A bad beat is a bad beat. It happens.

However, how it happens in online poker is really frustrating. The bigger stack often wins even when way behind pre-flop. It seems the priority is to knock out the smaller stacks to free up the servers or so that tournaments can finish earlier.

Many times, cards being dealt do not seem random at all. AA, KK, QQ at the same time just to force players in is just plain rigged if it happens too often.

But what can we do? We still play and hope for the best, right?

Good morning everyone, that's the feeling.
I play poker every day for an average of 10 hours, I have noticed a pattern of results, often in situations of All in, the player who has more chips wins, not always most of the time, yes.
I started to go much further in the Mtt, just not facing the players who have a lot more chips than me, when there were 80 players left in the BIG $ 2.20, I took AKo with 17bb, and another player with 72bb, raised, when my turn to speak went fold and villain was All in against another player and made the nuts straight.
In another hand at BIG $ 1.10, when there were 23 players left, I took AKs and raised 2x and the villain with many chips was All in and he had gone All in before with a very weak hand I don't remember and thought there was no way folding AKs with 12bb, I called and villain presents me with a good 86s spade in the same suit as my AKs, beats A on the flop and 5 7, river beats 9 villain makes nuts sequence, it's revolting all the time and website says that software does not interfere in result, believe whoever wants.

It can happen, but never give up, follow your goals!
Good luck!

from my experience it's important to remember that sometimes,before you blind call,always stop couple seconds and even use your banktimer if you need to think what the opponent has,unless it's all in from both sides so this is all depends on the luck.
but always,a lot depends if it's also cash tables or tournaments.
in tournaments small stacks will have a very slight opportunity to win and take a Huge pot,and sometimes you will get lucky and sometimes it will be a bad beat.
Best of luck on the tables !

Originally Posted by thwenth1983

Good morning everyone, that's the feeling.
I play poker every day for an average of 10 hours, I have noticed a pattern of results, often in situations of All in, the player who has more chips wins, not always most of the time, yes.
I started to go much further in the Mtt, just not facing the players who have a lot more chips than me, when there were 80 players left in the BIG $ 2.20, I took AKo with 17bb, and another player with 72bb, raised, when my turn to speak went fold and villain was All in against another player and made the nuts straight.
In another hand at BIG $ 1.10, when there were 23 players left, I took AKs and raised 2x and the villain with many chips was All in and he had gone All in before with a very weak hand I don't remember and thought there was no way folding AKs with 12bb, I called and villain presents me with a good 86s spade in the same suit as my AKs, beats A on the flop and 5 7, river beats 9 villain makes nuts sequence, it's revolting all the time and website says that software does not interfere in result, believe whoever wants.

That's a lot of time you spend playing.

How do you deal with the frustration of losing so many hands you were statistically expected to win? I assume you're winning more than you are losing, though.

Online poker can be very frustrating for a long time. I did not only experience this online but also in many home games and some live tournaments.

I feel like there is more action online. Ultimately, you can only accept the situation as it is or no longer play online poker.

Often times it doesn't help at all to play poker for several weeks. The frustration is usually gone for now and you can have more fun with the game again.

be patience, slow down and relax your expectations

online poker seems very swing-y in cash games. tournaments seem more realistic most of the time.

It happens to all of us ... the most frustrating thing is that sometimes it happens too many times, which at times makes it very suspicious. Good hands.

Whenever I get frustrated, I just remind myself of one thing. Why i started playing poker. It was the fun of it. Playing and enjoying, range bullying, getting a good read and so on. So it cools me off and set me right for the next hand/tournament.

Originally Posted by panaloto

A bad beat is a bad beat. It happens.

However, how it happens in online poker is really frustrating. The bigger stack often wins even when way behind pre-flop. It seems the priority is to knock out the smaller stacks to free up the servers or so that tournaments can finish earlier.
...it can also be the fact that, depending on effect bbs, big stacks can call of much lighter. yes, sometimes they'll be in way behind spots, but they still have some equity to win by the river.

lets take a6o v aa, where aa has ~94% equity to win.

a big stack, lets say 150+ bbs can call and effective 6 bb shove with a6o and they'll have 6% equity to win by the river. next, lets say someone has a6o with 15 bbs. against aa, it's the same equity, except a 15 bb stack isn't calling off a 6 bb shove.

so, is it rigged for bigger stacks to win, even with as low as 6% equity preflop? no, you're just going to see them win more often because they're going to be calling more often.

