Online Poker Forum at Full Tilt Poker

ryan7962 · High Card Joined: 19 Aug 2005 Posts: 7

ok i have AA and i was in 2-4 nl game and raise to 20 i get one call other guy has q10 flop comes up like 2 9 q i go all in he calls with q 10 so he gets runner runner for a straight thats just so frustrating..... that was at pokerstars i dont like playing there any more

and on pokerroom i play heads up 1nl and i get kk raise and the guy raises me again so i go all in and he calls with aa that was the very first hand and it happened to me later on the next day....

sometimes i just think its rigged cause it always happens to me i dont know if it happens to anyone else which im sure it does but man it happens to me all the time however one thing i like about FTP is that once someone goes all in cash money games the cards are flipped unlike other poker sites which makes me thinks its like less rigged which i like

PlayingTheBoard · Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:55 pm Post subject:

Your KK losing to AA is not a bad beat...I guess maybe it's unfortunate that you were up against the single hand that can beat you preflop, but a bad beat is when a hand that has only a small percentage chance to win catches perfect and sucks out on you. The AA had you dominated from the outset (in which case had you won the hand, your suckout with KK would really have been no different than the player sucking out on your AA with QT).

Just have the level-headedness, and the bankroll, to face the inevitable bad beats that will come your way, shake them off, and keep making good, profitable decisions. Or have the self-awareness to realize you're going on tilt and get up and walk aawy for a while, so that you have time to settle down and refocus.

goodtime · Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 1:38 pm Post subject:

For the 1,237,043th time, Internet poker is NOT rigged. Pokerstars is DEFINITLEY not rigged. Neither is Pokerroom. I used to play a Pokerroom but now I play at Pokerstars and here.

KYThrill · High Card Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 2

I'm not going to say that online poker is rigged to favor one person over another, but I do think that online poker is unrealistic.

Just last week I played about 10,000 hands over the course of the week and I saw 22 quads hit (including an AA vs. KK with a KKA flop and another A on the river). The odds of quads being made by the river are 1:4125, but I was seeing them come every 1:455 hands! Not to mention how many times the quad hit was probably folded before it hit (1:4125 would be the odds when every player plays their hand all the way to the river; it's about 1:60,000 hands when you take into account players folding something like Q7 and then the flop come 777, so you never see the quads by the river).

Then quads just stopped coming (I've only seen them once in about another week and 15,000 more hands), but when they did, the flush became the next hand to hit. The day after this week long run, I played about 3000 hands. Around 70% of those hands were won with a flush. 75% of that 70% was a heart flush. I caught onto this after about 45 minutes and started playing any hand where I got dealt two hearts. I hit the flush every single one of those hands, and I only lost one hand because another player had been dealt two hearts and one was bigger.

I can go on and on with observations that I've logged and tracked that defy the odds (I mean what are the odds that you will see 8 straight flushes in one 10 player SNG during the first half hour? BTW I lost with a straight flush to a higher straight flush; i had suited connectors at the dummy end and the other guy has suited connectors at the top end).

Thanks to random chance, all these events are possible. However, I track these kind of anomlies daily that defy the odds of poker. Just look at how often people get AK, AQ, or AJ. If you are just looking to get AK, it should only happen every 1:36 hands. The odds of getting any one of those three hands is 1:6. But just watch and see how often AK, AQ, or AJ come up. The problem isn't that the odds are defied. It's that they are the norm and routinely defied. It's a daily occurance.

What is a true rarity is that the odds are upheld. So I don't think online poker is rigged for or against one player. But I'm not convinced that it is truely random either. If that were the case, then for every player that sees the kind of weirdness I see, there should be another player who watches 80% of the hands win with a high card, or something on the other end of the spectrum. They should be playing at a table where no one gets dealt high cards routinely to counter the tables where three or more players get dealt AK, AQ, AJ, KQ, etc. and it flops three face cards to boot. After all, only 16 cards in a 52 card deck are J or higher, so there is a better chance that no paint can come out, than there is of most or all of the paint to come out.

And if online poker isn't truely random, then why not? The technology exists to make it truely random. I was designing steady state components that were capable of generating truely random outputs that were more complex than dealing a 52 card deck (they were eventually tweaked by the end to not be truely random). The only reason I could see for it to not be truely random is that online poker rooms tweak it to not be truely random. I can see why too. Winning with a pair of A's isn't as exciting as beating a pair of A's by catching runner, runner to make three of a kind. Playing pocket 6's and winning after the river misses isn't as entertaining as hitting quads, and having all in action because somone else hit a boat at the same time.

Online poker is a form of home entertainment, so they have to compete with other types of entertainment in your home. This means the online game needs to be more exciting than it might otherwise be in a casino. This requires tweaking the odds a bit.

