Is online poker rigged??? An investigation!

Intro

So I've seen post after post after post either directly accusing or indirectly insinuating that online poker is rigged. Though the complaints more often than not come from folks who are frustrated from bad beats, the most common theory is that the poker sites so this to encourage action and thus increase the rake at their tables. I think if we polled the regulars here at Cardschat, I bet the vote would slant in favour of "not rigged". Still, despite the fact that accusations of rigging really don't make a ton of sense coming from current players (goodness, why continue to play?), I thought it would be worth investigating.

So here goes nothing...

Logic and reason

This is my own opinion: rigging a poker site would be like a professional athlete stealing sporting goods from his or her team -- the risk of losing something good would dramatically outweight the gains from cheating. I'm trained in game theory, and I can tell you that experts in the field would suggest that this is ludicrous (hip hop afficionados might suggest that it is instead ludacris).

Thus, I personally believe that it is unlikely that major sites are in any way rigged. I know if I were running one, and I do have a business background, there is no way I would risk the mint that online poker sites make in rake just to add a few extra bucks.

Research

For the sake of argument, I decided to use Poker Stars as my research subject, though I would apply my conclusions to Party, Full Tilt, and any of the other large, reputable sites. As for flybynightpoker.com and stealingyourmoneypoker.com, I speak not for those.

So, I did something incredibly complex and comprehensive: I went to pokerstars.com and looked around. Clicking on "integrity", I found their policy on shuffling basically immediately.

According to Poker Stars, there are many ways to shuffle a deck of cards. How many? Well, picture a 5 followed by 67 zeroes, that's how many. So what Poker Stars has to do is select one of those 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ways to shuffle a deck and start dealing the cards.

How do they choose it? Believe it or not, they use us players to generate their random numbers, using "user input, including summary of mouse movements and events timing, collected from client software". In the event that there are problems with this as a RNG (random number generator), they have a backup: "true hardware random number generator developed by Intel, which uses thermal noise as an entropy source". They go on and on describing how they obtain and apply their RNG, but these details are mostly beyond me.

So why should we believe Poker Stars? They could say anything on their website right? Well, their RNG is certified by 2 independent organizations: Cigital and BMM International. I decided to look into these organizations.

Cigital: An independent software risk management organization working with such companies as Qualcomm, Visa International, Texas Instruments, AOL, MasterCard, General Electric, Motorola, Pfizer Health Solutions, and Ericsson. Why would they put all that business on the line to lie for Poker Stars?

BMM International: A global organization that provides independent computer systems assurance and compliance certification testing services, the Australia-based company is a client of the Australian government among other organizations.

My question: Why would Poker Stars lie about its 2-tiered RNG when it is immensely profitable without it, and why would 2 independent organizations risk their reputations to vouch for it?

Conclusions

To me, if this is not enough evidence that Poker Stars (and in all likelihood, the major poker sites) is un-rigged and up-and-up, then nothing is. Personally, I believe it. That's why I bother risking my money there, and at Party Poker, and any of the reputable poker sites. If I thought for a second that they might be rigged, I'd take my cash out in a flash -- and so should you.

So the next time you're thinking you've taken 1 too many bad beats, or that you seem to win more in the morning, or after you've made a deposit, or during full moons, or what have you, and you think about posting that online poker is rigged, please ask yourself 3 questions:

1 - Isn't it possible that it seems rigged to me, because when something happens in my favour or my best-hand-going-in holds up, I don't notice it as much as when I take a huge bad beat?
2 - Anyway, isn't it true that even AA vs. 72o is still just a 8:1 favourite (according to this), and even here you should expect to lose once every 9 times, and no hole cards are 100% to win.
3 - Why would a poker site that is "raking it in", so to speak, bother to risk all its profits and cheat just to generate a little more action?

If you answer "no" to all of these questions, then I have gathered some additional links that you may find helpful: here, here, and here.

Epilogue

If anyone wishes to discuss this further, I would be happy to in a constructive way. I have just found that people are all too ready to blame their woes on multi-billion dollar companies rigging their operations to squeeze a few extra cents out of us. Personally, when I lose a bunch of cash on a bad beat, it's more often than not my own damn fault.

