AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

[Nathan Butler]

All good

[AJG]

Not going to post my beats, they are irrelevant.

But its hard to win the lotto once, let alone twice. Or get a hole-in-one.

Yet with poker, how come you can have AK and miss the flop, turn and river 17 times in a row? - Or be 90% fav on flop, 95% on turn , then busto!!

Over and over and over again, it happens to all of us and we have to 'embrace' the 'variance'. Well my fist was sooooo close to 'embracing' my laptop the other night.

You get runner-runnered and you say "pffft, it happens, i'll get em next time"
Then runner-runnered again, then two outered, then 1 outered and each time your frustration builds, because you know the odds of this happening are astronomical, YET IT HAPPENS! So, just for the sake of the thread...... <takes deep breath and places head into cushion>.....AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH m u t h a f k r WWWWWWWHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYY??????

I can see the future.... Anyone listing a computer on their Home Contents insurance will need to answer: "Do you ever play online poker?"*






*fine print: "Anyone answering YES to this question will not have any personal computer equipment insured under any circumstances, nor anything of value located in close proximity of such equipment"

[AJG]

Actually there are some interesting blogs and forum posts about discussing whether smaller stakes online poker (particualrly FTP) is rigged... As they like to remind: FTP claims "The most exciting poker on the internet". Well if they all have a fair shuffle, then how is FTP any more exciting than any other site?

Some people have produced some fairly persuasive evidence (I am not stating opinion either way). One person even claims involvment in a university study (prob just helping a mate on an assignment I suspect) where over 10 million hand histories of <50c BB NLHE full ring games were datamined (all from FTP), and showed big hands like straight flushes, quads etc- particualrly together in the same hand, occuring upto 5 times more often as they should statistically, now anything above 5% is considered statistically significant, so that is way out of the ballpark... also out of whack were big pair vs big pair hands, and hands sucking out on the river...

General concensus on these blogs/forums is that the high stakes isnt rigged because the players wouldnt play anymore (obviously), and they make most of the $ there, where at the smaller stakes there are enough people who either don't care or aren't aware of this...

So the basic premis is that shuffles are rigged to provide 'More exciting hands'... although I doubt the losers of such hands agree it is more exciting!

[bennymacca]

"The most exciting poker on the internet". Well if they all have a fair shuffle, then how is FTP any more exciting than any other site?

just marketing, nothing more.

also, nice graphics, fast gameplay, good structured tourneys, big prize pools, new concepts like rush poker and matrix poker, super turbos, big tournament series like ftops, all make full tilt have a point of difference over other sites, and therefore pontentially more exciting, and have nothing to do with the deal of the cards.

Some people have produced some fairly persuasive evidence (I am not stating opinion either way). One person even claims involvment in a university study (prob just helping a mate on an assignment I suspect) where over 10 million hand histories of <50c BB NLHE full ring games were datamined (all from FTP), and showed big hands like straight flushes, quads etc- particualrly together in the same hand, occuring upto 5 times more often as they should statistically, now anything above 5% is considered statistically significant, so that is way out of the ballpark... also out of whack were big pair vs big pair hands, and hands sucking out on the river...

do you have this evidence? i would love to read it.

saying something like "5 times more often" makes be suspect that the statistics are wrong. they might be counting 5 cards hands instead of 7 card hands for instance, which, for instance, makes every hand 21 times more likely. i would like to see the report. i would bet there is a high likelihood that there is a mistake in their analysis more than there is a mistake in FTP's dealing

General concensus on these blogs/forums is that the high stakes isnt rigged because the players wouldnt play anymore (obviously), and they make most of the $ there, where at the smaller stakes there are enough people who either don't care or aren't aware of this...

So the basic premis is that shuffles are rigged to provide 'More exciting hands'... although I doubt the losers of such hands agree it is more exciting!

why would they rig one but not the other?


i wonder if we can do our own experiment. how many people would be willing to send me some of their hand histories? i have about 100k hands myself (probably), if some other people would like to send me some of their hand histories, i could do the statistical analysis myself.

could be interesting, even though i know what the answer will be

[AJG]

Yeah agreed on 1st point... I was mainly focused on individual games abit.

No dont have any reports, just what I have read on these blogs etc...
But i will try and dig some up, or atleast more info. I know just a google of "full tilt rigged" brings up alot of hits.... But I dont think, as in the guy who analysed the hands, if they are capable of coding the datamining, parsing code etc they would make that mistake of using 7 card hands not 5...? also, don't the hand histories only list the best 5card hand??

I guess the idea they would only rig the small stakes, is that a) they rig it to produce exciting hands which isnt neccessary for the high stakes, and b) the smaller stakes are often recreational players who are playing for fun, and so dont mind dropping $100 or whatever as long as they have fun doing it... I have heard people talk about poker like this, as in payin for entertainment like any other form...
c) The high stakes players are likely more poker-savvy (on the whole) and if they caught on they wouldnt play again, and there would go a massive chunk of their income. Also as i mentioned above, the people making these claims also believe the avg small stakes player dosn't care, if they know this is going on.

