Another "is online poker fixed" thread.. reasons below!

Well, tonight has been a night of bad beats. One bad beat in a night will upset me and anger me.. but many is just plain unrealistic.

The first came as a surprise but happens.

in a $40 heads up match, I went all in with AK Pre flop. I got called with.. yes that's right.. Q2... Queen Two!!! Off suit? An all in, for $40, called by queen 2. Ok thats the fault of the player not the site.. though this angered me:
Flop was T45... Turn was 8. Guess what the river was? 2.

Ok that's one bad beat for $40.... so i thought, ok, I'll enter another $10 multi table with 200 odd players...

Down to the last 30.. (top 20 get money)... I went all in with KK... was called by A2. Flop?

A -- A -- A.



Fine fine, another bad beat.. so finally i entered a $5 sng just because I was annoyed. I got KQ suited. Raised. got called. Flop was JTQ. I go all in. He calls with A3. Have a guess what the river was? It was an ace.



I mean, ok every day people get river beats. But work out the odds of the events above happening? Less than 10% for each one. The odds of all 3 happening within one hour are ridiculously small! It doesn't happen! It just doesn't.

I play real life poker ALL the time. I may see one or 2 bad beats in a big game, but nothing like 3 in quick succession.

People will say "they're not as bad as..." and i agree, they're not as bad as some possible bad beats, but the point im making is the odds are NOT realistic on poker sites. If you play using odds it is easy to lose a lot of money through bad beats.

All of the above happened on noble poker. I will play our cardschat freerolls but that's it. I am sick of seeing ridiculous odds going for crap players. Its rubbish and maniacs take full advantage of it...

If you bet $100 and lose.. so you bet $200 and lose.. so you bet $400 and lose and keep going like this... the time you win you're going to get a lot, and the odds mean you will win sometime, so maniacs sit and do this and screw good players for christ sake.

Algorithms on poker sites suck! They seem TOO random that they become not random enough and odds are not realistic. If they were realistic then why do i NEVER see this type of event in ahome game.

All rubbish imo.

AK is ~68% favourite vs. Q2 preflop. It loses sometimes.
KK is ~71% favourite vs. A2 preflop. It loses sometimes.

..and his pair beat your straight? Wow, that is a bad beat. And entering tournaments "just because you're annoyed" really isn't a good idea...

gees thats nothing, suffered far more than that in a session

and its not really proof the sites are fixed is it ;]

Dorkus, first of all I made a typo LOL!!!!! So no I didnt have a straight.

Tbh, i'm just really angry. I don't think I played badly in those hands. Three times i was hot favourites. three times i got beaten and all three times it was for MY game.. not the other persons..

Grumble, I'm just saying you don't see it as much in real life.. its excentric online and thus unrealistic...

you do that sort of thing in real life, just as you play so many more hands in the same time online it appears to happen more frequently

Why?

1) Because you're seeing more hands in an equivalent time period online than in a live game.

2) Because online players are generally crappier than live game players, and will make stupid calls, thus increasing the potential for stupid suck outs. Also clicking a call or a raise button is easier for most than pushing chips into the middle, so online play is generally looser, especially at lower limits.

I'm writing this literally 10 minutes after being sucked out of a tourney on Stars with AQ vs. Q4s which turned a flush, so I know how you feel, but screaming "OMGFIX" isn't the answer.

I know screaming fix won't fix it.. and before I've backed up people like you who argue that it is a fix.. but part of the fix is the fact that there are more poor players in my opinion! A fix doesnt have to be a fixed algorithm, but just generally not realistic odds.

As for seeing more hands in time period... I dont agree. It takes a good 5 hours to play a home game £10 buy in for 8 players when it takes 3 hours ish for a $20 with 200 players? I mean ok in that 3 hours obviously there are more hands, but then again think of the amount of hands you'd see from playing in one tourmanet considering starting chips and blinds....

I disagree that seeing more hands is a suitable excuse. I have no way won for example "9 out of 10" times with a dominating hand.

Online players are crappier yes and it is so frustrating!!!! Clicking call/raise is easier than pushing chips in the middle yes, but for a $40 heads up match.. pressing call for an all in with a high card??? I mean come on man!!! That's ridiculous!