Many times, cards being dealt do not seem random at all. AA, KK, QQ at the same time just to force players in is just plain rigged if it happens too often.
...to be honest, how often are you seeing aa v kk or even aa v kk v qq preflop? compare that to how many hands you see where it doesn't happen. it's probably not as often as you think. it definitely happens a lot more often than live, but that's because you see a lot more hands than live.

but there is no anomaly online with these big hands. odds of getting dealt a pair or a pair vs pair vs pair is exactly the same. so, what's the difference? well, aa, kk, and qq are all pairs that are willing to get it in preflop. why do you see aa v kk, and sometimes v qq preflop a lot more compared to other pairs? it's because these are strong preflop hands.

getting 22 v 33 v 44 is exactly the same odd and has practically the same equity as aa v kk v qq, so what's the difference? well, you're very unlikely to see 22 v 33 v 44 get their stacks in preflop unless they're ridiculously short stack.

so, is it rigged for action? no, you just see the aa v kk v qq hands in all-in preflop situations more often because they're strong enough hands to get in preflop.

But what can we do? We still play and hope for the best, right?

above.

Originally Posted by panaloto

A bad beat is a bad beat. It happens.

However, how it happens in online poker is really frustrating. The bigger stack often wins even when way behind pre-flop. It seems the priority is to knock out the smaller stacks to free up the servers or so that tournaments can finish earlier.

Many times, cards being dealt do not seem random at all. AA, KK, QQ at the same time just to force players in is just plain rigged if it happens too often.

But what can we do? We still play and hope for the best, right?

seems like it, big stacks have called with Q2 , 38o, and all kinds of garbage and knocked me out. Some times they were correct for calling with any 2 because I was so short, but correct or not, thats the breaks.


I have spun up a short stack plenty of times so I dont think there is a conspiracy to free up the servers. I do remember one time that a certain player was hitting 2 pair with everything, so he was playing everything and hitting 2 pair over and over again. Its like he could do no wrong. Ive only seen this once but it did make me question the RNG for a moment.

If you see something like this, its best not to tangle with this player or make sure you can beat 2 pair if you call his jam.

Originally Posted by thwenth1983

I started to go much further in the Mtt, just not facing the players who have a lot more chips than me, when there were 80 players left in the BIG $ 2.20, I took AKo with 17bb, and another player with 72bb, raised, when my turn to speak went fold and villain was All in against another player and made the nuts straight.
In another hand at BIG $ 1.10, when there were 23 players left, I took AKs and raised 2x and the villain with many chips was All in and he had gone All in before with a very weak hand I don't remember and thought there was no way folding AKs with 12bb, I called and villain presents me with a good 86s spade in the same suit as my AKs, beats A on the flop and 5 7, river beats 9 villain makes nuts sequence, it's revolting all the time and website says that software does not interfere in result, believe whoever wants.

did you fold ak preflop in the 2.20 game? why didn't jam it in pre?

in the 1.10 game, how much equity does aks v 86s have preflop? of many times do you expect to win in that spot?

Originally Posted by panaloto

That's a lot of time you spend playing.

How do you deal with the frustration of losing so many hands you were statistically expected to win? I assume you're winning more than you are losing, though.

i'm not the person you're quoting.

however, it's all about looking at the long term and maximizing your value for your big hands. lets say, on average, you get it in with hands that have 75% equity either preflop or postflop. well, you can expect to win 75/100 times in those situations in the long term. even if you do lose 25% of the time, you're making a ton of value.

at the same time, you try to avoid spots where you don't have has a much equity or even less equity. so, maybe in 50-60% equity spots, where you are break even or slightly ahead, you're more cautious about stacking off in these spots unless under very specific situations like you're short stacked. and in spots where you have < 50% equity, you try to avoid these spots as much as you can. it's not always going to work but you do your best to avoid them.

