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Been playing 3 weeks on Sky poker and cannot believe this.
So first post on here, so hi to everyone. Now so people understand where I am coming from I have been playing poker on and off for about 8 years signed up on pokerstar years ago and have played on there on many occassion in both cash and MTT, SNG etc etc etc.
Always had my reservation about playing online yet aftre a frioend said how he had done ok on sky poker I thought I would dip my toe back in at the tail end of last year. However after tonight it has reenforced why I should have just stayed away.
Have been called by some proper donks on sky poker tonight. AK made a straght and went all in in a MTT about 8 BB left so was the right call. An absolute fish who was about the same stack calls. 9 5 suited. Now bear in mind this has gone me open betting at 3x then half pot after the flop this donk just is a calling station. However guess what he makes is flush, hits runner runner.
AA broke by 72 off tonight. trip 2's
KQ trip K on flop broken by a full house becasue someone plays K2 off.
10 10 broken 5 times tonight even when on 2 occassion hitting trips.
Is it just me this does not feel like real poker. I have a good understanding about variance, pot odds etc. Yet these people are just calling wiht absolute rubbish and hitting every single time. Am I missing something here. I know you might say my bet sizing is off. but to give some insight generally when playing I ould go 3-5x pre flop followed by half pot ish followed by numerious different betting patterns depending on flop texture etc from there.
Now I am sure your going to say well this guy has had a bad night and just wants to moan about it. Thats not the case. I think I am not that bad a poker player tbh however I do not have the bank roll of some of these poeple, which is always going to restrain me. But the way these people are playing poker and winning is a joke. 3 hands even 10 hands I can understand however every hand I have played in tonight has gone the same way. People with absolute rubbish in there hand just calling all the way to the river and making it. Something just does not feel right.
One question I suppose that come from this is has sky poker had it's RNG (Random number generator) independantly inspected, like I know other sites have. (pokerstar and full tilt).
Becuase something just does not sit right here. Or is there some weighting system I am not aware of that weights in favour of certain players etc or newer players etc until you get to the higher stakes?
Any sensible answer always welcomed, and if your just wish to be stupid about it by flaming then please do not bother.
Cheers
ZG
Comments
As for the RNG, I don't think it's "audited" per se (ie someone independent of SkyPoker with the technical ability picking through the code to ensure there aren't any questionable routines built in), but the results over periods of time are statistically tested, ie over 1,000,000 hands the probabilities suggest an expected number of pairs to be dealt, and the actual number analysed to see that it falls within the statistical norms. How robust this analysis is, ie what is examined and what isn't as part of the audit, is an unknown. That's where the trust bit comes in - if you have genuine concerns over the integrity of the underlying software then, I think the short answer is to find somewhere else to play.
How many hands have you played so far on Sky?
Goethe is pretty much spot on imo,the micro levels are/can be a nightmare,i know....i play them.
mtt's i don't play so can't talk about them.
dym's can be beaten at micro and low stakes..i've done it.
the secret for me was to play very tight early on and plenty of tables..as many as 18/20
i've just started playing cash at the nl10 level this week in fact,and i am taking it more seriously this time,after all my earlier attempts have failed.
i thought i was a 1/2 decent player and could break even from my play and making some small money from c4p,
i y'day posted up some of my worst losing hands from my nights b4 session,and have had some excellent feed back from players here.
my mistakes are very obvious to them and now i've had a look at the hands again,i can fully understand why i had a £33 losing session.
maybe you could post up some hands and get them looked at,i'm not saying that you are playing bad or anything but it's just a thought.
don't know what else to suggest really.
i'm sure there must be a reason why u r struggling atm,even if it is simply variance,but i'm thinking there could be other factors too which when added together isn't going to be good for you.
gl
keep us informed as to what happens next and if things change at all.
dev
ages ago when i 1st began i was playing nl4 cash and breaking even.
one night i played nl10 and lost 7 from 7 all-ins pre-flop when i was holding either QQ KK or AA...
7 in a row.not to mention £70 which was a large part of my b/roll then.
as you can imagine...i wasn't too happy,putting it very mildly.
so ,2 and a bit years on and i'm back playing nl10 again.
this time my b/roll is much bigger,which i have built up mainly from playing £3.30 DYM's.
my point being,i've been where you are now,as have many other players.i've worked hard at building up my b/roll.
don't give up mate.if i can do it...so can you or anyone else for that matter.
it just takes discipline,some effort,patience and good b/roll management.
best of luck
dev
RNG checking
https://support.skypoker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/281/~/poker-fairness-policy
If these numbers were to continue over a larger sample then I wouldn't be surprised to see you losing because you're playing far too tight a range. If you're only seeing the flop 10% of the time and only seeing showdown 1% of the time, then I'd say it would be a surprise if you're actually winning as many as 1/3 of those showdowns. Only if you were always playing a really short stack would those showdown numbers be expected to rise, but in that case your tight play would see you losing alot of money regardless of your relatively high showdown numbers because you'd be blinded away.
If you're only seeing the flop with a super-narrow range of hands you make yourself extremely exploitable. Other players know that when you're in the hand, they can see the flop with more speculative hands and stack you on the occasioins that they make two-pair or better because you're not going to lay your overpair down. The times they don't make those strong hands, it's not a problem for them to just fold so you win a small pot.
