More people about Online----Russ G
RussGe...@aol.com
Posted: 24 Sep 2008 08:59 AM CDT
I don't know who the first person was who claimed online poker was
rigged, but I'm pretty sure they're older than the Baby Jesus.
Unfortunately, the ubiquitous wolf-criers and Chicken Littles have
turned any claim that online poker is "rigged" into a bad joke in the
eyes of many people.
While the vast majority of accusations about boomswitches and
doomswitches are likely unfounded, the possibility of altered or
manipulated deals is real. If you play online poker seriously, I would
suggest that you approach any claims of nefariousness with a healthy
dose of skepticism - but also an open mind.
Today I wanted to talk about two recent 2+2 threads related to these
issues.
Triple Draw at PokerStars
According to this thread, with confirmation from PokerStars
representative Alex Scott, PokerStars has altered their deal in triple
draw.
In non-community card games, it's frequently possible to run out of
cards. For instance, if you play an 8-handed stud game, if every
player were to see the river it would require 56 cards (plus burn
cards). In a 6-handed triple draw game, theoretically speaking each
player could consume up to 20 cards each (drawing five cards on each
of the three draws), requiring potentially up to 120 cards total (plus
burn cards).
Now obviously we're never likely to see a legitimate hand of triple
draw that consumes anywhere near 120 cards. But occasionally more than
52 cards are consumed. In that case, the accepted protocol is to
reshuffle the muck and use the discards to complete all the draws.
PokerStars has chosen to alter this protocol slightly. They reshuffle
the muck as you would in a brick and mortar game, but they deal out
the cards such that no one will receive a card that they have
previously discarded. Presumably, before they deal a card to you, they
check to make sure you haven't gotten it already... and if you have,
then they deal you the next card.
Quoting Alex Scott:
I can confirm that this is correct. It is not possible to draw a card
which you have already discarded at PokerStars, even in Triple Draw.
and
It's not an error - the decision was made after much discussion and
consultation with Team PokerStars (in fact, the original suggestion
came from one of the most respected pros on the team). The theory is
that no player would want one of their previous discards back, but
there is no way to achieve that in a live game. Online, it's easy, so
why not do it?
I have to say, I think this is really quite a bad decision on
PokerStars's part. Here's why:
Online poker is designed as an explicit analog to brick and mortar
poker. In other words, by explicitly mimicking the look of a live game
(using the same deck, same table look, same deal, same betting
structures and rules, even going so far sometimes as to recreate fake
dealer boxes), online poker sites are also making implied assurances
that the game will behave like a live game as well. In other words,
that the cards will be dealt in a random manner and that each card is
equally likely.
In a live game you could (and would) never deal the cards according to
the rules PokerStars now uses for triple draw.
Therefore, this rule change betrays the implied assurance that
PokerStars accurately simulates live play.
I find Scott's shrugging rationalization bothersome: "The theory is
that no player would want one of their previous discards back..."
Well, no player wants to get dealt 7-2 in hold'em either. Maybe
PokerStars would be more fun if no one ever got dealt offsuit trash
hands.
Now one might quibble with my analogy in that removing offsuit trash
hands would have a huge effect on the game while this alteration to
the rules of triple draw is (admittedly) a pretty minor one. But I
think the difference between the two is in degree, but not in kind.
They are altering the deal to juice the game - albeit in an extremely
minor and subtle way.
If you are tempted to ask, "Why not? What harm could it do?" I would
ask, "Why?" If the change is minor and subtle, why make it at all? Why
break that implied principle that online poker should simulate live
poker for such a silly reason?
I see no reason to manipulate the deal in this way or any other for
any reason. Making players happier is a terrible reason to manipulate
the deal. Indeed, the rule change itself bothers me less than the
justification of it. The same justification could be made to support
other deal manipulations that could have effects the PokerStars people
don't fully comprehend... or that they do comprehend and benefit from.
In my opinion it's best not to open that can of worms at all.
A Doomswitch For Regulars?
PokerStars gets the finger in another 2+2 thread. This time some
regular posters are suggesting that they and some of their friends who
are also regular players experience significantly worse than expected
results in all-in pots. Basically the thread raises the question that
perhaps PokerStars has a built-in doomswitch designed to cut into the
winrates of successful regular players by intentionally screwing them
sometimes when it deals out cards in all-in pots.
I have seen no evidence thus far that convinces me in any way that
PokerStars has implemented this policy.
I don't really want to talk about the murmurings on 2+2 about
PokerStars and regular players because I have no documentation or
specific knowledge with which to pursue that topic. But I do want to
talk in more general terms about deal manipulation.
There's two things I'm pretty sure about:
Manipulating the deal in software is a nearly trivial task.
Poker rooms have both a short and long term financial incentive to
tweak the outcomes of hands.
The first point is relatively simple. Any logic that you can think of
regarding who should get what cards and how often and in what
situations these tweaks should occur can be translated relatively
easily into code. To implement most tweaks, it would require less than
one day of work for just one developer. If the code needs to be
hidden, that could take a little bit of doing, but there are numerous
available ways to hide code that are clever and nearly undetectable.
Simply put, it's entirely doable for any online poker room to "alter"
its deal in any way it sees fit and also to hide those changes
effectively from a standard, moderately thorough third party audit or
inspection.
Can they? Yes, they can.
Would they? In my opinion, they might.
No-limit hold'em is the most popular online poker game right now, and
online poker rooms are stuck spreading it whether they like it or not.
So far it's done well for poker rooms, but at the same time it's not a
perfect game from their perspective... assuming a perfect game would
generate the maximum possible revenue for them over the medium-to-long
term.