Please feel free to direct future queries about RNGs here, and I will add to it as needed.

ok first im not going to read all that,as for it to be rigged i dont beleave it is, for me im sick of seeing this posts on the forums

FIRST if you think online poker is rigged then dont play it
try your hand of line im sure you will see the same things
I play alot online as well as off line and i take bad to super bad beats, I make more money in a year online then I do off line
sorry I hate these posts

Why? Because you said so? Someone could think online poker is rigged but still profit off of it. If they profit, they're unlikely to quit playing it, even if they think the action is somehow rigged. (Note: I don't have any strong conviction towards or against online poker being rigged, personally, but I feel this point should be made).

Anyway, this is a good post. Of course it still leaves the argument many make about the lesser known poker sites that aren't "raking it in" yet, and the motive they would have to rig their action. I've pretty much only played at the major sites though, so I have no contention against any particular smaller site.

It's true that depending on how exactly you thought a site was rigged, you might still play there, but at the very least it'd give you pause I think.

And yeah, for the tiny sites that might not be around tomorrow, who knows what they're up to...

Well your conclusions are solid.

But it is odd that you'll be sitting at a SNG and see 4 Quads in one game. Statistically that shouldn't happen. And yeah I know PokerStars is running 5 billion hands at a time and blah blah blah, the world balances out.

I don't think they are rigged, I think the RNG is flawed in some way. Maybe in a way that those two independent companies weren't able to properly test. I think that is more likely than anything else.

History is full of cheats who are willing to risk all for extra gain, be it money, power, sex, etc. Just in recent memory in the US, these come to mind:

1) Enron
2) Richard Nixon
3) Bill Clinton
4) Major League Baseball Players
5) George Ryan, former Governor of Illinois
6) Track and Field athletes, heck almost any athletes
7) Tobacco companies

By the way, in the US a professional baseball player did steal from his team and was dropped from the team, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Any time there is a significant amount of money involved, there will always be greedy people who think that they can outsmart the system. Amazing how some people who "have it made" will take tremendous risks to get more ... and more ... and more ...

So ... whenever I hear people saying that people making unbelievable money wouldn't dare cheat and risk spoiling it for themselves ...

That being said ... seeing incredible cards come up in live games in Las Vegas and on televised matches, I do not think that what I see online is much different than elsewhere. However, I am amazed that on some sites (Titan for me), I almost always seem to lose on the river.

I agree that some kind of error is more likely than rigging, but even a serious error sounds unlikely to me. I've seen 2 quads in an SNG, but I've never seen 4 -- I doubt most people have. If I'm right in that assertion, then it is rare, as it should be.

You make a fair point here, with Enron especially being the one that sticks in my mind. But still, in each of these cases, the "reveal" that the crimes were being committed was a surprise. But in this case, the suspicion that online poker is rigged is an up-front concern, leading to all of this auditing and checking. It's the lack of auditing in so many of the above cases that made them possible.

(In the case of big tobacco specifically, I believe your example is flawed, as their crimes are exactly what permitted their profits.)

Is it possible that despite everything the major poker sites rig their draws? Sure, it's possible. But given all the scrutiny, it would surprise the heck out of me.

Beriac, are you one of those people hired by the by the online poker sites to join forums and spread propaganda about their sites being completely honest?

Actually... does Dream Poker count as a major site? I know it's not one of the top dogs, but I have no idea how they do financially. I guess they would count as a smaller site, so I guess I actually do have a contention with one.

I don't like to accuse poker sites of being rigged, but I must say the dealing and action at Dream Poker is absolutely the most bizarre that I've ever seen on any poker site. I've played many freerolls there. Okay, yes, I know they are freerolls. This ensures there will be a number of bad beats. But I'm not talking about there being many bad beats. I'm talking about there being a startlingly high PERCENTAGE of bad beats in all-in situations. I've played numerous freerolls at Absolute Poker, PokerStars, and Titan. I have no agenda to target Dream Poker, nor have I been so unlucky at Dream Poker that I have something against the sites. In fact, tons of the bad beats have been in my favor. Most of the ones I've taken note of, though, haven't even involved me. So I think I'm pretty impartial about it.

The rivers at Dream Poker are crazy. They almost always seem to help someone in a big way, notably when a dominated player is all-in. My impartial observations were so striking to me that I refuse to play a game at Dream Poker for real money. The 100k guaranteed they hold every week is a great deal and the field is not that large, but I just can't bring myself to spend my own money there because I don't trust it at all.