It sounds very much as though your problems are of your own making and you need to open up your range a bit. If you only play the top 10% of pre-flop hands you're unlikely to ever be profitable. Of course you will suffer bad-beats just like everyone else but you'll also lose hands you perceive as bad beats because your big pre-flop hands are being cracked by players recognising how tight you are.
Playing in MTT's we all have to expect to lose. Even if you were a top player, your edge would not be huge. The same is true of all forms of poker and the edge that top players have is only visible over the course of tens or even hundreds of thousands of hands.
If it were that easy to win when you gamble,ther would be loads of millionaires out there.
Besides the skill you obtain from playing loads of Poker ,which will give you an edge over others,There is a lot of luck involved.
Try investigating Bio Rhytms and see what happens in this world we live in !
I have been gambling for over 50 years and speak from a bit of experience!
As for independent checking of the RNG, I think the party line from SkyPoker (reiterated by the mods regularly) is that the integrity of the RNG is already "independently certified". Of course, what testing is done as part of the independent certification, and whether there's any subset testing done, is an unknown - probably to most of the staff behind the scenes at SkyPoker as well. It wouldn't surprise me if the only person who did know was the person who's filed a copy of the audit plan, and contract to do it, in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet somewhere. I may be wrong, and perhaps this information is freely available to everyone who's involved with the running of the site? If that is the case, then to the best of my knowledge it hasn't been made public. There's also the cost consideration - who's going to pay to take up your offer, and why would they want to when they already do (for the same service)? There was a previous thread on a similar subject, but I think it was posted in Area 51 - and so along with all of the aliens it will have been archived on Mars somewhere.
As I've stated above, there's a lot of trust needed if choosing to play any game of chance online, and if you're not happy that you're getting a fair game, the simple answer is to vote with your feet. As someone once said to me when I was young, "if you don't trust someone, why would you do business with them?". A profound piece of advice I think.
Better cards in the future.
hand 2, you have less than 2 big blinds, you are gonna get called with any 2 cards here.
hand 3, same again, just over 2 bigs you will get called very very light especially if people have stacks that wont be damaged much.
i'd worry more about why you have ended up so short in these situations where people are calling you with any 2 than trying to find conspiracy theories
If you're short staked and on the point of saying aufweidersehen, then you're looking for the most likely best hand to jam with; possibly anything with a 50/50 or better odds is the one? So you'll play a hand with a 50% chance of going out, and a player with a big stack is always going to call, regardless of their hand, as the worst that can happen is their stack reduces by a small proportion but the return of knocking another player out of the running makes it a worthwhile gamble (I use the word deliberately). Even if you come off better, and double up, you're still short stacked and facing the same problem of being the short stacked player.
Reading your initial posting, you stated you've been playing poker for 8 years? Have you not been in similar situations before?
first things first, sky is a mainly brittish based company and works in very few markets outside the uk, stars 888 ftp etc are all multinational sites so its obvious why the player numbers differ.
no one has a divine right to be a winner at this game. the percentage of successful players who are long time winners is small (i cant be exact as i dont know). most will have worked on their game, by learning about proper bankroll management (this can be adopted to any level of stakes), some maths, situational play and picking up betting tells etc.
you complain about not getting the luck, well you said earlier you only have a sample size of 5000 hands, its a tiny sample to go on as i can play that many hands in a day, its down to short term varience im afraid and it will feel worse when you are in tourneys because it just takes 1 beat and your gone. if as descibed everyone had 2 bb then situation odds come into play you cant credit people for hands as there is just no play, it really is chips in and hope for the best as the odds say your opponent wont have a hand either.
if you are going to continue in tourneys i think you need to research a bit about tourney play, you should never be getting as low as 2 big blinds, you need to be making moves earlier to keep your head above water. if you have 2 bigs peop[le have the odds to call you regardless of their holdings because all likelyhood you dont have a hand, their J rag could easily be best or they have at least 35% chance of hitting best, i suggest you google for a p[oker odds calculator and put some of your hands into it to see the % chance that you have of winning are. i can gaurantee you will be suprised at how many times the odds say you will lose.
this isnt coming from a player who has a big bankroll, i play micro games but i am a winner, so dont think im preaching because i have a vast sum to play with
thru better judgement i posted on here, i'll leave you to believe what you want to. getting into this aint worthwhile as its seems you will always be cynical
Been here on sky for at least five years and it ain't the sky I joined.
You are absolutely right that the cards you see defy odds. .These hands are built for action. Not so obvious at high stakes because they see far less turns and rivers as they are up against better poker players who make it way to expensive to see a turn or a river.
In micro tourneys where most people are staying to the river come what may it does make you laugh when you see the cards come down.
Honestly you can predict the cards coming just by looking seeing peoples hole cards.
Typical hand aa all in, qq all in, a10 all in the flop is full of paint every time. Usually a10 makes the straight lol.
But that not giving anyone any advantage no one is given special treatment.
easy to design deal twelve cards and write and algorithm to ensure the flop hits 3 of the twelve cards dealt ready made for action. If you designed it where twelve cards are dealt and 4 or 5 hit the 12 dealt you would continually have rivers making massive differences to the outcome. hmmmm
Lol I like sky it is entertaining but I would never take it too seriously. Never win much never lose much so happy to be a conspiracy theorist. I predict we will lose area 51 if we ever get too close lol.
snorky