginning, middle and an end and that is what I enjoy, not the one big endless slog of cash games (even though deep down I know that is where the real money is to be made).

Anyway, I have now played over 5,000 S&G’s across William Hill, Full Tilt, Party, various others and now on Stars. The level I play at varies between $20 to $100 games but in general I am playing the $39 6-man Turbos on Stars which I like. My stats across all sites apart from Stars show a ROI of 10%. How some of you guys have a ROI of over 20% is beyond me but you have my respect.

Now the reason for the post is to say Hi and I hope to join discussions in the future although I will not be a prolific poster and secondly to say that even after all the S&G’s I have played the conspiracy theorists almost dragged me down. When I started on Stars 2 months ago I lost my initial $500 deposit with the most horrendous suck outs mentionable. I almost gave up and went back to my trusted sites. However, my brain was telling me PokerStars are too big and have too much to lose to be anything other than straight. I re-deposited and re-focused and my ROI now stands at 2% on Stars. Not earth shattering but then variance is a bitch and I have played only 560 S&G’s on Stars. Hoping to get the ROI up to the rest of the sites. Then again perhaps Stars just have better players and I’m not as good as I think I am.

That’s enough for now. The moral is don’t blame anyone but yourself for long term loses. If you constantly lose you are just bad. Study and get better but stop griping about sites being rigged. Unless of course, for some reason all the sites have selected me to be one of the winners. And why would they do that? Exactly, they wouldn’t.

Rek

[Coy_Roy]

Please tell me you're a representative from William Hill, here to prepare us/promote the fact that they're gonna open up to US residents.......please?

[CCx]

no its still broken

[Rek]

nothing to do with Will Hill unfortunately lol

[Josem]

after reading the thread title, i was expecting this OP to be really moronic.

fortunately, it wasn't.


variance is big. that's what makes poker profitable.

[Losing all]

is is isn't fixed?

[dragonystic]

Stars is rigged.

[ayurice]

Yes, online poker is fixed. Al Gore didn't make it safe when he invented the internet.

[Backspin20]

Stars SNG's are rigged. Lost about the last 20 coin flips....really starting to piss me off

[Sticky007]

I play WH time to time with a friend in scottland. I'll say it's a pretty good site and I'd play there more... If I didn't have to wait 7 hours for a 9 player SNG to fill up. DAMN SLOW!