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Why Online Poker Is Rigged
If a poker site had a completely random deal, the good players over time would take money from the bad players. The bad players would become disillusioned and stop playing at that site.
The good players would only have themselves to play against - life would become a lot harder. They would leave the site to play where the bad players play. Result? End of that particular poker site.
This rule of online poker holds good for Sky as much as any other site. If you allow good players to take on average or bad players on an even basis, only the good players will win and the others will stop playing - which would be a disaster for any business.
Therefore you 'tweak' the deal to even out the 'luck' between good and bad players. Your player base stays roughly the same, generating the rake and tournament fees your business needs to make profits.
The only people able to prove this is happening are the software programmers and senior management within an online poker company.
Until some of these people have the courage to break cover and reveal what is really behind the deal, the rigging (and the dishonest shilling in poker forums) will carry on.
The good players would only have themselves to play against - life would become a lot harder. They would leave the site to play where the bad players play. Result? End of that particular poker site.
This rule of online poker holds good for Sky as much as any other site. If you allow good players to take on average or bad players on an even basis, only the good players will win and the others will stop playing - which would be a disaster for any business.
Therefore you 'tweak' the deal to even out the 'luck' between good and bad players. Your player base stays roughly the same, generating the rake and tournament fees your business needs to make profits.
The only people able to prove this is happening are the software programmers and senior management within an online poker company.
Until some of these people have the courage to break cover and reveal what is really behind the deal, the rigging (and the dishonest shilling in poker forums) will carry on.
Comments
i sit on a table with a player he gets ridiculously lucky on alot of hands has a huge chiplead on the table, however his played bad his got it in behind and sucked out....
so i go and sharkscope the player i see - in roi and - in profit.
i scope someone like supersnedd or elsadog or LJAMESL and the are all in profit. and + roi,
moral of the story over time bad players will lose.
But strangely enough there aren't any.
Very one sided and uninformed sir.
I'm the first to have a reasonable debate on this subject, but your points are naive and fundamentaly wrong.
for a lot of players poker is a recreational thing - if they make a profit great, if they don't they don't care.
"good" players will beat "bad" players over time.
only "site representatives"go from zero to millionaires - well I doubt they were site representatives when they started out! they would only become one once the site could see they were a very good and successful player otherwise why would they bother?
of course a poker site will "win" over time, they are a business after all and need to make a profit. otherwise there would be no sites at all!
Infact i can name a few but not off my head. A well known major site has Online sponsored pros and pros. Some of them play online and play under a little banner so people are away some will say team sitename and other will say team sitename online.
FWIW i dont have much faith when it comes to playing lesser players i believe that there is something wrong. But do i have evidence - no i dont, therefore i cant comment without my proof.
If you think it true dont you also think that in 12 years of online poker there has not been one disillusioned programmer,manager,lackey that has been peed of/sacked/made redundent that would of come out and told the "truth"?.
i dont know much about writing software but i cant see how it can make me a winning player just so i dont leave the site.
again if this were true surely it would then need to make me lose to a lesser player so he wont leave....and on and on?
point one....there are more than ten players on here that make £10k a month never mind3 months.
if i amassed 100k and then left the site it would not affect sky at all.
only 5% of players make a profit online so 95% are losing players anyway and mostly playing recreationaly.
most of the poker millionaires you are talking about started off winning big online then trying their luck live.
e.g....durr..trickett..cody...blom....vlampew..e.t.c
gl.dave
All the above statements are true.
A small percentage of players are able to produce a profit over a number of years. Most players cannot.
With regards to online players - There are a lot of winning and very profitable cash players who grind away multi-tabling and consistently beating the opposition. Apart from the nose-bleeed levels, these people remain largely unknown. With regards to mtt players very few can maintain the consistency to produce a profit year after year.
However some can and do. About 6 years ago a young guy used to watch all the top players on a particular site playing the ME tournaments. He began entering and did reasonably well for a time. Over the years he worked hard at his game and improved. He improved to the point that he regularly features in the worlds top ten mtt winners and has won millions. He isn't a site rep (although he now represents a site) and he certainly isn't in on the ''fiddle.'' He just worked out a winning strategy for mtts. That young guy was Chris Moorman and he is currently heading towards $10 million career earnings.
If your not winning then you're probably not good enough. Maybe you could be with more work and some dedication to the task. Poker in general is like the Sunday football leagues that run all over the country. The vast majority of players will never be good enough to play Premiership football - they just love the game and are happy to play at the level they are suited to.
as for the poker site winning over time - they win all the time - its called the rake - the original poster makes a fair point, the hands are not completly random, it is plain to see, I agree these sites should be for recreational purposes only. but, lets be honest and sensible poker sites are as straight as a corkscrew.
of course sites win all the time in terms of taking rake - it's a business.never said they didn't.
i was a losing player when i started and for a few months after, but after deciding to try and improve my game (and so get more enjoyment out of it) I knuckled down, took advice and am now winning. I am not good and have my share of losing sessions, but I've played enough on here to have the considered opinion that it is not rigged. Yes you see action flops/hands, but in number they are a minority to the number I fold pre/on the flop even when I am playing more than one table. If you play long enough you'll see them. I've even had a couple of Royals.
you'll have to wait for the book or maybe the deal with a paper!!
Would you want it to be entirely random, giving the same opportunity for success to freerolling, non-depositing players as to high-depositing players who generate lots of rake and tournament fees?
Or would you want it to give the impression of randomness while providing outcomes favourable to your business's profits?
What are the outcomes favourable to your business's profits?
Aren't they rewarding players who act in a way which generates income for you - such as making big deposits on your site and frequently paying rake and tournament fees?
What are outcomes unfavourable to your business's profits?
Aren't they wins for people who don't deposit sufficient amounts and fail to generate rake and tournament fees? Won't it hurt your business if these people gain large wins and withdraw?
How do you achieve the outcomes you wish?
The Random Number Generator programme is entirely in your hands. You can set it up to give you the results you desire. There is no meaningful scrutiny by a publicly accountable body. There will never be spot checks on your systems by outside agencies. All you have to do is give the appearance of randomness while operating in a far from random way.
What do you think the sites do?
Oh, and how many house players and bots operate on a poker site? I don't believe this happens on Sky, but I am sure it does on other major poker sites.
What do you think the purpose of these players is?
How do you know that PokerJoe from London who frequently cashes in big tournaments is an actual person? How do you know the winnings are not going straight back into the poker site's coffers?
He may be called PokerJoe one week and PokerBill the next - but 'he' is still a bot feeding winnings back to the house.
more players going out of tournys more rake when they enter to next one..
not rigged to any one idivdual.... good and bad... plenty of action hands for a reason, but EVERY ONLINE SITE does this...
It's also rigged in favour of the players with bigger bankrolls who generate more rake.
It's also rigged in favour of the big stacks in tournaments.
I think that's clear then *confused*
see the problem with all this is that the people who generate the most rake for money sky in cash games and/or tournamment fees they dont deposit lots of money...they withdraw money
A few weeks back I dealt AA v KK v QQ all in pre very first hand of a 10k freezeout.
You can't compare online to live, 6 max to 10 seater, on Sky poker you play 3 x the hands of a live game and add to that multitabling you will see far more action hands.
At DTD SPT Final very near bubble Yorkie74 was all in pre QQ v AT
Board came AQJ K K obv rigged!