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The greed of online poker..
Time and time again the age old arguement of is online poker rigged rear's it's ugly head,is it or isn't it is what everybody wants to know,at the moment there is no way to prove either way only arguments for and against.
Now for the last few months i have not played on skypoker whilst myself and a few poker buddies have tried a few experiments with online poker(if you are only reading this because you think these experiments will prove online poker is rigged stop reading now it is pretty much near imposible to prove with 100% certainty unless some top level programmer comes forward and spills the beans on it.IF it is rigged that is.
THE NEWBIE EXPERIMENT
It is often quoted that newbies will run good so we decided to test this theory,three of us deposited into a new sit the sum of £50 each the first night we all ran steady 1 of us played sng 1 tournements and the other cash,results were cash slightly down,2 buy ins down,sng 2 buy ins up.Nothing unusual here so we all decided to play sng for 1 week(on seperate tables and different times normaly due to work commitments)the results were great we were all running like god winning a good percentage of races etc.By the end of week 1 each one of us was sat on a bank roll between £140-£212 showing there was a skill element involved as we all played the same number of sng for the sake of the experiment but we all agreed we ran good.
2nd Week
we agreed to play cash games again for a set time period.
Steady start i made 60% of my buy in first night and the other two made 150% and 35% so all good.
night 2 onwards up to saturday lunch time it was run good again and by saturday lunchtime my roll had gone up from £163 to £281.60 a large gain i was playing great wahooo so too were my friends finnaly we had it beat.
3rd week
back to sng,oh hwo the mighty fallen ive gone from winning 1 in 2 to bearly 1 in 6 god i won 6 on the bounce the first week i can't win a sng for nothing even had a guy down to 600 chips to my 11400 and could not get him unreal what am i doing wrong not sure but i know my other friends aren't doing well either only winning between 1in 4 and 1 in 5 the bank roll is edging down so we all agree to load another £50 in another site on a different network and this is where it gets intersting as the results for all 3 of us worked out pretty much the same run good for a while beat city when we seemed to top out between £220 and £300.
We have now done this with 4 different sites and the results are pretty much similar from all 4 so i stand by my newbie run good experiment,although you will still get the same argument against it like you try harder when you start somewhere new or variance will come soon enough just strange how variance allways seems to rear it head after a few weeks of run good or i instantly loose intrest in my games and money too remember at the this point too.
So is it wild coincidence or something else only way you guys will know is by trying for yourself.
but at the end of the day best to remember 99% of us online players will run it the rake merry go round at some point where your cash gets passed on to the rake etc till you run dry.It's genius really win a bit loose a bit more reload rinse and repeat the only winner being the rake.Of course you will get your regular defenders claiming all is good becasue they win and of cousre the do but is it just coincidence that these guys defend the site to the death maybe just maybe they feel they will be looked after in the back of there mind becasue as they say the more bad players on here the better for them and there profits so why come preaching about your game surely it would be better and more profitable to leave you to sink.
So after all this can i prove online poker is rigged NO of course not but we could prove the run good theory if enough of us try it which would be a massive start in either proving or disproving dependent upon results and on the upside if mine and my friends results are anything to go by you may just make yourself a few bob along the way too but remember when you move to the next site make sure it's not on the same poker network as the others ie. stanley james is on the same as sadbrokes micro gaming network only one from this network etc.
so if you try it post here and let me know how you get on GOOD LUCK.
Now for the last few months i have not played on skypoker whilst myself and a few poker buddies have tried a few experiments with online poker(if you are only reading this because you think these experiments will prove online poker is rigged stop reading now it is pretty much near imposible to prove with 100% certainty unless some top level programmer comes forward and spills the beans on it.IF it is rigged that is.
THE NEWBIE EXPERIMENT
It is often quoted that newbies will run good so we decided to test this theory,three of us deposited into a new sit the sum of £50 each the first night we all ran steady 1 of us played sng 1 tournements and the other cash,results were cash slightly down,2 buy ins down,sng 2 buy ins up.Nothing unusual here so we all decided to play sng for 1 week(on seperate tables and different times normaly due to work commitments)the results were great we were all running like god winning a good percentage of races etc.By the end of week 1 each one of us was sat on a bank roll between £140-£212 showing there was a skill element involved as we all played the same number of sng for the sake of the experiment but we all agreed we ran good.
2nd Week
we agreed to play cash games again for a set time period.