I just don't get it mate.... eveyrtime i play for money online, i'm aggressive with good cards and avoid bad ones, and every time i'm getting screwed through bad beats! It isn't good for the game. Too many "pro wannabes" who watch em online and think they raise with EVERY hand.. grrrrr

Maybe im just v angry and over reacting, but had a hard day at work :/

tighten up more then ;]

AK you generally assume if they call your probably going to be in a race situation, ok that guy was an idiot who got lucky

but if he is that bad you surely could beat him playing for smaller pots

I try to be tight but selectively aggressive. Big slick is a big hand. When raised high with AK or all in, you are going to be called likely by A something, K something or a lower pocket pair.. thus you will be favourites.

I started off by beating him for smaller pots which was the worst thing about it... one hand comes and it kills you.

I dno.. just gutted

Somebody had to lose.
If the site were rigged, I think one Ace would have done the trick.

There's a missing card here. Since you didn't splt I'm guessing the Turn was not a king. He beat you with a flush so he had at least 10 outs. Hardly improbable.


OK let's do.
Q2 vs AK = 47%
A2 vs KK = 29%
A3 vs KQ = 58%
Sorry Killer nothing even close to a bad beat here. As far as starting hands go the cards that were supposed to win did 1/3 of the time. In fact, you were the underdog on that last hand. The good news is that you can keep playing because the RNG Algorithm seems just fine.

Uhm....what?

Brilliant.

According to the % on poker listings it says(before the flop w/o knowing if the suits etc...):
AK is 68.6% to win over Q2
KK is 70.7% to beat A2
KQ is an underdog though at 41.5%

But even if they are full of BS (which I think they are) I enjoy playing and hope once and awhile to take advantage for myself. Today I saw a guy go in 4 times in a row with anything and win. 47 off suit, J4 off suit, AK suited and 38 off suit. All won. But he got knocked out 5 hands later

I got that number from Harrington on Holdem p.126. 2 higher cards vs 2 lower cards = 5 to 3.
I just ran it on my odds calculator and got about what you have, assuming no suits in common. 68% to 32% about 2 to 1.
Your Right Killer! That is a bad beat!

I mean, ok every day people get river beats. But work out the odds of the events above happening?
I play real life poker ALL the time. I may see one or 2 bad beats in a big game, but nothing like 3 in quick succession.



All of the above happened on noble poker.

so maniacs sit and do this and screw good players for christ sake.

Algorithms on poker sites suck! They seem TOO random that they become not random enough and odds are not realistic. If they were realistic then why do i NEVER see this type of event in ahome game.

[/quote] I have found no mater what levle you play at online Pepole play more hands more often than live games. Hands good players would never play , but I even see the good players play low potential hands .This will create these situations live ,or online . I have been at noble for about 6 weeks and find it to be one of those sites that have alot more chance players. In a live game (or not) you don't see the folded cards , online you see a lot of cards that would have been folded by an expert or smart player . I think if you take a deck of cards and deal face up about 50 or 100 hands you will see alot of winning hands that you would even see the blinds with.

Four Dogs.. I appreciate reading the large post but can't you see the follow up ones? First of all I made a typo where the cards meant I had a straight. I didn't. So the odds for that one are still under 50%.

Now I know they're not bad. I also said that if you cared to read carefully..

What I'm saying is 3 hands for all ins, 3 times i'm fav's... 3 times i lose. How come on the crucial hands the underdog seems to win a lot more than necessary. That is my point.

I also said I was just pretty angry thus the post. Would have appreciated it if you took time to read the other posts. Not just the first

TA

I guess what I find hard to swallow is that you play the CORRECT way and get the crap beat out of you by someone who makes a totally idiotic play. All in with Q2 heads up? In my real life games, I have lost to people who made an excellent semi-bluff. But there is a difference between making an excellent semi-bluff and doing something that you know should be completely against good common sense poker. Unfortunately, this seems to be the way in online poker.