I used to play nothing but freerolls, for probably about half a year or a year, when I was 17 years old. There are always loads of bad beats because there's so many opportunities, but if you pay attention to both sides of it, you'll see that the dominating hand wins about as much as it is supposed to. Dream Poker is the only site where I've been constantly left with my mouth hanging open at consecutive bad beats I've seen OTHER PEOPLE take. If you're interested enough, check it out for yourself. It never fails to fascinate me. These have just been my experiences, but it's been so incredibly consistent that I can't imagine it being just a coincidence.

Who told you that?!? Damn, now my cover is blown.

In all seriousness, I'm not "on the same side" as the poker sites, but I find the number of people who complain loudly that poker is rigged without thinking it through or having an intelligent discussion about it kind of irks me.

Note: it's not the complaining or the suggestion of rigging that bugs me, but the lack of thought that goes into it.

Now, I can't speak for Dream Poker. Never played there. And it would be one thing if a lot of the accuastions focused on one site, but I also see people go "I've played a lot of places and Poker Stars is definitely the worst for bad beats on the river", or "I've played a lot of places and Titan is definitely the worst for bad beats on the river", etc. There is no consensus even among the skeptics.

My issue here, combuboom, is that though I respect your opinion I think you might be doing something called 'data mining'. To statisticians, data mining is the result of looking at lots and lots of data and finding strange patterns and drawing conclusions without having sufficient fundamental reason.

Here, my problem with what you're saying is, why would anyone want to rig a freeroll to throw more bad beats? I mean, the reputation risk is the same (even if you were caught rigging a freeroll, it would be disastrous to your business), but there isn't any real benefit. The best argument I can think of is that they want the freeroll prizes to go to the worst players so that they can then lose it to the best players in the cash games, generating rake, but this seems pretty weak.

So if your data comes from freerolls at Dreams, my question to you is -- why would they rig their freerolls?

An even better question, why rig any games ? And no, they don't have employees playing just to get them money by rigging their hands, it happens to many people on the good and bad side. I've played for about a year nearly every day for 3 hours minimum and to be honest not that much crazy stuff happens.

I've seen quads, seen a community card dealt up in a stud game. The bulk of complaints is from people who went bust playing at the $1/$2 game with their $25 bankroll. The argument about online cardrooms being rigged needs to stop, i've heard maybe 1 or 2 instances where it was legit complaint I believe for propoker.com where bots for the poker site are rumored to be playing. For the rest of the people who say J0kerstarz is ri663d need to learn that shit happens, get over it.

Playing Devil's Advocate...

You own a poker site - let's call it Shitean.

Your players are predominately lured in by the plethora of freerolls.

Therefore - your players are predominately below average when they migrate to pay games.

Which means - Poker sharks are attracted to feast on the fish.

The fish get destroyed and stop playing pay games.

The sharks go elsewhere when their food supply dries up.

BUT..........

If you skew the cards to benefit short stacked players......

Poor players will stick around longer, because they will lose money slower and be more likely to re-deposit.

Poker sharks will either despair of bad beats and leave (prolonging the lifespan of the fish) or will stick it out and win less.

As I said, Devil's Advocate, but they haven't got nothing to gain from rigging games in my opinion. You have to bear in mind, there is a finite pool of players, VERY mobile customer base, and a saturated and easy to enter market place.

Rob`s rite, they have NOTHING to gain and LOTS to lose if they rigged the sites,, the sites make money no matter what happens at the tables,, i have always believed they are NOT RIGGED, if they were and it got out they would be done, out of business>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> buck

Well I would assume that *if* it was actually rigged (gigantic "if") they would use the exact same shuffling and dealing system for freerolls that they would for any cash game. I don't see why they'd bother to create an entirely different one for each. The players are either going to be okay with it and play there, or think it's so screwed up that they don't want to. What would be the real point of changing the software for the freerolls? But then again, I've never been in charge of rigging poker software before, so who knows.

i've acually seen some of the proxie code for some of the shufflers online and there is no way at all it is rigged. although sometimes i want to take what i've seen and throw it out the window, due to the beats i've gotten and the beats i've put on ppl. but the truth is most sites have created a vertual deck and it has the same probability of a live deck shufled perfectly 6 times. you just play more hands online so the bad beats come more often

Point well taken, Combuboom, it was a silly line of rebuttal on my part.