Steady start i made 60% of my buy in first night and the other two made 150% and 35% so all good.
night 2 onwards up to saturday lunch time it was run good again and by saturday lunchtime my roll had gone up from £163 to £281.60 a large gain i was playing great wahooo so too were my friends finnaly we had it beat.
3rd week
back to sng,oh hwo the mighty fallen ive gone from winning 1 in 2 to bearly 1 in 6 god i won 6 on the bounce the first week i can't win a sng for nothing even had a guy down to 600 chips to my 11400 and could not get him unreal what am i doing wrong not sure but i know my other friends aren't doing well either only winning between 1in 4 and 1 in 5 the bank roll is edging down so we all agree to load another £50 in another site on a different network and this is where it gets intersting as the results for all 3 of us worked out pretty much the same run good for a while beat city when we seemed to top out between £220 and £300.
We have now done this with 4 different sites and the results are pretty much similar from all 4 so i stand by my newbie run good experiment,although you will still get the same argument against it like you try harder when you start somewhere new or variance will come soon enough just strange how variance allways seems to rear it head after a few weeks of run good or i instantly loose intrest in my games and money too remember at the this point too.
So is it wild coincidence or something else only way you guys will know is by trying for yourself.
but at the end of the day best to remember 99% of us online players will run it the rake merry go round at some point where your cash gets passed on to the rake etc till you run dry.It's genius really win a bit loose a bit more reload rinse and repeat the only winner being the rake.Of course you will get your regular defenders claiming all is good becasue they win and of cousre the do but is it just coincidence that these guys defend the site to the death maybe just maybe they feel they will be looked after in the back of there mind becasue as they say the more bad players on here the better for them and there profits so why come preaching about your game surely it would be better and more profitable to leave you to sink.
So after all this can i prove online poker is rigged NO of course not but we could prove the run good theory if enough of us try it which would be a massive start in either proving or disproving dependent upon results and on the upside if mine and my friends results are anything to go by you may just make yourself a few bob along the way too but remember when you move to the next site make sure it's not on the same poker network as the others ie. stanley james is on the same as sadbrokes micro gaming network only one from this network etc.
so if you try it post here and let me know how you get on GOOD LUCK.
Comments
dohhhhhhhh why does it bother you so much what other peoples opinions are it does not affect you at all but you allways jumpt to the defence surely you have better things to do like making money on poker becasue for some one who wins so much you spend an awful lot of time in here i don't know how you fit it all in.
Mostly what is interesting for me is that you and a few friends in your community discussed this and set about seeing if you could compare trends, which obviously means that these were the trends that you suspected you'd see (as would many.
Respect for not whinging/whining or moaning and setting out to do something relatively quantifiable.
It could be argued that it would give the newbie a taste of success, an inflated opinion of their own ability and hope for the future. This would likely give more incentive to the newbie to continue, re-deposit and possibly become hooked on the game, rather than an unsuccessful and expensive first venture into online poker.
As far as the graph Dohhhhhh has put up. well this person has obviously improved to the point of profitability. That's not unusual and wouldn't be impossible if the scenario the OP proposes were true. As I said earlier, the talented players will still profit over time and the rest will not. The profit they make may be reduced but overall they would still win.
As for the sample size, well it is rather small as the OP understands only too well. Dohhhhh's numbers are pie in the sky and he knows it.
In summary: Could it be as the OP suspects? Well it certainly could and there would seem to be very sound financial reasons if were so. Whether it is or not is anybody's guess for as the OP says - it will probably never be proved one way or the other. This was an interesting post by Dalty.
how is this strange, you run above expectation, then you run below expectation.. you cant expect to run good forever unless you're called muse12
oh and if you are convinced of this, just make a new account at a different site every 2 weeks and you will be a millionaire in no time
lol-raise it is not about running above expectation or below it is the fact that everyone so far in the group has run above expectation initialy surely if all was well this would not be the case some would and some would not i did not post in my original post about other little experiments that have took place like a couple of players opening double accounts ie one in the wifes names and playing on sites where they have not won in a while and playing the two accounts at seperate times during the day suprisingly they were a poker genius again on the new account but could not get a sniff on the old one this being the same player playing there same game but with two very different results.but as stated this does not prove nothing as sample size is not large enough which is fully understood but if more people try the newbie theory we may find out more.(in no way am i advising double accounting as this is not strictly legit you must only play your own account not your partners my friends took a risk that was there choice and i am in way advising this)
i do not disagree with dohhhhhhh a good player will allways improve there game and win because if everyone lost no one would play and far less people would bother with poker if every site they joined initialy they got battered on due to lack of skill which is why i feel the luck factor is increased initialy.