Vlad KGB · Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 11:00 am Post subject:

its not rigged. take a break, go outside, you might just be in a down swing right now. Luck fluctuates.

KYThrill · High Card Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 2

Oh, I'm not in a down swing. I'm up several hundred dollars. The last two weeks have been some of my best poker (especially after I won over $100 in a couple of SNG's after I realized that heart flushes were hitting everytime I had two hearts). I've been tracking online poker at a few places (Bodog, Ultimate Bet, Party Poker) in an attempt to perform my own analysis of how "random" these sites really are and how well they correspond to established poker odds in live games.

Like I was saying, I don't believe they are truely random. In a two year period, big hands occur between 5 to 10 times more frequently than the odds say they should. I'm not talking bad beats or software favoring a new player over a player who has withdrawn money, etc. I think their random number generators are seeded and that the seed values can be altered by the house.

I'm saying that if the game is rigged, its rigged so that big hands are dealt more often to entice more action and give a bigger sense of excitement. It's luck if you have one of those hands or not (or unlucky if you have a hand that is favored to win by traditional statistics).

I have only been a member of Full Tilt for about two weeks and I've only played a few games here (the software isn't my favorite), so I don't have enough data to say if Full Tilt's software is skewed as well.

One project that I have worked on is a set of digital dice. They are real dice that are blank on all sides but two. One face appears to have a six on it (the dots are metal though and serve as contacts for data transfer and recharging). The opposite has a display that lights up with the "number" you "rolled". They are weighted so that the display side always lands face up. You roll the dice and while they are in motion, a random number generator runs. When the dice stop moving, the generator stops and the value you rolled is displayed.

Initially it was truely random. If you "rolled" the dice a few millions times, you would end up with the exact same distribution as you would have with real dice. Therefore the odds were the same. When promoting this concept to casinos, the first thing they asked is if there was a way for the house to control the edge. I went back and added a way to seed the RNG so that the house could control the distribution. They could make a 7 occur less often, make snake eyes occur more often, etc. It's the same concept with slots. Casinos control how much or little the slots pay off, and they are looking for ways to incorporate this into other games (like craps).

So I know that US based casinos are not opposed to mucking with the randomness of a game if it gives them an edge. I'm sure casinos based overseas with no governing body are even more likely to muck with the randomness of their game.

And if you're ever in a casino two or three years from now and they are playing craps with digital dice, don't waste your money. Your odds of winning were bad enough with traditional dice and I can guarentee they will be worse with digital dice.

shweta · Four of a Kind Joined: 01 Sep 2005 Posts: 317

Good point KYThrill, I agree with you...I love how some people assume that these poker sites are so innocent and honest. It's a gambling site!! They are riding the poker wave right now and who knows when it will end, of course they would try and make as much as possible. I agree it wouldn't be targeted at any specific person but I have noticed that when it gets in the late phases of a SNG table the low stack people do tend to get good hands that lose...ie AA, KK, AK. Now do I think that the sites are definitely rigged, no. Do I think that the possibility is out there, yes.

luvdoinit · Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 3:57 pm Post subject:

KYThrill, Excellently written and obvisouly extremely well researched and thought out.

Poker IS entertainment which means there's money to be made. Baseball, Football, Basketball and Hockey have all changed rules (and continue consider doing so) in order to increase the number of points scored. Why? For the simple reason that higher scoring games attracts more viewers, more viewers means more MONEY!!

How can anyone believe the same does not hold true for internet poker!! More exciting hands means more interest/players. This holds true whether or not your in the hand or sitting the hand out and observing it.

After reading your post it makes me laugh all the more when people counter with a simple, internet poker cant possible be tampered with in any way. Especially when you state that a live Las Vegas Casino asked you if the digital dice results could be "LESS RANDOM". Or in my own words, RIGGED.

Since the question was asked by a Vegas casino which is seemingly strictly regulated by the Las Vegas Gaming Commission if the randomness could become not totally random. What in the world makes people believe that on line poker which is virtually totally run outside of the USA would not "FUDGE" the randomness even more! Especially when tens to hundreds of millions more in profit can me earned!!

luvdoinit · Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 4:14 pm Post subject:

Your statement about the digital dice made me think, isnt that the same as playing with loaded dice?!?! Only it's the house thats giving out the loaded dice and not a cheater sneaking them into the game. And doesn't that make the house the cheater!! But hey they have to get the money some how to keep building those multi Billion dollar casino's and have it profitable to do so.

Also profits could be down for the week so the casino's switch the digital dice to get the profits back up, thats done now with slot machines. The fact that it would be possible means to me that it WILL be done. Its just a matter of how much which is something we will never know.

I believe the digital dice will not go over well with the older players but be appealing to the younger ones (after all they are a digital generation) so the casino's with have both tables.

GripHoldOn · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 5:55 pm Post subject: Re:

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