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

That's 6 standard deviations from the mean and you can see the odds here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_d...

And for those who don't know how to calculate standard deviation, for any coin flip type events you can calculate the standard deviation using this formula, σ = √(n * p * (1-p)), where σ is the standard deviation, n is the number of coin flips, p is the probability of getting heads and (1-p) is the probability of getting tails. This works for any coin flip type event and you can determine the odds by the number of standard deviations from the mean (up to 6 standard deviations). If anyone doesn't believe it Google it or ask Deepseek or Chat GPT.

Thank you for the link/comment!

It was a special case... When I managed to calculate this stuff with a help of computer modeling (wave effects of my opponent's flop hitting). I had to waste some time to find a way to assess "how often does it happen in average".

So after I got 0,0000000035% chances to deviate (not from the mean but... well, it's a complex stuff) from a normal RNG behavior, i had to assess an average distance.

So I got this 8 500 000 000 000 hands distance for the variance to repeat in average approximately. It's a special calculation.

Otherwise, Gambling authorities would probably understand the proof, but the public - won't get it. 8,5 trillion is something you can communicate to people. But 0,0000000035% - is something you can't explain, lol.

johnmir, have you performed any analysis or planning to do so on large any sites like gg poker or pokerstars? also did your analysis show different behavior whether a player plays 1-table vs. multitabling? Just curious

Yes, I have performed.

Unofficially - Pokerstars got almost the same software algorithms implemented. More then that, I managed to describe the algorithm on PS, firstly. And only then I moved to iPoker and tested it's software using the description of PS's software.

The difference between my Pokerstars research and iPoker's research is that statistically - i have got slightly "weaker" evidence of rigging in PS. That is why I started from iPoker net.

I haven't tested GG, unfortunately, can't tell anything about this room.

At the same time, I have already got "verbal" confirmation of some players that Coin poker and PokerDom got very similar algorithms implemented. It means, that all the online poker rooms work according to a similar "model".

I think the casino RNG in general, even in poker, is not fair RNG. I think their RNG takes liquidity into account and makes adjustments based on liquidity and possibly some other variables (for example: did he deposit 1-st time? if yes- give more luck to activate dopamine receptors, did he deposit 50 bucks? If so, then don't give him that big win in 11 dollar tournament, but give him something like 75-150 bucks from a 1 dollar tournament. Did he deposit 2000 bucks, give him insanely good run in anything that is within that liquidity bracket 1-10 dollar buy in maybe? When they play like 200 dollar buy in then statistically they are given wins that fall within that liquidity bracket and not the actual totally random result, no matter how well they play- so they get less lucky on avg becaue of liquidity).

I haven't got enough statistics for this, but I suspect that if you play Spin&Go, for example, and get some big multiplier, a chance to earn the biggest prize is critically low.
I tested that making small deposits. But I still haven't got enough data to "prove" it. In my opinion, yes, most-likely bankroll amount plays significant role while playing the concrete limit $.

The idea is that software of the room is supposed to control bankroll increase speed. Since a player got 20 bucks, he won't be able to grow +100$ immediately.

Well, if you decide to run analysis on ggpoker that would be interesting too. Anyways, considering the rake is already very high on most sites, should not some sort of an algorithm on top of that, make it practically impossible to winning players to exist?

i remember already back in 2014 there were threads like this by very good players:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/38/om...

So rake alone, without any kind of algos, would make it quite hard for anyone

Pokertableratings was a fantastic sites as it showed if there were any winners of each stakes and so on, sad there are no longer quite sites like it

Thank you for the link, crazy stuff ))

Regarding high rake value and it's increasing.
I think, that there are too many regular players take part in online games. So that they have to "balance" this outflow of funds (winning regular players withdrawn too much).

But this talk is connected to discussion of a REAL possible ROI of a professional player (I talk about pro level players, not about regular players who open huge number of tables with 10%-30% ROI on each of them).
In case the real ROI of an offline pro player varies from 100% to 300% ROI on, for example, 200 participants MTT - there is no any acceptable room's commission level which would save the room's money from withdrawals.

Sorry for a complicated idea, but it's not a "fantasy". This is how it really works in finance, same as in poker rooms managing.

And yes, exactly, it's a pity there are no more open statistics regarding online-poker players results...

Dopamine receptors lmfao

What site are you even talking about?

