WVUforREDSKINS Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 I am a good poker player who does very well in live games. In online poker though, I have lost money and suffered bad beats where the odds must have been over 500:1. This has happend numberous times. Found this doing some research and it makes sense. I know a programmer who helped create the Pokerstars shuffle.According to him it is rigged as its a necessary evil from a business standpoint. Though not rigged for a specific individual the hands are rigged in a number of ways.First and foremost,80% of players on poker stars are bad poker players,the kind that call big bets on low percentage hands,or will even raise themselves on a bad hand.If it fell according to normal percentages the poker sharks would drain such players and drain them real quick.If a bad player was contstantly losing his butt he would get frustrated and not come back.If the 80% of bad players all left,so goes 80% of the sites profits with them.By rigging it to dish alot of bad river beats it gives bad players who should have folded out a more even playing field with the sharks who would have taken all their cash.Its not just about bad beats either.Your chip count matters especially in tournies.In a tourney if you have the highest stack in the hand being played its programmed for the come from behind beats on 4th or river 70% of the time if the higher calls the lows all in.You'll see it happen constantly a hand where a lower chips goes all in preflop with pocket aces and a high stacks calls with like a 4 and 5 off suit.Flop dishes a 3rd ace with king and ten,last two cards 2 and 3 to give it to the higher chip caller with the ace to 5 straight.By rigging it this way it puts the odds with higher chips regardless of who had the percentages to win but keeps it so in the long run all the low chip callers do get some hits to block the arguement its rigged.Thats the key is to rig it at a certain percentage this way a trend don't happen all the time,the low chips can still hit the high chip at 30% to quell any arguement that its plain out rigged for the high chip (which technically it is if its going to give it to him 70% of the time regardless of what high chips came in with).You'll also notice if you pay attention that the first 4 cards flopped are often two of two different suits to leave flush possibilities for multiple hands going into the river,and often these also have a straight draw potential in their to keep the max amount in the hand betting big.Many times that final river card in these situations will dish a flush but with a card that also gave another caller his straight.Its by design this is not a coincidence.The program is alot more complicated then people even realize. The endorsements of this site are paid for endorsements with the companies taking poker stars at their word of how the shuffle works,these companies didn't pay any programmer to comb through the program and actually see how the shuffle happens in reality.I asked the exact same question to him as people here ask,why would they risk rigging it if where people could figure it out and stop playing there.He said "Simply put,the general masses are really stupid and are willing to trust any business unless there is clear cut proof of rigging.As long as the low chips don't get bad beat every single hand they all in they can't claim its always rigged for high chips,as long as bad river fish don't win on the river everytime people can't say the rivers are rigged so thats why you rig it at a certain percentage so its not really able to be proven cause anyone can win the hand even if the percentages are fixed based on chip count and table action as opposed to the percentages based on the cards.He even told me of a time the program hit a glitch and all tournies for the day had to be shut down while they figured out what happened with the program.In dealing its usual drama hands to keep table action high in a tourney,the program miscalculated and threw a 5th ace.I actually looked it up on search engines to see if anyone ever spoke of this and found a screen shot of the tourney he was talking about http:/wtfpokerstars.ytmnd.com. They had to fine tune the program to make sure it didn't misread whats left in the deck again but the rigged drama flops remain in play,thats part was never altered.I asked him how they could get away with it if they were caught red handed,explanation "Well if people who saw it want an explanation its simple,tell them it was a hacker who compromised the shuffle and make the guy who got the five aces sign up with a new screen name and inform him if he talks about what happened in game rooms,specifically mentioning that the 5th ace came from poker stars end and not from some program he was using,he would be banned". So to sum it up they rig the site cause they know they can and its not just to make a few bucks,over the course of a year the way its programmed it generates them multi millions more in profits and its done in a way that can look questionable too many but can never really be proven.They bank on the majority trusting them unless actual positive proof can be shown its rigged (which it never can be unless a hacker got into their program and actually spelled it out for us exactly how the shuffle is working).If you read message boards all over the web you will see they made the right gamble cause the majority of people stick up for them and say "its not rigged,that would be stupid what could they gain from that?" The answer is they gain alot from that and by keeping it rigged specifically by a certain percentage to give the bad rivers and such,its kept so that the sharks can't take all the bad players money but at the same time the sharks will still get their own share of wins to keep everyone happy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 I think your assumption is fairly accurate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ancalagon the Black Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 I don't know about that, but I can say I just got bad-beat three times in a row out of a tournament. (Three hands in a row: I had AA, beat by K7 all in; I had KQs, beat by QTo all in; I went all in with A8s and got beat when someone called me with J6s.