Regarding your post i found it interesting. I don't disagree with it in principle. My experience of UB would support your views whilst noting that the run good factor doesn't support maniac play and therefore is not indiscriminate.
I actually used to joke in the chatbox occasionally that player X runs like a new depositor.
I remain open to the possibility of such things to the point that i wouldn't be surprised if they were ever proved correct one day. I simultaneously acknowledge however that i may also be a paranoid moron whose perceptions are being scrambled by erroneous thought processes.
That should reasonably cover the options
this is very true we may all be paranoid which is why it would be interesting to see other peoples experiances of this theory,and yes your correct it does not support maniac play at all but you do tend to run at a better percentage of wins on your races.
Posted by dalty
In some ways i find it interesting to think about the views of the non-sceptics/supporters of poker industry ethics.
I guess they are not very interested in the mechanics of manufacturing consent ( generally ).
If i said something like, " It's a good job they weren't alive in 1930's Germany ", i would anticipate an indignant response.
Also a statement like, " The vast majority of human history supports a perspective that suggests there is little or no relation between finance and corruption," could equally cause derision.
It is impossible for these people to be naive.
People in the main seem to be fixed and polarised in opposition on this issue.
In the absence of concrete evidence one way or the other the only satisfactory conclusion to be made is " I can't be certain. "
It's good to be open minded. But as Howard Devoto once sang, " My mind it ain't so open, that anything can crawl right in."
Logic isn't that simple.
Posted by BLACK_MASS
nobody can be certain in life about anything apart from one thing and we all know what that is!! but we all know that in life those at the top will try to decieve those at the bottom and as the old saying goes wherever there's money there's fiddles lol.
So query . . . is online poker rigged to favour newly signed up players? The ability to do it is certainly there, as is the incentive; it's in the operator's best interests for players to return and play at higher level tables and in tourney's with greater buy-ins.
I've argued before that despite both of the above factors, those who run online poker sites are making so much from the rake and buy-ins they've really got no reason to run the business risk of rigging things. Doesn't mean they wouldn't do it of course.
As he admits, the tale given by the OP doesn't provide any sound evidence of any tampering with the game, and is purely anecdotal. But at some point, there must be sufficient amounts of anecdotal evidence to provide at least some basis for thinking things are not as they should be - the old adege that "there's no smoke without fire" has been in use for a very long time. Problem is, even if the issue was thoroughly investigated, because of the technology in use (as someone has stated) only a programming expert, who examined the underlying code in great detail, would really be able to tell - the rest of us just have to take the word of the operators that the random number generator is truely random. I did once see some casino software (virtual card game as it happens) that was being touted with the line that you can "set" the payout rate anywhere from 70%-99.5% - so how could that be achieved without tampering with the underlying RNG??
I think the findings of the independent certification bodies that supposedly check the integrity of the RNG can be taken with a large pinch of salt, as I don't believe they have the technical capacity, or are willing to spend the money necessary to buy it in, to do the job properly. No different from the online casino licences issued by the Gaming Authority of Alderney not being worth the paper they're written on - opportunist job creation if there ever was such a thing. The chances of them taking action against anyone abusing their "licence" priviledges is zero.
So we just have to make our own judgements based on our own first, and second hand experience.
The real greed of online poker is in the rake (in my case c16%) or the SNG buy-ins - that on this site are a minimum of 10%. Compare that with the worst HE on a gaming floor - 5.2% on casino stud poker - and you can see why there's no need to fiddle, It's interesting that in Atlantic City, the gaming commission has banned the use of the Big 6/8 bets on craps tables as they're considered them to be unfair to punters with a HE of 9.09% (interesting though that the hard ways prop bets are up to 16.67 for rolling a "7" ??).
As for the graph that was put forward as proof that players can improve their game to a point where they consistently turn a profit playing poker . . . well, the less said the better - statistically insignificant sample and heavily skewed by what looks to be a single instance (presumably a big tourney win). Unfortunately, due to the variance factors profit at any one point in time doesn't necessarily mean consistently playing a winning game. I made a profit playing roulette once, so does that mean the 37 notched wheel can be beaten??? I think not.
Good cards everyone.
It's in the operators best interest to introduce players to the feel good factor of winning. It could be viewed as a psychological control mechanism. After all poker is gambling and gambling can be addictive to susceptible people.