For the die hards

AMYBR · January 2011

I've spent much of the last day or 2 reading the back catalogue of this forum. Its an intresting read in bulk. People play online poker because they are introduced to the game, feel like they can win and are willing to put their money where their mouth is right?

But then people have the experiences they have and become frustrated. This area 51 is full of people venting their frustrations and describing high ranges of very improbable beats. They dont seem to be arguing or looking to bring down the system, merely venting their disbelief in unison. But then there's people on the other side of the fence who seem to basically telling people "suck it up", "play through it" and the like without really hearing whats being said.

I have my own thoughts and opinions which I've already put out in another thread, so wont go into it here. I'm just curious about the "die-hards" who just simply wont let it enter their mind that something to do with internet poker is "iffy". Do they really believe that such huge business is beyond tampering or corruption? Even that matter aside, does the bot and software tweaks not give pause for thought? I dont pretend to know either way. I am a moderately successful live poker player. I travel to games that suit my BR. But my style is abit Negranue-ish. I like to talk and get a strong feel for my opponents and have more than 15 seconds to make decisions. Because that is where I feel I am strongist is why I dont commit fully to online play.

On a slight sidenote - I have only ever been to two casino's that offered a sign up bonus and even then it was £10. I do find it curious that online sites offer all this free money to join, especially up until 2008ish where your double up bonus was instant, rather than it being released as it is now.

unknown_username · January 2011

always m y b r are you questioning the sites integrity cuz i dont no what your really onnabout,im just a reg player(not a winning player) and i find it sound brother..i am wasted so i might be misreading lol

AMYBR · January 2011

No not questioning the sites integrity, kind of went through all that in a different thread. I do question certain elements of the RNG etc though. What I'm really questioning is certain peoples standpoint that there is no room for potential corruption. Peoples responses to my other thread were so strong it was as though i'd insulted their mothers, and throughout all the threads there is that common flavour. I just want to know what makes certain people so irrevocably sure that their is no room for tampering. Is it because they just dont care enough about it to look too deeply or run so good that they dont care either way. The time we live in is a very mistrustful one, where there are perceived conspiracies and corruption everywhere you look. So why put so much faith in something that has a large potential to be corrupt? And why be react so strongly when that status quo is challenged?

unknown_username · January 2011

maybe cuz i do ok sumtimes, ive never questinoed it,dont get me wrong ive ad sum wild swings but ive only questioned my ability not the site

AMYBR · January 2011

Yeah I hear what you say and respect it (I played against you yesterday BTW

). But over a long enough time frame I just found I was getting it in good and being sucked out on in ever increasingly artistic ways. And I dont mean 60/40 good I mean anywhere from 82 - 97/18 - 3 good. But you're right, the second you stop looking at your own game also (i.e. questioning ability) you're fighting a battle on all fronts

RedHouse · January 2011

A potential for corruption is not confirmation of corruption. Every poker site in the world has been bombarded with the kind of conspiracy theories that you will have read on this forum.

My stance has always been that with all the people who seem to believe it's rigged, i'v got to believe that at least a few of them have recorded hands / winning percentages over a substantial number of hands, looking for that anomaly in the amount of beats they have received.

I'v never seen the results from such a study published, which suggests one of two things are true:

Either i'm wrong and no one has ever done such a study (unlikely given the passion of the debates witnessed).
Or they have and the results were not what they were looking for.

AMYBR · January 2011

Well 1st hand I can weigh in on that. I had a big bankroll at FT, but went on a ridiculous swing where I lost aliitle over 23k. Being a poker player is, in part, how i define myself. I try and learn everything I can and keep track of as much as I can. I pretty much have that obsessive compulsive mind that seems to connect with poker. So I took the numbers away from the table and the math gave me the only answer i needed. Only speaking for myself (so I dont expect to be attacked) the odds layed for sessions in concurrant hands had stopped being improbable and simply become impossible. I would gove you some figures but i seriously think I'd lose all credibility. I approached FT with a 10k hand history and accompanying odds laid and they started off pretty nice, talking of statiscal variance and swings. But I pushed the issue and they quickly became quite threatening, threataning to close my account and pull what was left in the account, which they are legally entitled to do. (On a side note the money we hold in our poker accounts is always in danger, by international law we dont have much of a legal claim to it - partly why American legislation stands for online poker).

