All Online Poker Sites Rigged

Mar 11, 2012 This is an investigative report, proving that online poker really is rigged. We sat down at several poker tables in a popular online poker room, and found solid proof that there's definitely.

Poker is a game of skill, with a small dollop of luck tossed in. Because of this (or perhaps in spite of it) there are many online poker players who have postulated a number of conspiracy theories about the game. A brief scan of a few poker forums will reveal plenty of cries of “the game was rigged!” and “I can’t win after I cash out.” As with most conspiracy theories, a reasonable explanation usually exists.

There are a variety of poker conspiracy theories that should simply be ignored. Let’s take a look at a few of these…

The Cash-out Curse

One of the most popular and ridiculous poker conspiracy theories that you’ll find on message boards and poker forums is the cash-out curse. This conspiracy theory presumes that a player who cashes out some of his money from an online poker site will experience a horrible losing streak when he returns to play. The theory figures that a “curse flag” will be placed on the poker player’s account, singling them out to be dealt bad beats.

What would be the motive for such a policy? Poker conspiracy theorists say that a poker room’s motivation for the cash-out curse is twofold: firstly, they’re trying to punish you for cashing out and discouraging you from cashing out in the future. Secondly, the card room hates it when players cash out and redistributing the money to other players allows the house to eventually receive the money through the rake. Although it may be possible to see the twisted logic in this sort of reasoning, the simple fact is that the online poker cash-out curse is not real.

Poker is a game of constant, volatile fluctuations - what we call variance. Typically, a player will cash out after experiencing a nice winning streak. The average casual player will have a few wins, look at their bankroll, and think “Hey! That’s enough cash for that new set of golf clubs I had my eye on.” When he returns to the play poker online, he returns with an inflated sense of his poker skills. He doesn’t feel like he can lose, and when he inevitably does, he cries about the cash-out curse.

The situation is worsened when an online poker player who has cashed out is over-confident and decides to move up in stakes, where more advanced poker players are waiting to take his or her money.

Bad Beats

A “bad beat” typically occurs when you’re playing poker and receive a strong hand after the flop. Despite your seemingly monstrous hand, another player calls with a weak draw and beats you by getting a lucky card on the turn and/or river. Although this is actually a rather common occurrence due to the luck component of the game, it has led several naive poker players to cry conspiracy theory.

The theory is that poker sites are rigged to ensure that weak players don’t lose all of their money to better poker players too quickly. This is because a bad poker player who lasts longer will lose more of his money to the rake instead of to another player. The conspiracy theory postulates that bad poker players have their playing sessions extended by the online card room intentionally, at the cost of bad beats for stronger players.

The reality of the situation, of course, is that bad beats occur naturally. Firstly, online poker players, especially those at the micro limits, tend to be weak, passive, and loose with their chips. When the overall quality of the game is very loose, with players playing far more hands than they should, there are bound to be situations where a bad player sees lucky cards and beats a better player. Bad beats even occur deep in the main event of the World Series of Poker. In addition, online poker is played at a much faster pace than live poker. It would stand to reason, then, that you’ll see many more bad beats.

Action Flops

This is another theory that is based on the online card room trying to make more money from the rake. The theory states that the online poker site intentionally deals flops that help multiple hands in order to build up the pots, and therefore increase the rake that the card room receives.

This conspiracy theory is also explained by the loose nature of online poker, particularly at the lower limits. With so many players seeing the flop, there are bound to be instances where the flop helps multiple poker hands. Comparing live poker to online poker, pots will often be larger and more players will be eager to pursue weaker hands.

Again, it’s important to remember the random nature of the way in which cards are dealt.

Random Number Generator (RNG) Dealing Systems

The random number generator (RNG) is the backbone of any online poker room. An understanding of how they work will help dispel any of the conspiracy theories you’ve read so far in this article. The purpose of a random number generator is to ensure that there are no biases and that cards are distributed in an unpredictable fashion.

You might be surprised to know, but it’s impossible for a computer to produce a truly random shuffle all on its own. An unpredictable external stimulus is required for a pseudo-random shuffle. Online poker sites have various ways of creating a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG), which rely on real world physical processes that are unpredictable. Examples include:

Combined mouse movements from players connected to the online poker room.
Thermal movements around the computer’s thermal entropy chip.

In many respects the online poker rooms go beyond what is actually necessary to create an unpredictable and random shuffle to provide a fair and unbiased playing environment. Using such methods also ensures a potential hacker cannot break or crack the random number generator.

Many of the conspiracy theories suggest that online poker rooms somehow fix their random number generators to produce certain results. The fact is that any attempt to create some kind of set of rules or decision engine into a random system would immediately invalidate the randomness – and a dysfunctional random number generator would be extremely easy to spot.

Also, let’s not forget that there are online poker players with hundreds of thousands of hand histories, saved in poker tracking software programs. These poker hand histories are regularly scrutinized by the poker playing community, and if there ever was some kind of “fix” by an online poker room, (that produced results that deviated beyond expected variance), it would be pounced upon immediately.

So, is Online Poker Rigged?

