"Small stack" rigged.

We haven't had an "online poker is rigged" thread for absolutely ages, so i'm going to do one myself. I read recently that there are 2 schools of thought re small stacks in tournaments. One says that sites are rigged AGAINST small stacks late on to whittle field down. The other says that sites are rigged FOR small stacks late on, to avoid them going out.

I'm going to throw my hat in the ring, and say that it seems that small stacks are favoured late on! I've noticed this a number of times in our site events - small stacked players who are "pot committed" by the blinds seem to get an inordinate amount of pocket pairs, and survive through the blinds when seemingly facing extinction - I was actually going to post something like this last week, but then......

I've played 2 Multi-table SnG's on pokerstars this week, and have been bust down to under 300 chips late on (both due to bad beats of course ). Both times i've then got 3 pocket pairs in the next 10 or so hands (the last 3 entire Cardchats tourneys i've only had 2 pocket pairs in 150+ hands!!!). In the first, i came back from 250 chips to over 30,000 in less than 2 rounds (ended up 3rd), and in the 2nd i busted out on 3rd pocket pair (when up to big stack). Then I read about the "small stack rigged" arguement and hmmmmmmm???

Could it be that the small stacks just toughen up a bit and play better and therefore seem to get luckier. I know I've done that.

Seems to me that if a site were to rig a tournament it would work against the shorties in order to knock them out and send them over to ring games to contribute to the rake. Not to mention shortening the tournament and freeing up bandwith and other resources. After all the site has made its money.

But I really don't believe this happens. As a programmer I know how hard it would be to write such a program. And then all the other players would have to cooperate.

i know on pp with the small stack in a stt, the small stack almost always seems to be crushed. Got beat in a 11 tourney last night with aa vs a4 and flop comes 244, this stuff happens all the time to me when I am the small stack and only a couple of players left...

Kid.. reason why that happens.. people want to eliminate the small stack so they'll call with anything in hopes of knocking out the small stack. Then grumble when the small stack doubles or triples up cause they called with the A,4 and/or king(x). Gives someone a sense of power when their luck hand eliminates the small stack.

Same applies with the pre-flop raise callers. Instead of using common sense and actually thinking. Why not and feel power when one gets lucky instead of feeling power cause of knowledge.

Nah, it's just that more pocket pairs are getting shown down, not necessarily that more are being dealt. 33 in mid position after an early raise is a pretty standard fold or perhaps raise situation if you and the raiser are deep stacked, but a shortstack may well push with 33 and get called (because they're happy to take a coinflip), whereas a deep stack would either fold, or possibly raise and get the other person to fold (playing against another deep stack there is always a fear that one could lose a huge pot, whereas playing a short stack you only stand to lose as much as the short stack has), thus the pocket pair is never even shown.

You cite personal examples, but that's over a whopping sample size of 20 hands, which you should know you can't come to conclusions over.

...and I'm not even going to ask the obvious question - why on earth would poker sites fix the game like that anyway? Oh crap, I just did...