I've read a lot of poker books and every poker book I've read chimes in with a "but if your online..." clause because people online call a lot more hands than people in live games, and they bluff a lot more.
In addition to that you play a lot more hands per hour online.
When you have a lot of idiots chasing long-shot hands, sure there are going to be a lot of strange beats. And those are the hands that people remember.
I had a streak of getting my pocket Aces cracked eleven times before I won more than the blinds with them. That's not because the game was rigged, it's because while I might be an 80% favorite against one player, several would jump in despite my large opening bet. Sure, I'd be the favorite, but with a lot of callers it's more likely than not that I'll lose the hand.
In a live game I had 7800 and the one remaining player had 200. (This was last December against my cousin's wife) We agreed to go all-in every hand... and she ended up winnning every single hand to beat me! And I was the favorite every hand before the flop except for the last hand.
People who complain about online games being rigged don't understand statistics or variance.
Poker
People who complain about online games being rigged don't understand statistics or variance.
That's not true at all.
I mean, let's be totally honest here, you can't prove that online games aren't rigged or broken and that's fact.
You can't prove each online casinos' code is tight, that they have perfect anti-cheating methods in place, that everyone playing isn't cheating, that there isn't any scams going on, etc.
Your statement is made on pure assumption and that alone makes it wrong. In fact, it's based on perception, which is what you're slamming others for basing their opinions on.
Sorry, not picking on you, but I'm feeling argumentative and since I pointed out I've only ever seen a royal flush online, your statement could be aimed at me. But I'm not starting a flame war, just trying to make a point, so let me break this down:
I've read articles on online gaming and how some of the best minds in the casino, online gaming, and programming worlds all have worries about the randomness of their numbers. In fact, I'm quite sure one of the best ones I read was in a Sports Illustrated where they actually talked about how their system wasn't truly random, but was pretty close.
"Pretty close" isn't random.
We'll start off with the common slot machine. Slot machines ARE rigged, it's just that simple. Everyone knows that they're rigged, but they play them hoping that they play that machine just in time for when it's been rigged to pay off.
Now considering the house "tweaks" EVERY game so that they have the best odds of winning, so you honestly think that video poker/blackjack/etc. are setup to be perfectly random? The odds are that they aren't. A casino CANNOT take the chance that a video poker machine will hit a run of say 10 royal flushes in a row. If that were a possibility, the casino would not stock video card games.
Look at blackjack. Notice that casinos are going to single decks instead of multi-desk shoes? It's because it gives the house better odds.
Head to Vegas sometime and see how cheap the casino owners are these days. Hell, they make their employees pay $5 for their name tags. They're not taking unnecessary chances with their money. (The days of the mob run casinos are over and honestly, that's not a great thing. But I'll hit that in another thread or maybe a front page post sometime.)
Now in online poker games, there's no need for say, Party Poker, to "rig" the games as they're getting their money off the top and not from people's bets. However, it would be a very simple process to rig the games so that a certain person would win hands. Do you know for a fact that no reps from Party Poker are sitting in hands and raking pots? Of course you don't. Hell, Party Poker might not know. Look at the guy who was doing the U.S. military's payroll and was taking the figures after the .00. He made a mint. He got caught yes, but it took years.
The point is there are a lot more opportunities to steal or cheat the system online than there are in a home game.
And that brings me to my final point, cheaters. They're there whether you want to believe it or not. Video game companies deal with cheaters all the time and despite their best efforts, people are still able to cheat. So have online gaming companies found some magic code that's immune to cheaters? No, of course they haven't. Have they caught them all? Also, a big NO.
So they're out there and they're cheating. It could be as simple as two friends playing in one room together and informing each other of what they have, but it's still cheating and it's lower your odds of winning.
All that being said, I enjoy online play and trust it enough to throw some money in, but I don't believe for a second that the system is perfect. I've played
“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.” - Dr Thomas Sowell
"Pretty close" isn't random.
Machines are only capable of doing deterministic things. If you want to take that line of thought, then no random (secretly pseudorandom) number generator will ever satisfy you.
So have online gaming companies found some magic code that's immune to cheaters? No, of course they haven't.
You're comparing a MMOG to an electronic poker game? Come on, that's not even remotely fair.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
I mean, let's be totally honest here, you can't prove that online games aren't rigged or broken and that's fact.