I simply continue to think that the basis for the argument in favour of suspected rigging is pretty weak.

Edit: I'd add that since these accusations often come from players "on tilt", that further substracts from the overall credence. Finally, I think people just underestimate the probability of a bad beat. Even 23o is going to beat AA more than once if you hold AA 10 times -- and that's 23o.

Separate rant: I find a lot of folks talk about their successes/failures like every single time they lose a hand it's a bad beat. There's just a cognitive dissonance going on here where some folks don't take responsibility for a lost hand or tourney or session.

I agree with you, Beriac, that many of these accusations come from players on tilt as well as players who underestimate the probability of a bad beat. Those were the reasons I personally tried to establish some sort of credibility in that the vast majority of these beats did not even involve me, but rather I observed them. I think this helps keep emotions out of it. Of course, I know I can't establish much credibility without numbers and only supplying general observations, but I wanted to make clear that I don't think it's an error in perception on my part. Without a large enough sample of hands, there's always a chance that it's just been a really bizarre, statistically improbable run of hands that would eventually even out.

I'd actually like to purely observe freerolls at Dream Poker and record every hand in which a player is all-in (lol, we know how easy that will be in a freeroll), record the hole cards, percentage to win pre-flop, and how often the river alters the outcome, make kind of a study out of it.

The problem with doing that is a) I probably don't have time to get a huge enough sample of hands that the results would be considered credible, and if I did it would take a very, very long time... and b) People would have to believe that I didn't alter the statistics and that everything was legitimate. So I guess it's probably not worth all the trouble and tedium.

+rep, if for nothing else, the good discussion starter.

Appreciate the +rep, folks!!

Anyway, to your point Combuboom, sure that it's not your hands would be a more reliable source of observation. But though you admit that sample size is an issue, I don't think you (or anyone, really) understands just how much sample size matters.

Every time something weird happens in an online poker match (quads 3 hands in a row, being dealt the same cards 3 times in succession, river suckout 3 times in a row, etc), it doesn't prove anything. All it shows is that either an extreme outcome occurred or the site is somehow rigged. But to eliminate the first possibility in favour of the second requires a massive amount of data, not just to "prove" it to the rest of us but frankly to justify the accusations being lobbed around in the first place.

I really dont think online poker is rigged,but however i dont like the odds at blackjack.The dealer always seems to get a face card.Or if you take a hit you bust but if you stand the dealer ends up with 21.I dont know,what i do know is id rather play texas holdem.

Blackjack is rigged both online and casinos.

I dont believe Poker is however.

And explain how black jack is rigged? Why don't you take the lead of Bariac and prove your theory with some actual facts or stats? And why would you think live blackjack is rigged? How exactly would they do that?

heh, I honestly think Online blackjack is rigged. Never seen so many dealer 6's turn into 21's. Live blackjack is legit however.

Good Post Beriac. You have done a good job investigating.

I for one certainly agree that major sites are 100% legit.

On the Blackjack line I did have a funny encounter :-

Some promotional rubbish flashed up one day and I thought i'd take a quick look. A 'play for fun' screen allowed me to win ALL (every single one!) of about 20 hands. I was just laughing as I was playing while a large button flashed 'NOW PLAY FOR REAL'.

Beware of the small rogue sites I guess is the blackjack lesson there.

Welly

Playing blackjack online is equivalent to saying to someone "i'm either thinking of heads or tails - i'll give you even money" "OK, $10 on heads" "Sorry, I was thinking of tails, you lose".

black jack is not rigged. casinos just have a set of rules that give them the addvantage no matter what.

i agree with lightning 36 - just like betting on sports, if it was rigged than all of the players, coachs ect. would have to be in on it. do you really think all of those people would keep it secret? eventually the whole world would no and there woud be no mre!

Not to beat a dead horse, but I have the same opinion about blackjack as holdem. It's a game where odds favour the house (obviously), so the poker sites are already taking your money in the long run if you play a lot of it. I'm not ready to believe they're going to commit criminal acts and put that "license to print money" at risk until I see some real evidence...

The problem with online blackjack (or even casino blackjack machines) is that they shuffle after every deal. You can't get a count or even a sense of what's left in the deck. Might as well play "War".

I know a programmer who helped create the Poker Stars 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 pokerstars 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 pokerstars 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 pokerstars 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