The great "Poker is rigged" debate - Collected threads edition

Why on earth would you whine about people posting actual statistics on a forum. You complain when people post anecdotal "evidence". This isn't anecdotal so why are you whining?.

Oh and I did actually play with my money for 2 years up until January 2023, which is when the unbelievable bad beats after unbelievable bad beats started. And after a year of that I decided to download PockerTracker and then Holdem Manager to see if my perception was accurate.

And let's add another breakdown. I find it unbelievable that my all in adjusted differential on all the all in hands I lost can hover around 0 for over a thousand hands.

In fact, even if GG is rigged, it doesn't mean we can't win there, guys. But our profit will be limitted by a software to let players deposits convert into a room's commission.

If you play 1 table, Amazing, I don't know any room which doesn't reduce ROI after any withdrawal. Cause if you only play 1 table your "current priority" in the room is lower then priority of new players/regular players (playing 4+ tables, generating activity in a room). And it becomes lower again after any withdrawal.

More then that, if you play really well (i'm a professional level player), you should also understand that your profitability will be limitted by the room. I didn't manage to make 100% or more ROI in any room. More then that, I tried to go down (from 60-100$ buyins to 1-3-5$ buyins) to "test" the gameplay and my ROI even reduced.

So it's rigged. End of debate?

No!! Too early to close the topic )))
Proofs to the public! ))

OK.

Decide how it's rigged; tell us exactly how to test your hypothesis; ask everyone to start testing from now; ask everyone to post their results of their tests; and merge all their results.

Then we might be able to end the debate?

Poker's just not for you guys, move on

1. Decide how it's rigged: will be explained on youtube very soon )) Responsible - Johnmir
2. Tell us exactly how to test your hypothesis: will be also explained - Johnmir
3. Start testing: responsible - Society
4. Post their results: Society (on youtube/debate thread/gambling committees)
5. Merge all their results: responsible - Gambling committees
6. End the debate: - 2+2 administration 😃

Pretty easy! ))

How you know? 😃

Have you ever seen poker online? Since 2005 - I haven't seen poker online. Look, this card game got a general rule - random distributing of hands between players, random shuffling for flop, turn and river.

I saw people playing poker offline. I even played myself!
Buy haven't seen anyone playing online... Some different game - yeah, funny one. Some people like to sit and watch for a software to choose the winner this time. Cool game for you, but not for me, sorry! ))

If you are a high level player, you can even see, how exactly soft distributes chips between players on the table. It's a key to take the right decisions and fold hands in time btw :P

Do you consider skewing the results to favor lower equity hands rigging? Some have said it isn't rigging because it doesn't favor anyone. The only way that I could see testing that hypothesis, that would not be a nightmare to compile, would be to review the all-in adjusted differential on all, all-in high equity hands (more than 50% equity) and see if the results are skewed. You could also compare the win rates with the equity rates, but I didn't see a way to easily compile that data in Holdem Manager. Regardless that won't end of the debate because if they are skewed, it won't be by much because nobody would skew it significantly so that it would be obvious.

Do you consider skewing the hands for more action, rigging? Can't think of a way to easily test this hypothesis. Maybe by the frequency of chops but does anyone know what a normal frequency is? The other ways I could see would require hand by hand reviews, which would be a nightmare.

Rooms "play" with allins on a short distance to attract "new players" or to control the bankroll of a winning player. But it's not a key to find violations of laws. I tested crazy number of different stuff regarding allins:

Allins on the final table. Prefinal table. All chips allins. Allins vs shorter stack. Analyzed wave effect of allins winning/loosing. But found much more effective ways to find out what is going on )

A good idea is analyzing of a wave effect in card dealing process, and it gave me some good results in finding proofs of rigging (the problem is not that we don't know the game is rigged, every average level player can see, the game is not natural everywhere, postflop, preflop, first month in any room = upstreak, limit change = upstreak. The problem is to prove (!) - that the game is rigged, to make online poker illegal with a help of gambling committees).

By the way. On a bigger distance - all the rooms i tested gave a normal deviations of EV<->Fact Profit. So, analyzing of allins, in general, is not the best direction. You can try if it's interesting for you. But i tested almost everything there. It's all good with the allins. Not well, but it's acceptable.

Of course. By definition, any form of intentional skewing is rigging.

I find this hard to believe. If they did, they're wrong. What I think more likely is that they might have suggested it would be unlikely to happen as there would be little profit in it.

Why would they skew things to make less money?

How are they making less money? It's actually more profitable to skew it to favor less skilled players. Fewer quit playing. That's why GG has such a high rake to give incentives to those players. And if they make it more luck based even fewer will quit. You can't make money if you don't have casual players returning and even Negreanu admitted the rake and incentives were designed to ensure more losing players kept on playing. The fact is making it more luck based makes it more profitable because they don't make money on who wins but how many play.

ITT: Global Poker Slips Up: BIG SECRET REVEALED! (CONFIRMED x3)

I just made this thread; in which I have emails documenting the confirmation. GP uses RTP on poker tables.

This cuts through all the BS of are they or aren't they skewing results. At least on GP -> by their own admission; they are.

Since I suggested it, here are my results.

Positive Equity

Ultimately I consistently underperformed my equity when it was positive.

That's a pretty big goalpost shift. I was responding to this:

Those are two very different things.

Yeah, and it's getting better now... You win around 80% of the equity now. Have never seen big rooms skewing allins on a bigger distance. And they don't need to do it. They just spread hands between weak and strong players special way... Allins are fine everywhere ))

That only includes the 572 positive equity hands of the total 1059 all in hands. Nothing has changed except I isolated the hands I had better than 50% equity, and it shows I am losing over 20% more than my equity as the favorite. And the hypothesis was, is it skewed to win less on all-in high equity hands (more than 50% equity).

Oh you want me to answer how more action doesn't make less profits I actually didn't believe you could be saying rigging for action makes them less money because it's obvious why it doesn't hurt their profits. Rake on cash games is based on the amount of the pot. More action, bigger pots. Rake on tournaments is based player entries. More all ins, more rebuys.

In cash games, rake is capped. More small-medium pots makes them more money than a few big pots. Far better for them to have people swapping money back and forth all day long; no need for extra "action pots".

Doesn't matter. Higher pots ensures maximum rake. And in tournaments it means more rebuys. They don't lose money. And GG's rake is the highest.

Ah, i got you!
I met this before in another rooms, but on a short distance usually. On a bigger distance this effect disappears (never played on GG though).

Well, it's hard to explain, I will try to:
If you come to a room and start to overplay other players, software "stops" you on a short distance not to let you win too much.

What does this mean? They must "pay" you more on a longer distance, right? They can't just stop letting you win good allins.
What they do -
You "accidently" start to play huge number of bad allins. These bad allins equalize your average equity and prove that you won other players just on a short distance but later just took a huge number of bad decisions. This is how it works. Hard to understand but it works like that.

And guys... You are poker players.
Huge pots converts all the players bankrolls into a room's commission seriously faster. Pretty obvious.
But more important, it's a simple pschology that more action attracts more low level players to the game. All the casinos - is an entertainment.

We will see what happens if others compile their results because the Net Win and Adjusted Differential lines should weave back and forth. And for added context I included all, all-in hands where my equity was over 50%. 53 of those hands I had the nuts, so my equity was 100% and the opponent had no draws that could win. If you remove those hands from the calculations, I underperformed by over 23%