Never one to shy away from another cup of kerosene for the open fire, what about the current Ultimate Bet "big hand jackpot" promotion? I can tell you that since this promotion began a week or so ago, I have caught probably a dozen straight flush draws on the flop. 4/5 of the straight flush with two cards to go. Two or three have been one shy of the Royal, which is going to net someone a jackpot if they hit it.

I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but I know I never saw anywhere near the number of straight flush draws showing up in my hands prior to the promotion. And, it has worked in keeping me in a few pots that I otherwise would muck after the turn. Thus increasing the rake...

Well i've played hour or 2 every night this week on Betfred, and i've seen 1 straight flush draw in that time so .........?

Those aren't the worst beats I've ever seen I'll tell you that.

I lost $160 (In a .50/1.00 room) in one night about a week ago with 3 pretty bad beats in row, the first of which is posted somewhere.

It's a part of the game, I haven't had hardly a bad beat in a long while except for a few suckouts that are bound to happen. One night of 'em doesn't show that a site is rigged. It happens. You're luck is off for that night. I haven't played until today actually. Needed some time to collect myself again. Now I'm back at it, and it doesn't bother me all that much because I know I'll have no problem getting it back.

Accept the bad beats that are going to happen now and then. There's no way around them. It's an essential part of poker. Sometimes you're the one who benefits from it, and no one complains when it's like that. How fun would poker be if you won every hand? Not very.

Maybe I'm making no point and just rambling...I can't tell...Happens sometimes...


JOn

Well, I dont know whether i QUITE agree with this line!

Hmmmm... where are those sites with the str8 flush's? I play at Ultimatebet and haven't seen that or plays like Merciless killer had. Sometimes you just get a run of bad luck and you have to wait it out. I would go and play freerolls till I feel that I am playing better, then go back to the money tables. Playing at the freerolls will give you a better perspective on how some of these fish play. It will make you a better player in the long run cause it will help you recognize these fish players at your table.

Everytime I play in tournys, I seem to suffer bad beats. I understand the way to avoid it is to be tight and not put yourself in those positions, but sometimes you have to be aggressive with big hands!!! As far as I was concerned, I wasn't going to be called by Q2.. and as I was, I knew I would lose it as that is always what happens.

It is predictable what will happen in circumstances on online poker. If it was random (and not too random).. this wouldn't be the case.

I still disagree with that online poker is like real life in the such of the way the cards are drawn out. It must also be considered that in real life it isn't AS random as when the cards are shuffled they are not shuffled as well and logically as an online algorithm. This actually changes the odds a lot in my opinion.

Ah well

If you made a typo and didn't have the straight than what did you really have?

9 instead of T so I had top pair after flop basically... when other guy had Ace high. had to catch ace only pretty much.. thats a good 7%ish

merciless...I started chuckling at how I could relate, not only to your bad beats but also at the huge odds against them happening in consession. In opposition to most of the replies, I agree with you. I have all sorts of conspiracy theories myself, but it may all come down to the fact that it may be impossible for a computer program to be TRUELY random. ??

When I find myself continually getting lousy cards and/or bad beats, I sign out and sign back in, several times if need be. It seems to work!

Thank you High Maintenance! Now i don't feel like a COMPLETE prat lol...

Its not like I'm bad at poker before anyone goes thinking I am. If you look at those hands I didnt make bad plays! They're plays I'd make and win in real tables...

I will start reserach into algorithms and the mathermatics of the random number generator. But just remember, NOTHING is random. If the cards are shuffled, and re suhffled, and re shuffled.. in real life they will be shuffled that way and the cards for the next hand will be because of that shuffle. We are used to playing and seeing the outcome of these hands.

Online, the "random number algorithm" shuffles the cards. As it is completely random, it randmoises the card order several times. This in fact makes the cards TOO random. That's why there are monster hands every few hands in online poker imo. Because when the cards are shuffled TOO much, we're going to see a lot of trips/flushes/straights as well as straight flush draws.

By shuffling them too much, it is in fact making it unrealistic and very different to real life poker. Think about it, the pro's who make millions in the world series of poker or whatever could enter 100$ buy ins every few hours and make a LOT that way, but they dont. Why? Sure theres the lack of interaction, but online poker is very different.