So I have to admit my perceptions are coloured by these events but I have a deep understanding of the math behind poker, as I'm sure most of you all do. I just can't release the feeling that what we see over and over is so far from probable to be simply incorrect.

unknown_username · January 2011

i look at it this way,its a people game and nobody can tell what other people are gonna do...unless you think the other people are in on it..which i dont if im honest

unknown_username · January 2011

In Response to Re: For the die hards:

Well 1st hand I can weigh in on that. I had a big bankroll at FT, but went on a ridiculous swing where I lost aliitle over 23k. Being a poker player is, in part, how i define myself. I try and learn everything I can and keep track of as much as I can. I pretty much have that obsessive compulsive mind that seems to connect with poker. So I took the numbers away from the table and the math gave me the only answer i needed. Only speaking for myself (so I dont expect to be attacked) the odds layed for sessions in concurrant hands had stopped being improbable and simply become impossible. I would gove you some figures but i seriously think I'd lose all credibility. I approached FT with a 10k hand history and accompanying odds laid and they started off pretty nice, talking of statiscal variance and swings. But I pushed the issue and they quickly became quite threatening, threataning to close my account and pull what was left in the account, which they are legally entitled to do. (On a side note the money we hold in our poker accounts is always in danger, by international law we dont have much of a legal claim to it - partly why American legislation stands for online poker). So I have to admit my perceptions are coloured by these events but I have a deep understanding of the math behind poker, as I'm sure most of you all do. I just can't release the feeling that what we see over and over is so far from probable to be simply incorrect.
Posted by AMYBR

You talk a lot of sense and try to make a reasonable argument, but I think you might be wasting your time.

The argument is usually made that it would be far too complicated to generate false outcomes in order to somehow fix the game against any individual or individuals and that it would be corrupt of the site to do so. This is true in part, but only in part, the truth appears to be rather different. Most players don't want to believe that this or any other site could or would use any method other than a totally random deal, and that is understandable. Unfortunately when someone attempts to have a proper discussion regarding this subject, they are assumed to be 3 slates short of a good roof. I have made my thoughts known on what I observe in on-line poker in general and the changes I have seen over the past 8 years or so, and had a bit of a drubbing for it. It's a shame that when someone else attempts to open a discussion with their observations they get derided by a small number of people.

Most people believe that the RNG is infallible and produces random cards in a split second from 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,404,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations. As I understand it this isn't possible because even a 128-bit system which can handle 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,770,000,000 combinations is still only capable of handling .0000000000001% of all possible deck sequences. A software code has to be included to compensate for the shortfall. The problem with this scenario is that skilled players would dominate the game (this was the case in the early days of on-line poker) because the RNG cannot produce sufficient hands. To overcome this shortfall the second generation of RNG's used a constant shuffle technique which did not predetermine the deck. This soon became undesirable as the outcome was less than equitable since one person could theoretically win pot after pot regardless of their starting hands. One site that used this was pokerroom.com (now closed). This technique also did not produce enough random hands and was considered unfair to all players. The present generation software used in online poker today has far more sophistication in seeding the random number using white noise generators and 64-bit hierarchy to produce a larger variety of hands and ( here's the contentious bit) it has a mathmatical function known as 'Equitable Distribution' added. This new technique was brought in at the insistence of several Licensing Organisations in order to produce fair outcomes for all players. Multiple subroutines and sub-programs are written into the online poker software in an attempt to produce a ‘fair’ game within the limitations of the RNG's ability.

This all a bit difficult to get one's head round I know, but as I understand it, all players are given a fair game based on predetermined outcomes from a pseudo-random RNG. That doesn't mean it's random and depending on your interpretation of the word fair, it doesn't necessarily mean it's 'fair' .... just 'fair to all.'

And 'fair to all' makes very good business sense because it levels the playing field and keeps the merry-go-round of players turning that much longer.

LOL_RAISE · January 2011

the main reason why i dont believe it is because it just makes no logical sense for them to do it.

tournaments: the fee & rake is payed right at the start so why would the poker site care how long it continues to run for.

cash games: the rake gets capped so fast at nl100 and above that it makes no difference to set up lots of action boards that make people lose their money.(nl100 and higher is where the vast majority of most poker sites income comes from) or do you think the RNG is less rigged at different stakes?

and reputation: if/when they got found out(which wouldnt be impossible e.g ex employee p*ssed off they were sacked etc) they would lose the vast majority of their players and pretty much fold in on themselves.

unknown_username · January 2011

In Response to Re: For the die hards:

the main reason why i dont believe it is because it just makes no logical sense for them to do it. tournaments: the fee & rake is payed right at the start so why would the poker site care how long it continues to run for. cash games: the rake gets capped so fast at nl100 and above that it makes no difference to set up lots of action boards that make people lose their money.(nl100 and higher is where the vast majority of most poker sites income comes from) or do you think the RNG is less rigged at different stakes? and reputation: if/when they got found out(which wouldnt be impossible e.g ex employee p*ssed off they were sacked etc) they would lose the vast majority of their players and pretty much fold in on themselves.
Posted by LOL_RAISE

It makes a lot of both logical and financial sense.