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WVUforREDSKINS Posted November 20, 2007 Author Share Posted November 20, 2007 Another reason I might be having bad luck is simply because I am not putting enough money on to start with. I always play low stakes (never higher than 25/50c blinds) because I have never put more than $60 dollars to start with. I have turned $60 into $500 before. But overall I get called by terrible cards with the nut straight after the flop and lose to 4 of a kind or a full house on some ubsurd turn and river. Incredibly frustrating when I know I am the better player. I don't know what some people are thinking when they make these calls. I wish there was a place near DC that I could go to and play at live tables. As far as I know, Atlantic City is the closest place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosher Ham Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 You just figuring this out ? haha. There are games in DC you just have to know the right people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjcdaman Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Suck at Poker, but I'll kick some ass in Euchre and Spades . . . with a decent partner of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G.A.C.O.L.B. Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Suck at Poker, but I'll kick some ass in Euchre and Spades . . . with a decent partner of course. I got you in spades. And bones ftw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moviedude25 Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 These games are rigged. It was proven: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_Poker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mufumonk Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Another reason I might be having bad luck is simply because I am not putting enough money on to start with. I always play low stakes (never higher than 25/50c blinds) because I have never put more than $60 dollars to start with. I have turned $60 into $500 before. But overall I get called by terrible cards with the nut straight after the flop and lose to 4 of a kind or a full house on some ubsurd turn and river. Incredibly frustrating when I know I am the better player. I don't know what some people are thinking when they make these calls. I wish there was a place near DC that I could go to and play at live tables. As far as I know, Atlantic City is the closest place. This is your problem right here. It doesn't matter if you play online or at a casino. When you play stakes that low you are going to get tons of donkeys playing hands they have no business being in and sucking out a 5 percenter. One thing I've learned from playing low stakes is that you are going to beat yourself by slow playing big hands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hokie4redskins Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 It is ABSOLUTELY rigged. I probably got beat with quads by higher quads or straight flushes at least 15 times. My straight flushes got beat by royal flushes at least five times. That's one in a billion. Point is, I had probably 20 of the worst possible, nearly ZERO probability, bad beats in online play. And this was a time span over two months. It would've been a miracle to get 20 bad beats in three lifetimes in live play. Seriously. Haven't played online since. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aREDSKIN Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 No question it's rigged. When 85% of the time the is an Ace or a pair on the board it's FIXED. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Mike Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 There are several independent poker news sites on line, do a search. If you have a story you should take it to one of them. They cover cheating and fraud cases. I read one story where a former owner or something had access to a back door where he could see others cards and he was busted. The first problem with your theory is that the shuffle affects everyone the same so no one gets an advantage. They all are playing with the same odds. The second is that odds are an insanely fickle thing. Play enough hands and the odds are you will see almost any combination. A random number generator does not know what the last hand was or the last fifty. It just knows the raw odds of that roll or shuffle. Something about a physical shuffle of real cards seems to dampen this affect (my own opinion) but you still see strange things sometimes. Once at a party I was playing poker with friends and four of us kept betting into the pot like we had the nuts. I don't remember the exact play and I don't have the time to tell it all but in the end, no one backed down and when it came time to turn over the cards we all had the same hand... Q 9. I have a photo of it somewhere. Bottom line, do online casinos cheat? Maybe some do. But the shuffle is as much art as science and I think they do the best they can to match the behavior of real, physical cards. :2cents: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Mike Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Another reason I might be having bad luck is simply because I am not putting enough money on to start with. I always play low stakes (never higher than 25/50c blinds) because I have never put more than $60 dollars to start with. I have turned $60 into $500 before. But overall I get called by terrible cards with the nut straight after the flop and lose to 4 of a kind or a full house on some ubsurd turn and river. Incredibly frustrating when I know I am the better player. I don't know what some people are thinking when they make these calls. I wish there was a place near DC that I could go to and play at live tables. As far as I know, Atlantic City is the closest place. Yeah. That's a classic. In the long run you will do better pushing people out of hands that you have good odds to win. Slow playing is fine when you have the nuts or are playing one person but if you don't and enough players are hanging around, the odds are one of them is going to get lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RLeVan Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 That's just the game of poker. Unless you can pinpoint someone playing like they're reading you're hole cards, a bad beat is a bad beat. Low stakes games have more of them like Mike said. Poker is kinda like driving a car. Nobody admits they're a bad driver and they usually blame the cop for pulling them over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexey Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 These games are rigged. It was proven:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_Poker Being able to see other people's cards is not the same as shuffle order. