Same hand 4 in a row

Man im sitting here playing a sng on fulltilt an i have gotten q9 suited and off suited 4 hands in a row. This happens to me alot. Mainly on fulltilt. Does it happen to anyone else?

It happens to everyone else and means the cards are random. If it never happened, you should be concerned.

yes i know this. But q9 four times in a row just dosent seem very random to me.

Because your idea of random is wrong. I've been dealt JJ 3 hands in a row at my buddies home game. I've had AA 2 hands in a row with the same exact 2 cars. My point is that if you play enough cards (actually you would only need to play 4 hands to get get the same 4 hands because again it's random) you'll see a lots of crazy things. Just don't be fooled into assigning patterns to randomness (like hey I'd better play the J2 because deuces have been hitting) and you'll be fine.

I will actually tell you that, in most cases, online poker is more random than live poker. Anytime you have an actual person shuffling and dealing, there will be patterns in the way they do it. I see it alot in the 2 home games I play. If you watch carefully, youll see that most home game dealers only shuffle the deck 2 or 3 times. This is a mistake. As a result, I see the same cards in play several hands in a row. Most recently it was 7s. I saw the same 2 or 3 sevens in play 3 hands in a row. On the fourth hand, Im dealt q7, call UTG and flop 2 pair, then turn a 7s full of qs. Its not because Im a donk that plays rags. Its because Im observant and notice that people dont shuffle and deal properly. Im willing to bet its the same reason that caused WVHillbilly's pocket jacks 3 times in arow.

I think not

kdanko@mchsi.com said:

yes i know this. But q9 four times in a row just dosent seem very random to me.

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Not long ago I was in a tourney on UB and 5 hands in a row K high club flush won the pot! Now I am not exaggerating 5 in a row!!! And I know that was random (NOT NOT NOT)! Maybe you disagree. Love from OZ:angel:

Last weekend I got dealt K,4 of diamonds 7 times within a time frame of about an hour. I finally got sick of folding it, so I called a pre-flop raise and flopped the king high flush. Stuff like this happens all the time, it's totally random, even though it doesn't feel like it.

SlowcalaPro said:

I will actually tell you that, in most cases, online poker is more random than live poker. Anytime you have an actual person shuffling and dealing, there will be patterns in the way they do it. I see it alot in the 2 home games I play. If you watch carefully, youll see that most home game dealers only shuffle the deck 2 or 3 times. This is a mistake. As a result, I see the same cards in play several hands in a row. Most recently it was 7s. I saw the same 2 or 3 sevens in play 3 hands in a row. On the fourth hand, Im dealt q7, call UTG and flop 2 pair, then turn a 7s full of qs. Its not because Im a donk that plays rags. Its because Im observant and notice that people dont shuffle and deal properly. Im willing to bet its the same reason that caused WVHillbilly's pocket jacks 3 times in arow.

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Maybe, but we rotate the deal for each hand. Everyone's shuffle is a little different but generally it's 3 riffles and 2 overhand for each person + a cut. I prefer to think it was purely random that I had JJ 3 times in a row, not something caused by poor shuffling. BTW I won twice and lost my stack (probably 35 bb) the last time I had them when I ran into a set of eights. Man I hate Jacks.

Had A9 3 times in a row, and JJ 3 times in 8 hands in the last 2 days. Just a coincidence, going to happen at sometime, does seem strange tho, but it will happen.

Well, I can tell you that if your shuffling the deck any less than 7 times, even with a cut, you arent shuffling properly. Rotating the deal changes nothing if your only shuffling 3 times and cutting. If you dont believe me, pull out a deck and try it. Shuffle three times, cut and deal any more than 4 handed. Youll start seeing the same cards popping up within 10 hands, I promise. And 4 handed youre only using 16 cards in the deck(less than half). Make sure you look at the burn cards too. Every home game and league Ive played in rotates the deal amongst the players. And every one Ive ever played in has this same problem. Actually, I shouldnt say "problem", because I use this to my advantage every chance I get. But I always get a good chuckle when someone at the table asks me why I shuffle so many times. Its like they're in a hurry. We recently switched to using 2 decks at one of our home games for this reason. It helps negate the bad shuffling and speeds up the process.

"The human mind is quite adept at seeing paterns, even in random sequences." The Mathematics of Poker - Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman

kdanko@mchsi.com said:

yes i know this. But q9 four times in a row just dosent seem very random to me.

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This is because you don't understand randomness.

I got AKs, 58o, 22, 4Jo, J9s, 33, and AJs all in a row. This is more unlikely than Q9 4 times in a row, but you don't see the same pattern. You are setting your standards post facto. Now we can say you would have been surprised if any hand came up 4 times in a row. So the only significant part is the 3 in a row (since every single hand is a possible candidate for the start of a 4 in a row).

Since you're not including suited and unsuited, there are exactly 91 hands. Assigning an equal probability to each (a flaws assumption, which I will address later), there is a 1 in 753,571 chance of this happening. Now this number is off because pocket pairs are obviously less likely than non-pocket pairs (for example Q9, if a Q is drawn as the first card, there are now 4 cards that can complete Q9, for 33 if a 3 is drawn as the first card there are only three more 3's in the deck). If we pretended pocket pairs didn't exist we would get 1 in 474,552. So it's somewhere in between the 2. Let's simplify and say 1 in 500,000.

Now I'm sure that seems impossible to you. But at the moment pokerstars is playing it's 14,318,445,377th hand. That's right, 14 billion+ hands. If getting a hand 4 times in a row was enough to prove that poker was rigged, and it happened as much as it was statistically supposed to, pokerstars would be accused of rigging their hands approximately 28,636.89 times. Understand why although it's extremely unlikely, people still don't believe that makes it rigged or not random?