Anyone else notice this?

OK, everyone claims poker sites are fair. I mean why would you put money into something you thought was unfair? Maybe cause you trust the word of the site director? Has anyone ever noticed this. You come into a table, there is maybe 1 or 2 large stacks. One is an aggersive player very, calls everything raises everything, pushes as hard as they can but always seems to catch. I try to believe it's a flip of the coin but sometimes I just can't accept that as a reason as to why everytime I call this person they hit it. Luck or not, I've noitced it more at freerolls or play money. Person calls big stack raises person next re-raises then big stack just goes all in and the lotto players join him and he wins. I sat at a table for 30 mins and every other hand the big stack got the pot putting him at like 60k I believe. Or what about all the quads and the fullhouses, I mean maybe it's just me but I find it so odd there can be so many, how can one player catch 4 boats in a 30 min period? Two of them were back to back. I guess it just seems odd being I play a lot of games offline and take notes during my games and then keep track online and compare and it just seems unfair at times. Maybe it's just me.

its just you ;]

Wow that sucks

I've been on both sides of this situation. Poker's a game with MANY ups and downs, good streaks and bad ones. I guess that's what makes it so much fun.

Yeah online u seem to get a lot of bad beats but i cant say to much as i have never played it at a casino just on the net.

Yesterday I went in with AKo in a game irl. Flop came AA8. I started betting and 'til the river it was a guy and me. There was no flush, no straight, and I had trips with K high. Thought I had it. He shows me... pocket 8's.

Very next hand I was left shortstacked. Got Q9s, went in. Flop came QQ3. I went all-in. Same guy called. Turn came J, river came another 3. He had pocket 3's.

Right after he got me out he got 3 guys out in a 4-way all-in Q-high flush vs K-high flush vs A-high flush vs his full house.

Hell, and I was the damn croupier.

aww man i would be pissed, when i playa t the casino i dont get bad beats because they actually shuffle cards good online its all numbers n shit some of them dont have the proper math n sometimes it favor a player

at some sites ive noticed that it mostly depends on what seat ur sitting in they same to get all the good cards early and then again late on in games maybe it just me im not sure

I can feel the pain. As a math teacher, still have to believe in the odds and luck, it just happens, a few weeks back on noble, I had in 4 straight hands, AA, KK, AA and AKo, it was unreal (naturally, I won LOTS!), of course it was only a tournament so didn't take some real cash on them.

it always happens in freerolls cos it iant hteir money they are playing with. but they tend to stop playing stupid when the money places come closer and then they play for real. At this point they get tight too, good tiem to blind steal

Yah, I have seem some pretty shady call by the large stacks and they always seem to win in online games. Like they'll be chasing straights, or flushes. I had one experience where i had pocket kings in a heads up the very first hand. The guy I was playing went all in, in an attempt to steal my blind. So I called. HE had 8, 9 suited in spades. On the flop came a King, and two other cards, one which was a spade. The turn and the river were spades and he ended up beating my three kings with a flush. It was complete bullocks..

-Deuce

only 13 different cards,4 different suits.... anything can happen.

It could be something and nothing but at some poker rooms I do seem to do better at certain seats, i've been sat on the right hand side of the table and got nothing but winning hands, been moved over to the left on another table and got nothing, over the course of a game being moved around 15 times this happened every time I was moved, if I got the right I did good, if I got the left I just folded, it's just how it happens sometimes.

In regards to the topic in question I have also been on both sides of this, one particular time was just last week, I was playing a "sit-n-go" tourney, only for $2.00 and I hit the winning hand 14 times in a row, one person even accused me of working for the site, it was very unreal. The prime example in this particular game was it came to my Big Blind and I was dealt 7 and 2 offsuit, would have folded this in a second, but I checked and two more 7's and a 2 flopped, needless to say I won this tourney and Pissed all the rest off, it's good when it happens to you, it's just not as often as you see it happen to someone else.
Bad Beats : tell me about em, worse I ever had was last year, I had 4 Q's and the river gave the other guy 4 A's, that's poker
Good luck all

Tony ( The Webmaster )

it seems to certain seats at the tables on pokerstars cause i always seem to get the lousy 1 lol

The only real edge I've discovered (because of the overall randomness of poker), is to be extremely selective about seating..i.e., never sitting in front of the largest stack, wait for seats to open that u want, etc. In a tourney, you get what what you get so you have to adjust your approach dramatically if you get an unfavorable seat. Also, I search for players that are loose by name. I record them in the search for feature after I've watched them squander and call all the way down for who knows what reason, then search for them when i play live $ to exploit that advantage. If you collect like 20 of them, you always have a target instead of wandering aimlessly.

