Bovada Case Study Opinions

I keep looking all over the place and havnt seen anyone talk about this case study so I figured I would share it and see what you guys think.... Bovada sucks me out all the time and I find these stats very easy to believe.
https://medium.com/@dataminepoker/re...c41#.xz5lqjiji

Bovada is illegitimate for sure.

Wow. That was fascinating. I wish I could fully comprehend everything they did, but if their conclusions are true...I would probably never be able to trust another online poker site again.

Think I've read this before, but doesn't surprise me one bit.. Could only imagine how many "real" people win those big tourneys they host..

I wish they would share the big hand formula to me

They gave u a potential theory to test in the article I believe..

No wonder it is harder for me to make money on Bovada than other sites...sigh.

If only I knew how to hack programming languages and my browser and how to track/store all the hand info I don't even know how to track my own hands

Not sure how I feel about this or whether I should believe it.

I was going to switch to bet online last week, but I cant get the client to connect

Just be careful with bet online. My own fault but I can never cash out there from all the betting bonuses I used rofl

what do you mean? you mean you have to roll over your bonus before you cashout or...?

Yeah. I know that's how it works on all sites but I have some absurd amount of roll over I'd have to bet before ever cashing out

cant you forfeit your bonuses so you dont have to rollover?

Oh I bet them already years ago before realizing how bad it was lol

Bovada made me feel like the worst player in the world. My same exact strategy anywhere else has me being a winning player. Not hugely so, but I consistently win at small stakes cash and place in the money in a large percentage of micro tournys.

Bovada--and I will just call it badluck since I refuse to call foul when I dont see it myself, I have had runs that defy probability.

This is bogus and has been debunked on 2+2 many times. Shameless plug to drive traffic for their site. Disgraceful really to make up stuff to promote your own product at the expensive of others. 2+2 removed most of the links after researching is because they concluded it was bogus. You can see one of the links here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip-sponsored-online-poker-report/article-saying-bovada-unfair-cardroom-1566462/?highlight=dataminepoker

Sigh...

It's all riggggged... I swear it is because I lose!

I've been a winning player on there for over 10 years at just about every stake level. I guess I just somehow avoided the rigging. lol

And FYI, I'd move a mod to ban OP. They are coming in here (probably from ACR or somewhere) and posting up BS about bovada on the forum. It's literally their only posts:

https://www.cardschat.com/search.php?searchid=3398477

And to the posters above... always take what you read on the internet w/ a grain of salt and do some fallacy recognition on any report you read.

i saw that awhile back not sure what to think about it, but i would definitly use caution although ive binked first place a few times on there site for some hefty amounts so idk.

If you play clash on ACR it is absolutely terrible, you can't even find one recreational a table, 5nl on there is probably the same as 100nl on Bovada.

I dont see in that link where it debunks it, just members posting there thoughts on it

A lot of top players pointed out countless fallacies in their article, along with the mod who removed the link, who is a lawyer and a pretty fair person. He called it a shady article. Why? Because it's anonymous, talking about an anonymous site and plugging ACR at the same time (with affiliate links to ACR). Hmmm... wonder what's going on here?

I don't think we need to call Sherlock Holmes in.

I've noticed so many problems with bovada, I just don't trust them. They have to use crazy algorithms

Bet online is just as crooked

There's no way an illegal, offshore online Indian casino would consider cheating for profit. They're in the business to make people happy, not to enrich themselves.

Funny... but they are in a businesses to maintain their business. Having rigged systems or cheating doesn't bode well for long term business. Bodog has been in this business a very long time.

Bovada is not rigged. If you lose, it because you're not playing well.

I've played on there for over 10 years. I've cashed out hundreds of thousands. That wouldn't happen with the million+ hands I've played on there if it was rigged. I doubt I'm some major anomaly not susceptible to their rigged system.

Never Play BOVADA. Play any other poker or casino site. Bovada has created anonymous users and my chart shows 86% loss when leading... also the board pairs more than half the time. IT IS CONFIRMED ITS RIGGED. PLAY ANY OTHER SITE - SAVE YOUR MONEY. BOVADA IS THE FAKEST SITE ON INTERNET.

not rigged? I have been losing with monsters to pretty garbage hands and it's like what the hell are these people thinking shoving flops with 7 2, lowest pair on board and all spades when i have kk no ace on board and i also have a flush draw. they river a deuce for 2nd pair to crack my KK. the casino side sucks pretty bad. for me anyway the casino side is where i lose all of my money at..

Same thing happening with me. It seems to happen in patterns. When I was logging into Bovada Poker it used to say the name of the governing board. Now it doesn't anymore. it makes me wonder if they lost their license again. I had a good 2 month span this summer where it seemed I could win like I was in the past. Now I am always bubble. I can see if I get last place or 5th or 4th but to always be bubble in a 6 person sit and go is a bit fishy. Same with the knockout tournaments. I used to average at least 4 a night. Now it's like pulling teeth to win one. Something is definitely going on with them.