In the same vein, you can't prove that casino dealt poker isn't rigged, either. Trick deals, rigged decks, and the like are all possible as only the casino itself is policing itself on a daily basis. And those automatic shufflers could be rigged with tiny cameras and programmed to set the deck any way they wanted. And I'm sure there's also cheaters, too.
Edited By TPRJones on 1182955293
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
Well, computers can use hardware random number generators that are truly random.Malcolm wrote:Machines are only capable of doing deterministic things. If you want to take that line of thought, then no random (secretly pseudorandom) number generator will ever satisfy you."Pretty close" isn't random.
It's not me, it's someone else.
From what I've read, online randomization is based on the time that the game starts, to the millisecond, along with other factors. So even if you knew knew wrote the software, you'd never figure out what cards were coming by the time the game ended.
I have seen studies taken from people's logs in games (millions of hands), and none show that cards tend to be better than what a random dealing shows. I think BMM Test Labs does most poker sites, because they pay BMM to, because they want to assure their customers that the fluke hands are just flukes. BMM Test Labs also does several state lotteries.
Since online gaming sites depend on people trusting them, it would be devastating to their business if they were found to stack the deck to promote more action. Poker is very lucrative for them.
They get plenty of $ from the 5% rake. In fact, unless you're using a rakeback system (usually recovering 30% of your rake) a winning player could easily be losing more than half of his winnings to the rake, because to win $100 you often win and lose $10 dozens and dozens of times along the way, and you pay 5% each time you win.
Here's an example of how lucerative the rakes are.
Now, with a rakeback deal in place (Absolute Poker will pay back 30% of your rake if you sign up ahead of time, and Full Tilt will pay you back 27% if you sign up ahead of time) he'd have gotten $3,500 back, but that's still a big profit for the poker site.
As far as anonymity of cards go, I think you know less about the cards online than at a home game. I've seen the bottom cards countless times when the dealer has shuffled the cards. Also, there's close to zero chance of the dealer accidentally exposing your cards, or accidentally mucking them, or the dealer being a crook and stacking the deck.
The biggest flaw I see in online poker is collusion. A table could have two or three people at it, all teaming up, sharing information. It'd be really easy to do.
I think for the most part brick & mortar casinos try to prevent this, but it's not always the case. I know in Phil Gordon's book he mentioned a story about going to a casino and one of the managers (a friend of Phil's) tapped him on the shoulder to talk to him. He told Phil something like, "You don't want to play in this game. They're all working together." I guess that card room didn't care as long as they were getting their rake.
Negreanu also tells a story in his blog about two people who played the casino where he "worked." (He played in that casino the same 8 hours every day, 5 days a week along with Evelyn Ng). He said it was widely known that the two players were in collusion, and used it to his advantage by bailing out of pots when one of them would limp in to sweeten the pot for the other.
Edited By Paul on 1182963144
I have seen studies taken from people's logs in games (millions of hands), and none show that cards tend to be better than what a random dealing shows. I think BMM Test Labs does most poker sites, because they pay BMM to, because they want to assure their customers that the fluke hands are just flukes. BMM Test Labs also does several state lotteries.
Since online gaming sites depend on people trusting them, it would be devastating to their business if they were found to stack the deck to promote more action. Poker is very lucrative for them.
They get plenty of $ from the 5% rake. In fact, unless you're using a rakeback system (usually recovering 30% of your rake) a winning player could easily be losing more than half of his winnings to the rake, because to win $100 you often win and lose $10 dozens and dozens of times along the way, and you pay 5% each time you win.
Here's an example of how lucerative the rakes are.
I played 59,375 hands of $5/$10 at the same site. My winrate was 0.24 bb/100 (and the games weren't all that much harder… isn't variance great?) I earned $1,450.14 in this stretch, and I paid $11,699.00 in rake. Yes, that's right. I paid rake at a rate of about 1.94bb/100; therefore my winrate before rake was 2.18bb/100. In this case, as a marginal winner, I was actually paying back 89% of my winnings to the rake!!!
Now, with a rakeback deal in place (Absolute Poker will pay back 30% of your rake if you sign up ahead of time, and Full Tilt will pay you back 27% if you sign up ahead of time) he'd have gotten $3,500 back, but that's still a big profit for the poker site.