Cards have a lot to do with luck...Betting has absolutely nothing to do with luck.

I think thats just you because I see the same things no matter where there at

Ya Ive come to notice that many freerolls always high stack you it seems. I think they give the people with the higher stacks the better cards to make the tournament go faster.

Anyone who thinks the online shuffles are rigged is half right. They are actually random, however the site software evaluates every shuffle to see if there are enough strong hands to make the game exciting and bring conflict to the game. If not, the shuffle is discarded and the next random shuffle is produced. That's why there are so many monster hands in online poker. The sites want quick and fatal conflicts to speed up play... the faster your game or tourney is over, the more games they can run ($$$). The more monster hands out there, the more excitement. If online poker used every single random shuffle produced by the software, it would be so boring no one would play.

These are the simple facts of online play... we simply have to accept it or quit playing.

Popcash you are talking out of your bottom, this is not a "fact", you just made it up. The "poker sites are rigged" debate has been done to death and no-one's ever found convincing evidence that any are... the reason no-one would rig their own site being that they would just go out of business immediately when people found out, as well as probably being convicted of fraud. Poker involves luck and % chances of winning, and that's what they are, %ages. 1% of the time your aces will be cracked three times in a row, which will feel like a bad beat but it's guaranteed to happen.

*head explodes*

So ummmm.
Let's pretend for just a second we live in la-la land and what you say is true.
Exactly what happens when a programmer for this 'action-packed' poker site decides to leave?
Do they pay him off, or just kill him?

the one i helped program keeps me drugged up pretty well. anyone wanna buy some vicodin and/or lithium?

Kill 'em of course...

How come no one ever notices the 4 hour sessions where the table never sees better than a flush?

It's really interesting how quick you all are to defend the poker sites.

First, let me clarify... I didn't say the sites are rigged. I said they use selective shuffling (there's a big difference). There's nothing illegal about selective shuffling and the sites have nothing to worry about from former employees "exposing" anything. Selective shuffles ARE random... they don't decide who wins or loses... they just guarantee lots of exciting hands and lots of conflict, keeping players in hands so someone will take a beat.

I live in Vegas and I've been playing poker for a very long time (way before it was cool) in cash games and tournaments all over town. I'm also a programmer by trade and have written quite a few shuffling and poker simulation routines since online poker went big. In addition, 5 of my friends and I have run 6 separate experiments where we played at the same online table, recording our cards for 500 hands each session, playing to the river each hand to see the full compliment of community cards. Our findings were very consistent... the number of straights, flushes, boats and quads was staggering (staggering!) compared to the simulations and our live game experience.

I'm not posting all this to start some big fight. Take it any way you like. As for me, I'll be out here in la-la land playing and winning at live poker. No offense to any of you fine players out there.

Having said all that, you may now continue with your insults. Have a nice life.

...and I'll be here playing and winning at online poker. Take care.

You mean there's no bluffing in online poker because every "shuffle" has "strong hands"? Thank God! Now I can throw away everything but my Aces and Kings. The other cards are so ugly anyway.

I would disagree with this post for a few primary reasons --

1. What motivation is there to rig the deck? In almost all limits you're going to cap the rake and yes number of hands per hour is certainly important but not if people believe that their play has no impact on the outcome.

2. I've seen 1000's of hands folded to a single moderate raise. This is not consistent with a desire to increase action flops.

3. The number of monster hands is stictly based on the number of hands per hour. When the speed of play is hastened then you're going to see more of these types of plays.

4. You're going to generate a lot of action with moderate hands as a lot of online players are willing to go at it with TPTK when the TP is 7's or worse.

5. The only thing that prevents sites from running as many tables and tourney's as possible is bandwidth.

6. Maybe some out there would consider playing normal hands boring. I love getting something like 8-9 suited in one of the blinds; seeing the flop cheaply, hitting the flop, and extracting as much cash out of guy slow-playing his Q's.