Tournaments - The site earns money by charging rake - the quicker players exit a tournament they are likely to buy into another one.

Cash - By equalising the skill factor the money available to lesser skilled players goes further and therefore produces more rake. The more skilled players can still be profitable but the rake is substantially increased.

As far as the staff and probably even the suits are concerned they wouldn't know.

demondave · January 2011

In Response to Re: For the die hards:

Well 1st hand I can weigh in on that. I had a big bankroll at FT, but went on a ridiculous swing where I lost aliitle over 23k. Being a poker player is, in part, how i define myself. I try and learn everything I can and keep track of as much as I can. I pretty much have that obsessive compulsive mind that seems to connect with poker. So I took the numbers away from the table and the math gave me the only answer i needed. Only speaking for myself (so I dont expect to be attacked) the odds layed for sessions in concurrant hands had stopped being improbable and simply become impossible. I would gove you some figures but i seriously think I'd lose all credibility. I approached FT with a 10k hand history and accompanying odds laid and they started off pretty nice, talking of statiscal variance and swings. But I pushed the issue and they quickly became quite threatening, threataning to close my account and pull what was left in the account, which they are legally entitled to do. (On a side note the money we hold in our poker accounts is always in danger, by international law we dont have much of a legal claim to it - partly why American legislation stands for online poker). So I have to admit my perceptions are coloured by these events but I have a deep understanding of the math behind poker, as I'm sure most of you all do. I just can't release the feeling that what we see over and over is so far from probable to be simply incorrect.
Posted by AMYBR

You think on-line poker is dodgy and at one point you had over 23k in your FT account, something smells fishy and im not talking about low stake players on here.

AMYBR · January 2011

Again attacking the individual rather than the subjuect matter. Your belief is totally unimportant to me.

Also much of online poker sites income comes from holding such vast sums of other peoples money for an undetermined period of time. This money just doesnt sit there. It's invested and gains revenue on its own basis. An online site recently commented that if all its customers pulled their money at the same time, they would have to borrow heavily to cover it.

If RNG's didnt provide a "fair" game to all then in reality all the money would naturally filter upwards over time, no?
How would they make multi-level profit then.

murphey · January 2011

In Response to Re: For the die hards:

maybe cuz i do ok sumtimes, ive never questinoed it,dont get me wrong ive ad sum wild swings but ive only questioned my ability not the site
Posted by stokefc

here here at last a voice may it be herd loud and clear all over this site very well said

LOL_RAISE · January 2011

In Response to Re: For the die hards:

Cash - By equalising the skill factor the money available to lesser skilled players goes further and therefore produces more rake. The more skilled players can still be profitable but the rake is substantially increased.
Posted by elsadog

and how exactly do they equalise the skill factor. if the deck is rigged to set up action boards and big hands to create more rake then all the players will experience this and they will still have the same skill edge just with higher variance. or are you saying that poker sites mark losing players accounts as fishies and rig the deck in their favour so they lose less money? (therefore play longer = more rake)

i can see your point about tournaments however

unknown_username · January 2011

In Response to Re: For the die hards:

In Response to Re: For the die hards : and how exactly do they equalise the skill factor. if the deck is rigged to set up action boards and big hands to create more rake then all the players will experience this and they will still have the same skill edge just with higher variance. or are you saying that poker sites mark losing players accounts as fishies and rig the deck in their favour so they lose less money? (therefore play longer = more rake) i can see your point about tournaments however
Posted by LOL_RAISE

Firstly, I didn't say they do, I said they could.

Action hands in cash games wouldn't increase the rake substantially if at all. Equalising the skills at the table would. The question of how the cards are shuffled is clouded as I outlined above, but the question of what happens after the shuffle relates to equalising skills. For example if a table of 6 players has 2 skilful players and 4 lesser skilled players, eventually all the monies would end up with the more skilled. The question of how long it takes for this to happen relates directly to the amount of rake generated. With a little imagination it's not difficult to see that a little help for the lesser skilled will keep the total volume of cash at the table rotating for a longer period and therefore increase the percentage of rake to cash available.

An interesting point when reading a leading site's Certificate of Conformity is that the certifying body doesn't go beyond the shuffle in it's certification. What happens to those cards and how they are delivered to the table is strangely omitted although there is mention of it producing a fair game to all players. As mentioned before the cards are taken from pre-determined card sequences and therefore the outcome of each deal/sequence is a known factor before they are presented to each player at the table.

Final point you said in your post ''if the deck is rigged'' ........... it isn't, otherwise it wouldn't pass the checks on (apparent) randomness. The RNG does the best job it can, within it's limitations, of producing a pseudo-random shuffle of pre-determined card sequences ( in short it picks one from many). The question mark is over the what happens to those sequences after the shuffle and how they are allocated to the table.

For the die hards

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