Why would online poker sites not rig their games?

[TruePoker CEO]

I understand why you refer to this as a jurisdictional matter, but I would just believe that a dishonest game which rigged against US players would somehow violate US laws against dishonest business practices.

For us, the issue you pose would be academic*. We run an honest game and have had no need to conduct research into what statutes might be tripped or in which jurisdiction if we did not do so. (*I once took a class in International Trade law at Yale, but I do not recall this issue coming up on the curriculum. I do not want to pay counsel to research this for us.)

[Josem]

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There may be no law prohibiting online poker to be offered by an offshore operator and accessed by players from the US. The US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit differs with what the FBI website link obliquely refers to.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't disagree with you on this.

The poster asked for why it may be criminal to offer a rigged game. I believe various jurisdictions' interpretation of "fraud" is likely to cover someone running a rigged online poker operation. I can't think of a more cliched example of a fraud being perpetrated.

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That an honest online poker game is not prohibited by Federal statute should not insulate a rigged game from a variety of statutory prohibitions related to dishonest schemes and fraudulent practices.

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I agree. That is my point.

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Without even debating whether or not those laws you listed could even be applied to a "rigging" case, they most certainly would not apply at all to TruePoker due to their location.

TruePoker mentioned the criminality aspect, insinuating it would be illegal, and I'd like to see if that is in fact true, considering his jurisdiction. Costa Rica, Antigua, or wherever he is located.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do not believe for a second that any Western court - be it American or Australian or UK or whatever - would hold that someone was able to commit a fraud against an Australian living in Australia and located in Australia, and not be subject to Australian fraud law.

A similar situation occurs with various mail scams. The fact that the accused is physically outside Australia does not protect the accused when the final result of the fraud is to scam an Australian resident physically located in Australia.

Mail scams are difficult to prosecute because of the difficulty in identifying the scammer. I would assume that a publicly listed company (such as PartyPoker) would not have the same identification problems. A privately owned company (such as Stars, or FullTilt, or, I assume, TruePoker) may be a little harder to identify in some circumstances, but I doubt if that were the case here.


The point remains - if you think that you have been defrauded over the internet, you should report this to your local law enforcement officials. This applies whether you sent money to Idi the Nigerian, or whether you believe that there is some "rigged" poker operation.

The complainants won't take their case to the police since they know they have no real evidence of the hypothetical fraud. The complainants are generally scumbags who are willing to make huge and offensive accusations with no evidence to support them.

[TruePoker CEO]

LOL. There is a lot of history to the "Castaways" collapse, but a cheating house was not involved.

[MicroBob]

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There is no way to rig a poker site and not get caught. Anyone with a first year stats course can look at hand histories and tell you if something is abnormal.


[/ QUOTE ]


just FYI, there is a poster on 2p2 with 17k posts and at least a first year stats course who says he has done a statistical analysis of a huge number of hands and concluded that several sites including stars are almost certainly rigged.

favorite hand wins 95% as often as expected
(also search/see dozens of other posts by same poster...)

[/ QUOTE ]


Wow. Had no idea Myturn had joined the ranks of the conspiracy theorists.

Since it seems he found the same percentage-discrepency at all the major sites he did his study on I would say there is a signficant chance there is a flaw in his analysis.

I like myturn and don't think he's a stupid guy. But that each site would rig the cards in the exact same way to yield the exact same bias against the favored-hand pre-flop seems somewhat less likely to me than the possibility that some outside poster looking at the data didn't make an error in the calculations or miss an aspect that needed to be considered.

I even have some ideas on some aspects which he may have overlooked when he did his calculations but it's kind of lengthy for this thread and it's impossible to say for sure without knowing more about his study.

Lets just say that one person's mathematical analysis of a situation doesn't make it gospel. Even if they have 17k posts which really doesn't mean anything except that they like to waste a lot of time surfing on 2+2.

I have 27k+ posts and I say this stuff almost certainly ain't rigged.
If myturn's 17k post-count somehow makes his analysis valid than my post-count should perhaps make my analysis even more valider, shouldn't it?

[ryanj247]

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I have 27k+ posts and I say this stuff almost certainly ain't rigged.
If myturn's 17k post-count somehow makes his analysis valid than my post-count should perhaps make my analysis even more valider, shouldn't it?

[/ QUOTE ]

lol, i don't know whether his analysis is valid or not. but i would be curious to see some others knowledgeable in stats take a look at it and see if they can identify the flaw. i'm really surprised that there hasn't been more of a response on 2p2 to someone like MT2R making these kinds of statements...

[Henry17]

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First of all, I am a huge winner on all sites except pokerstars, and I still say all sites are rigged.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you honestly believe a site is rigged and yet you play on it then this is going to taint the rest of the post for me since it already demonstrates some lack of logic.


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Second of all I have the experiance in playing live games and comparing them to online games and visually seeing the difference between realistic poker and rigged poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent. What type of statistical analysis did you do?





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Anyone with half a brain can rig the games and make the stats normal.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent. Well since I assume you think you have at least half a brain can you please explain how someone would make the stats look normal on a rigged game?

[That Foreign Guy]

Given it was made in a chat thread I think he may have been levelling.

[ryanj247]

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Given it was made in a chat thread I think he may have been levelling.

[/ QUOTE ]

i guess no one really ever knows on 2p2. but he's made posts about the analysis he did in multiple forums and having read all of them in context it seems quite clear that he is not leveling. i also talked to him on aim and he described the entire process he used to do the analysis in detail, and i didn't detect any signs that he was FOS. if he's leveling, he's really trying way too hard to create a massive, prolonged level.

[Henry17]

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lol, i don't know whether his analysis is valid or not. but i would be curious to see some others knowledgeable in stats take a look at it and see if they can identify the flaw. i'm really surprised that there hasn't been more of a response on 2p2 to someone like MT2R making these kinds of statements...

[/ QUOTE ]

If he posts actual details I'd be happy to. I'm very busy so it might take me a week or two to get at it but I am pretty sure I'd find what he did wrong. Based on his comment in the other thread I can't say anything but I have at least a few ideas about possible errors.

There was a site in the beginning of online poker that wasn't rigged but which had simply made an accidental programing error in the way that they did their randomization. Statistical analysis pointed that out very quickly and they fixed it. It is impossible to design rigged software that would not be detected by stats.

[KSOT]

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It is impossible to design rigged software that would not be detected by stats.

[/ QUOTE ]

This statement is ridiculous. They could easily rig any aspect of their RNG without being caught as long as they did it slightly enough to stay within the standard deviation.