While gg poker typically has slightly higher rake it feels way different than stars. Also people think that gg has looser playerbase but this is generally not the case as russian players are banned from stars now. So nowadays stars is quite soft compared to gg often times, but the gameplay feels much weirder than gg. No statistical analysis simply as an anecdote. :shocked:

Havent tried iPoker. Does stars use really same software or is it developed by same company?

Aha. Well, the most fun to play on Stars on the weekend 😃
A lot of players arrive, who play "from time to time" and the software tries to "satisfy" them ))))

Wow, i'm surprised to hear that there are some rooms like GG which look "natural".. Cool. In fact, Star's gameplay looks x2 more natural, then iPoker's one (just the gameplay, yes, they got the same software "logic" of alternating "clean"/"trapped" push-fold hands, but iPoker is more like a "circus" comparing to Stars. Same hands of different opponents - AJ vs AJ, AA vs AA. Same structure flops J 9 7 x2 )) A 2 3 - suited flop, and then 4 5 6 - of the same suit. On a regular basic. It doesn't even look like a poker game).

iPoker's software is developed by Playtech PLC. That is why I sent my materials to The UK Gambling Commission.

But Pokerstars software is developed by Flutter Entertainment (a huge sport better company registered in Ireland).

The developers are different. But it looks like there is the only way to rig the game so that players wouldn't manage to "notice"/to prove rigging without opening of opponents hands (I just managed to open my opponent's hands in iPoker, that is why I prepared the research and sent it to Gambling Supervisors).

By all means, try playing on gg poker. I would like to hear your initial thoughts on it. And perhaps if possible at some point run a similar analysis and compare the results for example to ipoker or stars. Altought keep in mind the rake is slightly higher on gg than many of the competitors. But the game anecdotally feels very different from stars. Cant really compare to live poker because play so little live.

Unibet (a very large betting site) have also small poker site of their own, and at least some years ago it felt pretty good and natural. In fact I think i should try their site again too.

Also you mentioned playing against sit-out-opponent so you were able to see the mucked cards. Could one method to gather information be to arrange a heads-up or a 3-6 short-handed game between players of vast different skills on a selected poker network. And after a good sample size all of the players share their hand histories for a proper analysis. 😵

Nice that you share your thoughts about acceptable rooms to play.

Regarding GG - sounds interesting.
At the same time, man, I had to spend too much time to perform the research of iPoker/Pokerstars/Partypoker's software. So, I would rather move to play offline poker.
I hope to synchronize playing offline with tennis coaching somehow and to test my real abilities in a random game.

Since Unibet looks natural - it's good to play there at least to keep your gameplay and to train the game, you know. So, the idea to comeback there is good.

I had to stop playing online not to spoil my gameplay, because, starting from some moment bluffs stop working online (players got huge hands again and again, and you can't even see these hands). Hard to feel pushes mathematically when the game is rigged THAT much. All this spoils the playing shape badly.

Yeah! Look, this is what I successfully tried on iPoker.
I started to show every valuable hand after the end of the game cone. And other players noticed, that if you can see hands of your opponents every time - the game looks like a circus, you know.
And they started to show almost every hand too. I played hundreds of games like that )) Was fun.

- Several players got the same hands simultaneously - 76s for both, Ajo for both.
- Or 4 of 6 players on the table got KT, K9, KJ with K J 9 flop - the software puts similar hands to players to raise action on a postflop.
It looks just crazy, when your opponents start to show you every hand.
- Or every new player reaching BB position got a premium hand, lol.

In fact, yes, exactly. If people would manage to exchange hand history and gather some amount of statistics with "all the cards visible" - that would just destroy online poker immediately. But, in fact, I made something similar to it. More then that, i simply described the software algorithm.

I think, starting from this moment more and more people will start to understand what is going on. That software is simply predictable and tries to reduce profitability of all the players eliminating good decisions with a predictable generating negative ingame situations right after positive ones.

And, looks like all the online poker market (all the rooms) works according to this model.
So people think that they win or lose pots randomly. But there is just a predictable logic of this process. You play a good all in - you fold the next strong hand (preflop/postflop), if you just won several tournaments before.

I don't see a way, that online poker keep being legal in a near future. Most-likely it will become something like a "well-known" type of scam (like "send me some money, my pet is ill" messages of scammers on the mobile phone).

Guys it's simple. Starting hands distribution would be a good starting point to proving Poker sites aren't rigged and their alrogithms really to randomize perfectly. Even though the proof is not 100%, it would give me some hope. However, not a single site has ever released the full starting hands distribution percentages. Think about it. Not. A. Single. One. If randomizers worked as well as they said, surely at least it would be provable to some degree just by releasing historic starting hands, or even the distribution of the last few years?