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henry Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 I stopped playing online poker years ago. Too many maniacs who got lucky too often. I wouldn't be suprised to learn it was rigged to maximize profits to the site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexey Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Unfortunately statistics are generally counter-intuitive for humans. Anonymous programmer who "helped create" the shuffle probably has some great evidence that it's rigged. Players who had an unlikely thing happen to them will surely appreciate all the times the likely thing happened just as much. and it's not like addictiveness of variable ratio reinforcement schedule needs any reinforcement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moviedude25 Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Being able to see other people's cards is not the same as shuffle order. Oh I'm sorry I guess its not whatever you said it was but the fact remains that its been proved that these sites cheat its users. The title thread was "Im really starting to think online poker is rigged". Well stop thinking it is rigged and start believing it. That is what is important here, not what kind of cheating it is :doh: And for the record I never said it was shuffle order when I posted here If you want an honest game then play only live games. If you want to be cheated then play online. Its that simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WVUforREDSKINS Posted November 20, 2007 Author Share Posted November 20, 2007 Glad im not the only one who, at the very least, truly believes there is something fishy about these online sites. I'm done with it!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexey Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Oh I'm sorry I guess its not whatever you said it was but the fact remains that its been proved that these sites cheat its users. The title thread was "Im really starting to think online poker is rigged". Well stop thinking it is rigged and start believing it. That is what is important here, not what kind of cheating it is :doh: And for the record I never said it was shuffle order when I posted here If you want an honest game then play only live games. If you want to be cheated then play online. Its that simple. Yes, I just wanted to point out that changing card order would be much, much harder to pull off (comparing to displaying information to unauthorised users without changing anything) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KingGibbs Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 I can see the website owners laughing their ass off everytime they get a new registration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
National Defense Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 its totally rigged to encourage heavy betting action, which in turn leads users (especially new ones) to get more enjoyment out of their poker experience. the odds of making an inside str8 or hitting trips on the river are much less in jokerstars than in real life-but would you bet it? how many times have you seen royal flushes in live poker, and how many times do they come up on joker stars? i would never play for real $ on these sites, but they are fine for play games Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warhead36 Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 OMG I won't even get into all my horrifically bad beats on Full Tilt Poker. Just disgusting. My guess is that it's rigged so first time players always seem to get a little luckier and win, thus making them think it's easier to win $ before they eventually lose their winnings(and thus more profit via rakes goes to the system). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WVUforREDSKINS Posted November 21, 2007 Author Share Posted November 21, 2007 its totally rigged to encourage heavy betting action, which in turn leads users (especially new ones) to get more enjoyment out of their poker experience. the odds of making an inside str8 or hitting trips on the river are much less in jokerstars than in real life-but would you bet it? how many times have you seen royal flushes in live poker, and how many times do they come up on joker stars? i would never play for real $ on these sites, but they are fine for play games I have had several straight flushes, and once I lost to a higher straight flush. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CurseReversed Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 Honestly I have been playing online poker for 4-5 years now and although I have taken some tremendous beats, I find it to be relatively consistent with the ratios and playing experience in live poker. I can understand how making subtle altercations to the card program could induce results that would benefit the casinos. But from what I understand these shuffling programs are EXPENSIVE and are usually bought from a third party programmer who supplies several casinos. I could be wrong about this though as this is just what I have heard from several locations. These online casino's make so much money as it is, they are raking in money hand over fist, it doesnt seem rational for a smart business man to risk the future of his entire buisness just to skew the odds slightly in a manor to give him just a little more money. If it were ever found out, say by an audit of someone who specializes in shuffling algorhythms, think of the amount of money they could be sued for. Doesnt seem realistic to me, especially for the larger online casinos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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