As far as anonymity of cards go, I think you know less about the cards online than at a home game. I've seen the bottom cards countless times when the dealer has shuffled the cards. Also, there's close to zero chance of the dealer accidentally exposing your cards, or accidentally mucking them, or the dealer being a crook and stacking the deck.
The biggest flaw I see in online poker is collusion. A table could have two or three people at it, all teaming up, sharing information. It'd be really easy to do.
I think for the most part brick & mortar casinos try to prevent this, but it's not always the case. I know in Phil Gordon's book he mentioned a story about going to a casino and one of the managers (a friend of Phil's) tapped him on the shoulder to talk to him. He told Phil something like, "You don't want to play in this game. They're all working together." I guess that card room didn't care as long as they were getting their rake.
Negreanu also tells a story in his blog about two people who played the casino where he "worked." (He played in that casino the same 8 hours every day, 5 days a week along with Evelyn Ng). He said it was widely known that the two players were in collusion, and used it to his advantage by bailing out of pots when one of them would limp in to sweeten the pot for the other.
Edited By Paul on 1182963144
I suppose, but I'd bet most folk just get the best software pseudorandom generator they can.TheCatt wrote:Well, computers can use hardware random number generators that are truly random.Malcolm wrote:Machines are only capable of doing deterministic things. If you want to take that line of thought, then no random (secretly pseudorandom) number generator will ever satisfy you."Pretty close" isn't random.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
So what I hear is that there is room in the market for a <3.5% rake game?Paul wrote:They get plenty of $ from the 5% rake. In fact, unless you're using a rakeback system (usually recovering 30% of your rake) a winning player could easily be losing more than half of his winnings to the rake, because to win $100 you often win and lose $10 dozens and dozens of times along the way, and you pay 5% each time you win.
It's not me, it's someone else.
Rake is actually less than 5%.
There's usually a minimum pot size before they take a rake, so no rake is paid in an uncalled pot.
From how I understand it they extract $.05 from each full dollar in the pot. So in a nickle game they take $.05 from pots of $1.00-$1.95. It's be $.10 for pots $2.00-$2.95, etc.
Plus, there's the 30% rakeback, which knocks their cut down to around 3.5%.
Still since you generally win and lose the same money over and over again, and they're taking a cut each time, that small percentage does a lot of damage. If you play all day with $100 you could be paying that 3.5% on more than $2,500 in wins despite most of that being lost bits at a time.
Some sites (like PokerStars) do not have a rakeback system other than sign up and reload bonuses. They also have a lot of players. I bet they're rolling in the dough.
Still starting a site is hard to start. There are hundreds of competing sites, and getting enough players to keep your customers happy is difficult. A lot of smaller sites pay prop players. That is, they'll give people up to 100% of their rake back to sit in short handed games, but they have to leave when the table fills up and move to other short-handed tables.
Some sites pay their prop players on a per-hand basis, but that usually equals the rake anyway.
Edited By Paul on 1182966243
There's usually a minimum pot size before they take a rake, so no rake is paid in an uncalled pot.
From how I understand it they extract $.05 from each full dollar in the pot. So in a nickle game they take $.05 from pots of $1.00-$1.95. It's be $.10 for pots $2.00-$2.95, etc.
Plus, there's the 30% rakeback, which knocks their cut down to around 3.5%.
Still since you generally win and lose the same money over and over again, and they're taking a cut each time, that small percentage does a lot of damage. If you play all day with $100 you could be paying that 3.5% on more than $2,500 in wins despite most of that being lost bits at a time.
Some sites (like PokerStars) do not have a rakeback system other than sign up and reload bonuses. They also have a lot of players. I bet they're rolling in the dough.
Still starting a site is hard to start. There are hundreds of competing sites, and getting enough players to keep your customers happy is difficult. A lot of smaller sites pay prop players. That is, they'll give people up to 100% of their rake back to sit in short handed games, but they have to leave when the table fills up and move to other short-handed tables.
Some sites pay their prop players on a per-hand basis, but that usually equals the rake anyway.
Edited By Paul on 1182966243
I've been reading the archives of Law school droupouts poker blog. If it's real (and I think it is... not enough advertising or interesting stories to be fake) it's about a guy who quits law school to pursue poker. He mentions not liking No Limit, so he plays Ed Miller's short stack strategy so I looked it up. (I love how Allen misinterprets the strategy in that link)
He's made thousands playing Ed Miller's strategy. I wonder how profitable it would actually be now, years later?