Digging up a bogus article from 2016?

Sigh...it's not rigged. You're just not as good as you think you are.

Sure there are bots. Sure there are people who will collude. But by and large most of them get caught eventually, and most people aren't on there cheating.

John, I can almost see you shaking your head as you are writing responses to some of the posts within this thread....

Bovada is definitely illegitimate.

wish i could say this is surprising, ive experienced most of this on my own n im fairly new to online poker n never visited bravodo, but low percentage preflop hands seem to win as much if not more than the hands with 60-|80 percent advantage. normally coming on river, while mine always show promise early. guaranteeing me to bet big. someone needs to give us a legitimate alternative to these sites, in the us
thanks for ur post it confirms what ive been saying now for a while

Anyone else think its suspicious that John A is back here posting about what a great place bovada is and "debunking" this report based only on the fact that it is anonymous? Does he have an alert on this thread or something?

I understand doubting the report because its anonymous, but you can't just say it is "debunked" because you don't agree with it. If you really want to prove it wrong, you need to do an even better job than these anonymous people did and put together the evidence to prove them wrong. Until then, you can't just claim the opposite while also providing no evidence.

I think anyone who really believes that several different forms of cheating are not taking place in all of the online poker rooms is a bit naive. We know that ACR had an issue with cheating and collusion just this year. Other sites have had problems with bots and collusion as well. Why wouldn't it happen? With what we know and understand about human nature, it should not at all be surprising or shocking that this stuff happens. And if it bothers you, don't play or just play micro online and save your money for the casino, if you can get to one.

I just don't trust bovada.

WOW

Yeah I stopped taking bonuses

Once I realized I'm setting myself up to be obligated to play through 10x what I'd ever win etc

played the 7:30 EST $22 buy in knockout last night and the 2:15 PM $22 buy in knockout today. Almost the same things were noticed.

Almost every flop will have 3 of the same suit. If it doesn't you can bet that it will have an Ace. Out of 15 hands an ace hit the flop 10, it hit the board 13. Try dealing a 5 card flop 20 times and tell me how many times an ace will hit, i'l wait.

So in both tournaments I start strong, last night I had 5 knockouts, today 2, but those knockouts gave me big stacks. As soon as I get the big stack a new player comes to my table. Funny that new player will miraculously win every single hand until they have just as many or more chips as me. They go all in with 6-9 against kings and they hit a set, happened over and over until the new monster lead eventually beat me. I get how beats work but its funny to me with Bovada the same person is always on the winning end of the beat. Play in these knockouts and tell me you don't see the same thing. Aces every flop is not random at all. The site is a joke. If not for their sportsbook I'd be done with them.

i often found it was my game that was degenerating causing me to go on a bad streak. often you have a few bad beats you make an adjustment you think is correct and that doesnt work so you do something else. pretty soon your game has gone bad. dont blame the site look at your own game check yourself see if and where you went wrong.

Did you not read my post at all? It's not just me having a bad beat. When you see multiple players having bad beats but only 1 player benefiting from it doesn't that strike you as odd? Not at Bovada, where it happens every tournament. Also it's funny because they took out the chat so now you cannot even talk about it with the other players. Everyone is just a number so you can't tell who is real and who isn;t. You will see it all the time. Aces every flop isn't my game going bad, it's a random generator not working properly. Boards pairing every other hand is not my game going bad. Play a few tournaments and I assure you will see this too.

I took this report to someone with a background in both economics/statistics and computer programming/coding. They said there is nothing in it that is not sound. He also said that since it was apparently done in 2015, things could have changed at Bovada since then. He said that it appears as though the worst wrong doing is in the coding and building of the RNG itself. He also said that he thought that if he spent a little time and effort on it, he could likely exploit the RNG himself and/or build a bot to exploit the lack of security at the site. He does not play poker, although he has before in the past; so he is not totally naive about the game.

I personally have been thinking about this a lot the past few days. In regards to the accusation that it should be dismissed because the authors remain anonymous: if these people were in fact contracted to do this study, then it would make sense that whoever hired them would not have wanted them to leak their work to the public. Another reason for the anonymity could be that they themselves have decided to use everything they found in their research to cheat and make money on the site. In any case, I don't think it is a fair argument against the report being real and not a hoax.

I have to admit that part of me still has doubts about the report. I am not a scientist but I have studied in it before, and one of the things you never do if you want to remain scientific in conclusions is to make them without adequate evidence, usually in the form of empirical data. Until I can see the actual data published to completely verify the report and the authors claims in it, I cannot come to the conclusion that this cheating is absolutely happening. Even if I could have that data and verify it, and have it go through some sort of peer review, it would only prove that such cheating activity was happening at that time, and it would not contribute to any conclusions drawn about what is happening at the site currently.