so, by setting yourself to play hands where you have more equity than your opponent most of the time, you're winning a lot more often. but you also lose a lot of the time. with 25% equity, villain is still winning 25k hands/100k samples. and lets not forget all the other hands you might have to fold preflop and give up some blinds and/antes, or hands you open and fold to a 3bet or hands to open and have to check/fold the flop. so, you are losing/giving up a lot of hands, but you're still setting yourself to be profitable in the long term with strong hand selections that you play.

as far as making money, you go for max value in spots where you have a lot of equity to make up for the times you lose. so, going back to the 75% equity preflop, if you risk $1 to win a $2 pot, how much value are you getting?

ev = [$2*.75] - [$1*.25]
ev = 1.5 - .25
ev = 1.25

so you're making $1.25 each time

but lets say that, because you're losing or on a downswing, you want to risk less and you only risk .25 to win .50 instead. well, then you're only making ~.32 per hand. or .93 less.

in poker, the object is to make money off of bad players. yes, some achievements are nice like final tables and winning mtts, but profit is the number one reason to play for most players. so, if that's the goal, you have to set yourself to get maximum value. you might think you're risking less and can counter the bad beats and downswings by betting smaller, but you're losing a lot more value in the long term.

in the example, out of 100 hands, you're giving up $93 by not betting the full $1 instead of the $25 you're losing 25% of the time. that's $68 you're giving up.

Believe me I get, why these ideas of "rigged poker sites" are so common. Sometimes it can really feel that way, when we see the bad side of variance in one way or another. But nobody has ever presented any kind of evidence, that say PokerStars is rigged. And this is in spite of the fact, that hand histories are fully downloadable, and many professional players have millions of hands in their database. There are also stables, which (against the rules) pool their databases together, so they get even larger.

If there were any statistical anomalies like the big stack winning to often, or KK running into AA to often, i am pretty sure, that some math nerd would have presented the evidence already and gotten his 5 minutes of fame for bringing down Stars. So the fact, this has not happened, is already pretty solid evidence, nothing is wrong with the RNG.

In top of that Stars also have licenses in several european countries, some US states and probably a lot of other places as well. So there is independent oversight from a lot of governments, who are probably not keen on their citizens getting blatantly cheated by an online casino not delivering the promised odds on bets against the house.

However over small samples deviations will occur. I am currently doing a 110$ to ? challenge on PokerStars (was orignially 55$) playing the SnG MTTs. And over the first 116 of these I think, I have run KK into AA 4 or 5 times. It was probably only supposed to happen 1 time over that sample, so it has definitely happened more often, than it should.

However I am pretty sure, that if I look at all the 500k or more hands, I have played on Stars over the years, then the frequenzy is just about, where its supposed to be. So its just, that samples, which people tend to feel are large, like 116 SnGs, are actually not very large, and even significant deviations to the statistical mean will occur.

I confess that it is hard to survive in a mtt when the dealer decides to put you in the losers category. it is also rare to win flips against players who have a larger stack. the only solution to avoid losing in these situations. it is to fold your good hands preflop and wait for a better opportunity. what frustrates me the most is when there are only 30 or 20 players left and you have an average stack. the dealer only gives you Q7 or 46 to prevent you from reaching the final table. after a while you have to take a risk because of the blinds. of course as usual in this situation you never win this flip.

Originally Posted by panaloto

A bad beat is a bad beat. It happens.

However, how it happens in online poker is really frustrating. The bigger stack often wins even when way behind pre-flop. It seems the priority is to knock out the smaller stacks to free up the servers or so that tournaments can finish earlier.

Many times, cards being dealt do not seem random at all. AA, KK, QQ at the same time just to force players in is just plain rigged if it happens too often.

But what can we do? We still play and hope for the best, right?

Yeah! I have experienced the same in many tournaments I have played especially on the ITM situation.

Really Frustrating.

where do you play that the big stack will win?

It’s normal since the cards aren’t generated randomly...

I think some maniac players with the big stack often play very loose and sometimes it works. That is very bad but in poker even AA still don't have 100 percent of winning chance.