I've seen it suggested numerous times that online poker rooms would
like to see the "fish" come out better than they do in a typical
online no-limit game. The theory is that the longer the fish stay in
action, the more tables will be going at a time, and therefore the
more rake the cardroom will net.
I think the actual dynamics are a little more complex than that, but
it seems a relatively easy conclusion that there are some tweaks that
a cardroom could make to the game to improve its profitability.
Whether that might be tweaking the game to favor fish or some other
change, I think it's essentially undeniable that cardrooms do have
some financial interest in altering their games to improve
profitability.
So they can do it, and doing it (intelligently) would probably make
them more profitable. Sounds like something most businesses would jump
at. Yet we online poker players generally assume that no poker rooms
are, indeed, altering their deals. Why do we assume that?
Do we think the guys that own these sites would never stoop to
something so dishonest? Probably some owners are honest enough, but
obviously it's laughable to assume that all owners of online poker
rooms are cut from the most ethically upright cloth available.
Do we assume that the risk of getting caught wouldn't be worth the
extra profit? Many people do assume that, but I think the assumption
is flawed for two reasons. First, greed commonly overcomes common
sense. Even if it were true that the risk would be too risky, that's
not going to stop some people. Second, I don't think it's necessarily
true that it's too risky. If the tweaks were subtle enough, and
possibly if they were varied from time to time, it could be very
difficult to detect them to any reasonable level of confidence just by
analyzing collected hand histories. It's entirely possible they could
do it for years and years and never really risk getting caught.
Bottom line. Do I think online poker is rigged? Not really at the
moment. At least good players can still pull a very nice (and fairly
consistent) winrate out of the games. But there's probably some
cheating and botting that cuts into any regular player's winrate. And
there may be some subtle deal manipulation on some sites that also
cuts into regular players' winrates as well. I really don't know, and
frankly no one else does either.
I do know that manipulating the deal is relatively easy to do, and I
also know that it quite possibly could be profitable to cardrooms to
do it. Do I trust them not to try? Frankly, I don't.
I see no reason to strip naked and go running through the streets
screaming, "OMG IT'S RIGGED!!!1″ But I think it's entirely responsible
for all regular players to examine the data periodically and try to
uncover any irregularities. If you don't find anything, great. But I
won't be too shocked if one day we find out that someone, somewhere,
has been playing some tricks with the deck all these years.
Boise
OR..
THE EYE OF THE HURICANE..
.
The Virtual Haircut.
http://tinyurl.com/2lnl8o
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MMelia
Snipped---
>
> In non-community card games, it's frequently possible to run out of
> cards. For instance, if you play an 8-handed stud game, if every
> player were to see the river it would require 56 cards (plus burn
> cards). In a 6-handed triple draw game, theoretically speaking each
> player could consume up to 20 cards each (drawing five cards on each
> of the three draws), requiring potentially up to 120 cards total (plus
> burn cards).
>
Snipped---
There are no burn cards in online poker.
---
RecGroups : the community-oriented newsreader : www.recgroups.com
johnnyco...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> Manipulating The Deck In Online Poker
> the muck as you would in a brick and mortar game, but they deal out
> the cards such that no one will receive a card that they have
> previously discarded. Presumably, before they deal a card to you, they
> check to make sure you haven't gotten it already... and if you have,
> then they deal you the next card.
>
> Quoting Alex Scott:
>
> I can confirm that this is correct. It is not possible to draw a card
> which you have already discarded at PokerStars, even in Triple Draw.
>
> and
>
> It's not an error - the decision was made after much discussion and
> consultation with Team PokerStars (in fact, the original suggestion
> came from one of the most respected pros on the team). The theory is
> that no player would want one of their previous discards back, but
> there is no way to achieve that in a live game. Online, it's easy, so
> why not do it?
Don't know if this is true (sorry, not that I don't believe you, but
it is you afterall), but if it is, this is the stupidest thing I've
heard in a while. Obviously it completely changes the game. If I can
discard half of a pair and KNOW I'm not getting that card back ever?
(So now I have a 1/3 less chance of re-hitting that pair.) Also, if I
discard 3, then 2, I'm looking at 5 fewer bad cards that I could
possibly get??
Ranks right up there with the (live) show one-show both rule.
.
RussGe...@aol.com
> .- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
johnnyco...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> I didn't write it, nor am I the source.
>
Ok, but even you have to admit that at times you come across as the
love-child of a menage-a-trois between the boy who cried wolf, Chicken
Little and Oliver Stone.
.
John_Brian_K
> love-child of a menage-a-trois between the boy who cried wolf, Chicken
> Little and Oliver Stone.
This is pretty funny.
TIGERS World Series- 35, 45, 68, 84
RED WINGS Stanley Cups- 36, 37, 43, 50, 52, 54, 55, 97, 98, 02, 08
PISTONS Championships- 44, 45, 89, 90, 05
LIONS Superbowls- lol
BOOM byae
John
_______________________________________________________________________
Lute
being cheated by the sites:
I noticed when I first started playing online poker (this was true for
at least 3 sites), that my first table in any given game, I did well.
The "hook." After that, not so well. In other words, my first NLHE,
my first LHE, PLO, 7stud--- I did well in my first session at each one
of these. Thereafter, not so well.
If there is a way to generate, or track, "new" accounts, to see how
well they do in their first outing, and observe how, and whether, they
win, then you could make some statistically highly probable
conclusions.
Until then, I think I'll try your mention of running naked down the
street.
**********
On Sep 26, 1:09 am, "RussGeorg...@aol.com" <RussGeorg...@aol.com>
wrote:
igotskillz com
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