But I am only repeating some of what I remember reading on these sites.

As I said, I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, but tend to believe they wouldnt do this... anyway, even if they do, like variance, I am just as likely to be on the end of a rigged suckout than any other player

Edit: this page on outflopped.com lists a heap of obfuscated hand histories, most at $1+ but a few (zip) files at less.... biggest issue is writing code to parse and analyse these hands... any other programmers on this forum??
[2nd Edit: didnt remember you said you'd do the anlysis yourself]

And I will say again, forumers: get involved in this site! its only new so not manyquestions there yet, but it is a great format for them, and will grow...

[muzzington]

Full Tilt give me quads more I've decided.

[bennymacca]

But I dont think, as in the guy who analysed the hands, if they are capable of coding the datamining, parsing code etc they would make that mistake of using 7 card hands not 5...? also, don't the hand histories only list the best 5card hand??

doing manipulations on data to get the numbers out of text files is pretty simple really.

i dont think i was clear before. what i meant was, a hand rank (such as a flush) is 21 times more likely to occur in a texas holdem game than it is in a 5 card draw game, because you are taking best 5 of 7 cards.

what i am trying to say is, you have to be very very very careful about how you do statistical analysis, so make sure you are generating the right results. a statement like "5 times more likely" is very ambiguous unless you know exacly how the analysis is performed, what are their baseline comparisons etc etc. so it is very easy to make errors in your analysis.

furthermore, it is quite easy to manipulate data so that it supports your perceptions. something like "a flush occurs 5 times as often in micro stakes because poor players chase it too often without getting the required odds" could easily be rewritten by someone who thinks poker is rigged as "poker is rigged because flushes occur 5 times more often"

do you see what i am getting at here?

c) The high stakes players are likely more poker-savvy (on the whole) and if they caught on they wouldnt play again, and there would go a massive chunk of their income. Also as i mentioned above, the people making these claims also believe the avg small stakes player dosn't care, if they know this is going on.

the reason i dont think it can be only at small stakes and not at larger ones is this. high stakes poker players weren't always at high stakes. they progressed through the ranks, they didn't just start off at the nosebleeds most of the time.

some of these players would have lots of hands at smaller stakes. and would have studied them meticulously (after all, this is pretty important if you are a pro)

don't you think some of these people would have noticed this?

[AJG]

I reiterate, I am not endorsing these views, although I am passing them along, which can be seen as endorsment, yes...

Yeah I get all of what you've said, and actually the link I provided to hand history files includes a post about research someone did, basically uncovering just theses kinds of tendencies (lower stakes chasing flushes etc)...

[Edit: with the 5-7 card thing, I meant comparing stats from best 5 of 7 card games like HE, and 5 card only games like Draw. IF, they are capable, and IF they even did this, you'd expect they wouldnt make such amatuer mistakes]

And the words '5 times more likely..." was me basically paraphrasing... I will track down the site I found this on....

But as I said, I dont really beleive it is rigged.... When I worked at the casino I used to get asked all thetime "Do they really have magnets under the roulette wheels?" and other crap like that, so i know people are paranoid about it...

Maybe i was wrong to even post that originally, i dunno, I was only drawing attention to what some out there in cyber-space are saying.

I DO know, that in the early days of online poker, people found a flaw (and exploited it) with the random number generation algorithm, because it was purely software, hence NOT random [Edit: and also limited in the number of unique 'decks' it can produce, which lead to the exploit], but that problem has been solved by using custom built rng hardware that uses external sources of randomness, like radioactivity etc...

[maccatak11]

what purpose would it serve to rig lower stakes games. Nobody, even at lower stakes thinks "yes i got a straight flush that beat quads, im going to play this site more often than poker stars'

Why would any site like FT want people to think they are rigged - it would kill the action at higher stakes games, which given the high publicity these games have had lately, clearly draws players to lower stakes games.

One might think that more cooler type hands might mean bigger pots and therefore a bigger rake in ring games, but most have capped rake anyway (unless im mistaken) so this also would not make much of a difference.

Every story, comment, perception etc that i have ever seen casting doubt about the integrity of online poker has been a terrible player who thinks the only reason that they lose a hand or lose money is because the site is rigged, not because of their bad play.


In live games, you will often hear people say comments like 'gee lots of flushes tonight' or 'we have seen three's a lot tonight'. In a live game, people better understand statistical variation or 'the luck of the deal', but instead of accepting this premise in online environments, people assume that it is rigged.


Again, what possible advantage is it for any online site to rig any of their games?? Im sure that the lure of 'more exciting hands' is going to draw far fewer punters than a site that is fair and just.

[AJG]

Hmmm, almost sorry I even mentioned anything about this now, as it seems you are trying to convince me of something I dont need convincing of...
I mainly mentioned in the first place cos i read some things that made me think twice about the whole thing, but not to change my mind...