I would like to see how an online pro does in a WSOP tournament to be very honest...

(before people say "well you see online entries in finals at WSOP", yes indeed.. but for the amount of people that play online poker (and say they're pro), why's there only a few?)

Limit ring games/NL rings games fair enough. If you get a good game plan and sit tight to make money that's fine. BUt to play in multi tables for example is impossible to relate it to real life.

It is in fact impossible for anything to be truly random. In fact RNG are actually PRNG's or Psuedo Random Number Generators. The PRNG is really a very simple funcion avaialble to anyone. Why reinvent the wheel. The key to security is the SEED and the number of shuffling possibilities. All PRNG are primed with a hopefully secure number known as a seed or key. The early poker sites like Planet Poker, and Pure used a 32bit seed derived from the number of milliseconds since midnight, public knowledge, as the key to the shuffling algorythm. It could generate only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the possible ways a deck could be shuffled. These early sites were vulnerable to brute force attacks by hackers and it was possible once the seed was cracked to determine the sequence of cards to come. This is ancient history, with all poker sites now seeding the algorythim with 128 and 264 bit encryption, all possible shuffles are covered and the deck is reshuffled continuosly. The cards you see on-line are far more random than anything a human can reproduce. Maybe that's the problem.

Yes fourdog you are exactly spot on what I was trying to explain

THe problem is, it is implicating an unrealistic poker system so how can we treat the online game in the same respect as a real poker game? after all it is in fact a computer game in the sense that it is NOT based on reality.

I don't see where you're coming from. Once I started to get to the point where I started to think I was among the 'advanced' section of poker players (which I'm not saying is the best, but right above beginner and moderate) I started to see less and less of these. I used to not be able to make a bankroll go up for crap. It'd bob up in down depending on my bad beats and luck of the cards.

Now that my bankroll steadily climbs I see less and less of this, and a big part of it is folding when you have the feeling that someone happened to get one of those weird monster hands. I am, in fact, agreeing with you about seeing more monsters online, but I think that's mostly because of the speed of hands. Sometimes at a homegame you'll only play 4-5 hands in ten minutes, whereas online you can play 10-15+ hands in ten minutes, thus being able to see three times as many monsters. You've just gotta be aware.

You sort of have to expect more of them. When someone is going over the top of you again and again when you have that pocket pair that is higher than any of the board, you might just have to let go and realise maybe they hit their set or straight or something.

There's no reason to believe online poker is rigged anymore with the amount of amazing technology we have these days. Online poker has been around for so long now that it would have been detected by now if it were rigged.

Once again, I may have just rambled here, but my point might be somewhere in there. :P

jon

Jon. You are missing the point here....

Rather than saying it is purposly rigged, I am saying that the algorithm is simple too random it takes away realism which is why there are more monster hands.

In an 8 hour home tournament I see few straights and few flushes.... in a 2 hours online one you see loads.... that just doesnt make sense to your excuse of there are more hands played.

As for folding... when you got AK and you know/think the other person has Q2... you gna fold for example? How can you get a bad feeling they have better than you lol...

Also, it seems that it happens more pre flop rather than post flop where the play is made, and then the bad beat appears on the river.. That excludes your excuse of someone going over the top?

You're missing the point mate.

Can't treat online poker realistically as the cards that appear simply aren't realistically generated.

I know this feeling well. After multiple bad beats...take a moment to chill.

Its been over a day now

I am chilled but still believe algorithms are too random thus too many unrealistic situations as mentioned.

The jackpots are only being run on the Ultimatebet cash tables. Any tourney action (freeroll, real money, or sit-n-go) is excluded. And I'm not the only chatter at the Ultimatebet table who has noticed a substantial increase in the number of straight flush possibilities suddenly hitting the boards. I literally see 2 or 3 every session. Just odd that "nut" draws are falling out of the sky like raindrops with a big hand promo underway.

hehe def.

People say "its just because your looking for them" but i disagree. We all know the odds, so when we see so many flushes and straights in one game on one table... don't make sense to me Means the cards are shuffled too well they end up close together again :x