Sadly, the only thing proven in any of this is how much better online poker would be if it were federally legalized and regulated.

On a side note, to everyone wanting to believe that Bovada, or any other online poker room, is rigged or has cheaters everywhere simply because they had a bunch of bad beats in a row one day, or two days, or for a whole month: That is not how it works. You need a massive sample size to even try to show anything deviating from the usual statistics.

I play on ACR, Betonline, and Bovada and the algorithm felt different enough for me to research it. I'm not here to get into a dick measuring competition. I know about RNG. I know what a 20% outer means. I'm profitable at the tiny stakes I play.

But I've seen enough hands, hundredsof thousands, to know when something feels off. It was enough for me to withdraw funds from Bovada. Although I think smarter minds COULD ABUSE the algorithm if you figure it out. I may try to do that myself at a later date. I've played tens of thousands of hands on the site if not more.

There's something strange for sure in the amount of big hands players get against eachother, especially on later streets. I've been sucked out and sucked out other players plenty of times and I notice both of these, not one or the other. However I've seen a very large amount of suck outs, particularly on the river (and not really ever the turn for some reason) on Bovada. The frequency of these suckouts is much higher than on other sites. I have even started calling many draws with bad odds or playing them very aggressively, different than my usual style of play, profitably.

Coupled with the annonymous factor of players it seems very likely it is being abused by Bovada in some way. Maybe Bovada just wants to make it more exciting for recreational players, and more rake gets drawn in from cash games. Maybe their coding just sucks. Or maybe it is much more sinister than that. Not for me to know or care. Unfortunately I have one less site to play on.

The Bovada algorithm is NOT perfectly random. Be careful.

It's not necessarily a large sample size that is needed. What is needed is to know what needs to be measured in order to apply the necessary statistical test to show that the results truly deviate from what is expected to be normal. That is what is needed. With the right test, you could get the sample size down to a reasonable number and have the result still be significant within a certain confidence interval. The trouble is finding the test.

I had to finally come and vent about the bogus,rigged Fing site Bovada. I have been playing sit and go tourneys for months and keep getting beat on the river time and time and time again.If I am not getting beat on the river I watch other players getting beat on the river over and over. What a bogus rigged site.

So if you keep seeing players beat on the river and keep seeing yourself beat on the river, can you not adapt your play to hole cards that will succeed on the river rather than on the flop and turn?

I think you could theoretically play Bovada in a strange way such that you try to see a river card where it does not usually make sense to. For example if you believe your opponent has a strong holding try to block bet the turn without inducing or call a bet with bad odds to see the last card. Alternatively you should be very careful with strong hands generated on the flop that reach the river. I've noticed an exceptionally large amount of suckouts on specifically the river card. This is a strategy I would only ever consider doing on Bovada. I know this sounds crazy and fishy but I really believe this to be true. I would love someone to prove me wrong. The vast majority of suckouts happen specifically on the river card. This doesn't mean that you'll always hit that card, but I think it happens 5-10% of the time more than it should. That also doesn't mean suckouts can't happen at other points in the hand,but I think the algorithm is tweaked somehow to increase the chance of it happening on the river.Again would love someone to mathmatically prove I'm wrong.

From my rake generation increase theory it would make sense that Bovada would tweak the river card because pots area already bloated at that point. Imagine a pot that reached 1$ on the turn is now 10$ on the river. Altering the suckout rate by 5% would probably generate additional thousands of $ of rake per month. Making sick coolers all in on the river makes it great for bovada's bottom line. I also wouldn't be surprised if they change the algorithm once people made it public or investigate it too much. Additionally the annonymou factor and lack of chat on the site only serves to benefit this possible alteration.

Did you even read the report? If you did, then you don't seem to have understood any of it. Try again.

This "statistical test" you are talking about is pretty much what the entire report is about. They were trying to spot evidence of an edge sorting exploit through bovada's RNG. They absolutely did need a massive sample size, and not just of the live data they were collecting, but also in the hand histories they got from the tracker site. The old hand histories were the control, and the hands they recorded and turned into data from monitoring bovada were what they tested to see if there were any anomalies. All of this is in the report in much greater depth and finer detail than I can provide in a few paragraphs, so maybe go back and actually read it this time.

You're right I did not read it at all. I was just making a general statement not directed at the case study / report. Contents of the report do not surprise me at all.

I played on them when they were Bodog and it was one of my favorite softwares but I understand everything is different now and I believe its all anonymous player. I cant get with playing against a number.

Do you even know what edge sorting is?

I think he was referring to edge case targeting which is what the report discussed.