Well, hard to say, because once they publish this statistics, they will let other players know the strategy of everyone, you know.

I mean, even if they don't show actions of players, those who got trackers (Holdem managed, hand2note, etc) will manage to watch the full history of their opponents including decisions on all the stages.

So, i'm not sure it's a good option to prove fairness. I think many players would be against it, also.

At the same time, if they did so, it would be fun, a crazy joke. Because, if you play vs each other showing every of your hand, you will see, the game is not even close to be random ))
I played like that, and i know how it looks, lol. They just deal the same or very similar hands to players of the same suit, same value. It's just a model of "max action" hand dealing so that everyone got some combination on the flop and play it until the showdown.

I got KT, my opponent got QJ, some other guy got JT and the flop is T 9 3. This is what they do, and it becomes obvious once players start to show their hands each game cone.

I don't talk about this too much, cause i haven't got enough statistics to show you. But it works exactly like I described you.
Just in case you wanna know how they deal hands ))

I'm talking about STARTING HANDS distribution. Big difference between that and what you are saying. I'm not asking for hand histories, only distributions. Starting hands is only a start. But they can begin begin with that. What 2 cards people get at the start of a new round. Releasing this data would not be useful in any way in the sense you described. It would only show that hand distributions are fair and balanced according to statistical probabilities. Mind you, I'm not asking for what player had what starting hands, only the distribution dataset.

Also I am glad to see monteroy gone. Browsed some pages of recent history in this thread. Good riddance. I hope he never comes back.

However, this theory presented, does not necessarily require starting hand distribution anamoly? Post flop statistics seem to be most influenced in the theory/analysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKvqjXv5...

would not matter one bit.

most of the people complaining about perceived rigging cant be satisfied.

There was real deal poker and people still complained and it went out of business.

there is provably fair technology for other gambling games beside poker now and people still claim its rigged.

the best the rooms can do is what they are doing have some certification and ignore the loud minority of riggies

What do you mean by a word "distribution"? What exactly should they publish? A data base with all the hands dealt on a preflop?

Look, why I'm suspicious about the idea of publishing of players starting hands - because everyone, who has got a poker tracker program on his PC can open the tracker and watch any of his own game cones played. He opens a game cone, then he opens statistics with Starting hands of players and watch all the opponent's starting hands, right?

So he can check what decisions his opponents have taken on the flop, on the turn and on the river. Because he has got a starting hand of every player.

If you mean, that a room will publish starting hands distribution without players nicknames - then how will public check if this statistics is true?

Monteroy was the final boss for all riggies in this thread.

You can look at your own starting hand histories. Even with just 50000 hands you could see if pairs show up 1 out of 17 hands and if each combination of non-pocket pairs are within 20 hands of the average frequency. Even if certain hands come up more often than others, I'm not sure what that proves as far as fairness. With respect to fairness what's important are things like if AK beats AQ 3 out of 4 times, K hits the flop, turn and river as frequently as Q (and vice versa) and aces 33% less frequently.

you can only check if AK beats AQ 3 out of 4 times if its a preflop all-in

if you set filter to hero has ak & villain has aq you get skewed results because you miss all the times villain folded aq before showdown
just like many (if not all) observations in this thread are skewed and flawed

But if you distributed that 3 out of 4 times AK vs AQ in such a way that a first depositor gets the lucky side of it so to speak- he wins 3 times out of 4 with AQ as an underdog and later that luck evens out when he loses with AK against AQ. Even though the depositor got super lucky and ran like a god if you just look at the overall win% of hands it looks like normal distribution because it evens out, just they choose what part of distribution goes where to manipulate with liquidity and player retention. Wouldn't it all look legit until you start comparing specific subsets of distributions, like depositor vs non depositor etc?

Well then this becomes bingo and there is no skill involved. Was your reply translated because the wording sounds a bit of, and it sounds like you are saying fewer losing players would quit playing as a result. If that is what you are saying I would agree but then this isn't really poker anymore. And yes you would have to look at more than a few hands and look at the sequence the cards hit the board because even if AK would have beaten AQ 3 out of 4 times in a preflop all in situation, if Q always connects first that's a problem. But my reply wasn't to document every possible issue. It was to illustrate why hole card distribution really doesn't impact fairness. Ultimately a simpler way to review the hands to see if they play in accordance with the probabilities is to review the all in results which eliminates any of these issues. Which is why I posted my all-in results.