No, online poker is not rigged. The conspiracy theory presuming that online poker is in some way rigged is misconception that has been proliferated through poker forums and internet message boards. It’s human nature for a person who loses or has an unfortunate streak of poor luck to claim that the system was rigged, simply because it’s more difficult and uncomfortable to accept the fact that they were responsible for their own losses.

Players who continue to spout on about online poker being rigged (known as “rigtards”) are usually the same people who have a hard time accepting the fact that they might be a losing poker player. Instead of learning more about the game of poker and trying to improve their poker skills, they assume that system is working against them. It’s not!

By Tim Ryerson

Tim is from London, England and has been playing poker since the late 1990’s. He is the ‘Editor-in-Chief’ at Pokerology.com and is responsible for all the content on the website.

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07:58
24 Sep

(Photo: Pokerstars.com)

PokerStars remains without question the most popular online poker room out there even after all these years and attempts by other sites to dethrone it. And it is NOT even close - they have by far the best software optimized to enhance the experience of both the grinder and recreational player, the most variety of games, and the most traffic. PokerStars also has arguably the best support and until recently, the site run by Amaya even had some of the best rewards in the industry. Of course, this isn’t the case anymore since the Supernova Elite level is basically obsolete and just two weeks ago, the site announced a new major VIP Club revamp that could trim down the rewards even more.

Even so, nobody can really compete with PokerStars and that’s why it is the most beloved and yes, the most hated poker room on the internet. Many earned lots of money playing there but even more lost fortunes. And that’s where Fuckpokerstars.com comes in, a place dedicated to all those who lost their bankroll on PS and think that their RNG is rigged. But is it really? Or are those haters just sore losers who want to blame somebody other than themselves? And is this Fuckpokerstars.com worth mentioning? Well to some degree it is and you will have the read the next lines to find out why.

(Photo: Fuckpokerstars.com)

1.4 Million Hands And Some Pretty Interesting Results

Besides their countless horror hands that you can experience yourself by just grinding online poker and some very questionable plays in the process (basically how NOT to play your big hands), Fuckpokerstars.com made an interesting experiment tracking milions of tournaments on PokerStars and filtering only the situations in which two or more players were all-in preflop. The outcome was 1,360,000 tournament hands selected and analyzed carefully.

All those hands were grouped into four categories: 80% chances of winning the hand versus 20% - basically pairs vs. smaller pairs - 70% versus 30% - situations like Ace-King versus Ace-Queen so basically bigger kicker vs. smaller kicker or pair vs. one overcard - 60% versus 40% - two cards versus two smaller cards like Jack-Ten versus Seven-Eight - and flips close to 50% versus 50% - basically pair versus two overcards.

The results were somewhat interesting: the standard deviation - which is what one should expect based on statistics/mathematics minus the actual results - was well within limits in the coinflips and the 60/40 situations. In the 80/20 and 70/30 situations though, the deviation was off: in the pair vs. smaller pair situation, the overpair actually won 72.7% of the time which is indeed way under the expected 81%. In the 70/30 kind-of hands, the smaller kicker won the pot 41% of the time which is way above the expected 30%. According to Fuckpokerstars.com, over 475,000 70/30 hands were analyzed so this deviation seems to be something more than just plain-ol’ variance.

Moreover, in the Ax vs. Ax battles, the Ace with the smaller kicker won the hand 4% more than it should have been. And the Ax vs. pocket air battles, the Ax won at showdown 12% more often than what math usually tells us. Aces galore on PokerStars right?

Editor’s Take - The Truth Is Out There!

Well, for one who has played a fair amount of tournaments on PokerStars as of late, this is not quite news. Indeed, as you play more and more on PS, you start to believe that Ace with a higher kicker is actually more of a coinflip versus Ace with a lower kicker or that your big pocket pair doesn’t win often enough against the Ax type-of-hands where x is smaller than your pair (a standard 70/30 situation one might say). And yes, you would even agree that the action postflop is way over the limit - big hands running into bigger and bigger and bigger hands - compared to some other smaller online poker sites. But does this mean PokerStars is rigged? Or maybe, just maybe, our process thinking is actually flawed?

Yes, it is true, ALL online poker sites, including PS, need to be audited seriously by public organizations that actually care about the safety of its citizens and not by private companies based on some financial heavens like the Fuckpokerstars.com petition suggests. We all know scam sites like Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker were both audited by such private companies and let’s not forget what flaws their software had. But to call PokerStars scammy is way over-the-top. What we should do first is actually look in the mirror, study our play and see what we have actually done wrong and how we could have played a certain hand better. We actually remember a bad beat much clearer than a hand in which we cracked somebody’s Aces so maybe that’s why poker feels unfair sometimes.

Is Replay Poker Rigged

And since you want to play on the biggest poker site of them all, don't forget to think about variance as well - you will play MTTs on PokerStars against thousands of players so you will have to win many, many flips not to mention give several bad beats in the process to emerge victorious. However, if you play on a smaller site with only several hundred players per MTT, you will have to win way less hands in order to reach the top of the ladder. And if you think there’s too much action on PS, think of how many flops are dealt with every second of the day. Or maybe think of this year’s WSOP Main Event and it’s crazy action with many quads and big hands vs. Bigger hands situations.