7. Typically, most people that I've met that start the "online poker is rigged" argument are people who cannot turn the page from the bad beats that they've encountered. Not saying that is you popcash.

There is plenty of money to be made in poker online without having to rig the deck. Vegas games in the 70's were much more apt to be rigged than online poker in my opinion. It wasn't until you had Johnny Moss and Eric Drache cleaning up the rooms that poker was able to played by the normal folk.

My .02

joosebuck --

I was playing in the Caesars boat outside Louisville, KY and in a matter of 3 hours, saw quads 4 times, at that same table and three of those four it was 7's. It happens everywhere both the long droughts and the long streaks. Online your number of hands per hour is so high that you're going to see it much more often.

whyareunvs... that's a nice, well thought out posting. I respect that. In response...

1. What motivation is there to rig the deck?

Again, not talking about rigging the deck, simply avoiding lack-luster shuffles. Motivation is to provide excitement to keep players coming back and to speed up play. Thought that was clear in my previous postings.

2. I've seen 1000's of hands folded to a single moderate raise. This is not consistent with a desire to increase action flops.

My findings were not with starting hands but with online hands played out to the river versus our software simulations. Our various randomization algorithms didn't even come close to producing as many final monster hands as online shuffles did... somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/6th as many.

3. The number of monster hands is stictly based on the number of hands per hour.

??? How do you figure that? We run a 500 hand simulation and compare it to 500 online hands... where does time come into the equation?

4. You're going to generate a lot of action with moderate hands as a lot of online players are willing to go at it with TPTK when the TP is 7's or worse.

I don't see how the loose play of online players changes our findings as to the number of big hands created by selective shuffling. I understand that's why you end up seeing more of them online, but our random shuffles just don't produce all those big hands... it takes selective shuffling to have that many produced.

5. The only thing that prevents sites from running as many tables and tourney's as possible is bandwidth.

OK... this one is just plain wrong. Shorter games and tourneys = more available time... more available time = more games and tourneys.

6. ... I love getting something like 8-9 suited in one of the blinds; seeing the flop cheaply, hitting the flop ...

And this is a reason to disagree with my post?

7. Typically, most people that I've met that start the "online poker is rigged" argument are people who cannot turn the page from the bad beats that they've encountered.

Again, not "rigged"... "excitement enhanced" might be the term we're looking for here. And you're right... most people who complain are speaking from their bad beat experience. If you re-read my posts above, you'll notice that I wasn't complaining, just pointing out my findings. The poker sites are free to present their games to the public in any legal way they choose. I am free not to play there if I see a problem with it.

In any event, I appreciate your opinions and was impressed with your posting (unlike some others).

Are you that old nit that demanded the dealer give a new setup every time your small pocket pair didn't hold up ?


As a computer programmer you should have some sort of basic math background.
What can you tell me about a sample size of 500 hands?
What can you tell me about a sample size of 10,000 hands?

You probably can't, so I will answer for you:
VARIANCE. YOUR SAMPLE SIZE IS TOOOOOOOOO SMALLL!!!!!!!!I like it just fine here in normal land where I can win at live poker also, and where I can Play4-6 tables online at a time.

Funny thing is, when I play live, it's almost just for fun, because even on my biggest good nights, I still would have made more online.
OK, You sir are a Poopy Head.

Well popcash, sounds like you've got some pretty explosive evidence building up here. Has it been published yet? If not, you can make a fortune selling it to a national magazine or newspaper. Imagine the headlines! I look forward to reading about "The Great Online Poker Scam" in the near future.

Isn't it odd how all of you defenders of the sites are doing nothing but winning on line? Yeah, right. I'd love to meet any one of you at a cash table some time.

You've convinced me of one thing, though... for the most part this forum is frequented by a bunch of flamers. I'm sure you'll all be happy to see me leave, so good bye. The insults you fling from this point on will be a waste of time... I'll not be back.

Well, I personally think it's a shame you're leaving us so soon. While I don't necessarily agree with the points you've made, I do appreciate the fact that your posts were well thought out and of good quality. I hope you'll stick around a bit longer and give it another shot.