Basically you enter a cash game with a small amount of chips, wait for a premium hand, and then go all-in. People at the table generally think that a new guy who overbets the pot is an idiot who's bluffing, or desperate and since the pot is small and can't be re-raised they make the call.
Once you win (or lose) you move to another table to find people who don't know what you're doing and repeat the process.
I'm sure this would generate a lot of chips in the free games, but I'm not sure if the strategy would work in actual money games? It seems like if it worked it'd be done to death and then it wouldn't be effective any more.
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I'll should be at the 90+ player tournament tomorrow night. I think I'll post my results now:
I kicked much ass, dominated the table, made some great reads, built a respectable chip stack, and then lost all my chips when I was a 4/1 favorite.
He's made thousands playing Ed Miller's strategy. I wonder how profitable it would actually be now, years later?
Basically you enter a cash game with a small amount of chips, wait for a premium hand, and then go all-in. People at the table generally think that a new guy who overbets the pot is an idiot who's bluffing, or desperate and since the pot is small and can't be re-raised they make the call.
Once you win (or lose) you move to another table to find people who don't know what you're doing and repeat the process.
I'm sure this would generate a lot of chips in the free games, but I'm not sure if the strategy would work in actual money games? It seems like if it worked it'd be done to death and then it wouldn't be effective any more.
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I'll should be at the 90+ player tournament tomorrow night. I think I'll post my results now:
I kicked much ass, dominated the table, made some great reads, built a respectable chip stack, and then lost all my chips when I was a 4/1 favorite.
Machines are only capable of doing deterministic things. If you want to take that line of thought, then no random (secretly pseudorandom) number generator will ever satisfy you.
And perhaps things have changed since the article I read was written, but if "pretty close" is the best we can get, then no, I won't trust them. Not when real money is on the line.
You're comparing a MMOG to an electronic poker game? Come on, that's not even remotely fair.
Why? Every MMO ever made has had bugs and exploits galore. They're a business, that's designed specifically for online use, involves real money, and has customers who want a cheat free environment despite other customers who will cheat if given opportunity. Any cheating scandal could destroy the rep of either. Why are they different?
Oh, and FYI, almost every MMO has had scandals involving employees who altered the code/system/etc. to allow their friends favors in game.
In the same vein, you can't prove that casino dealt poker isn't rigged, either. Trick deals, rigged decks, and the like are all possible as only the casino itself is policing itself on a daily basis. And those automatic shufflers could be rigged with tiny cameras and programmed to set the deck any way they wanted. And I'm sure there's also cheaters, too.
Duh?
I don't discount any of that, but you're taking my point out of context. I'm not debating about where cheating occurs or anything like that.
Remember, all I'm trying to do is show that a person cannot make a definitive statement like "online gaming is not rigged."
Your statement actually bolsters my argument.
Ok, you math/programming wizards, help me understand here. Paul says:
From what I've read, online randomization is based on the time that the game starts, to the millisecond, along with other factors. So even if you knew knew wrote the software, you'd never figure out what cards were coming by the time the game ended.
Add that to this from the wiki I linked:
Such library functions often have poor statistical properties and some will repeat patterns after only tens of thousands of trials. They are often initialized using a computer's real time clock as the seed. These functions may provide enough randomness for certain tasks (for example simple video games) but are unsuitable where high-quality randomness is required, such as in cryptographic applications, statistics or numerical analysis.
So, am I reading this correctly? BMM is using a shitty randomization technique?
“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.” - Dr Thomas Sowell
I don't think the Ed Miller thing would work. What's happening to his stack when he pays antes and blinds? Who calls a guy who goes all in on his first bet? Especially if he's been at the table for a lot of hands?
He is making an assumption that he'll get the nuts on the one hand he decides to go all in on and won't get beat by the turn or river (I assume he's not calling bets).
And he assumes that someone will call him.
He is making an assumption that he'll get the nuts on the one hand he decides to go all in on and won't get beat by the turn or river (I assume he's not calling bets).
And he assumes that someone will call him.
“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.” - Dr Thomas Sowell
Leisher wrote:So, am I reading this correctly? BMM is using a shitty randomization technique?
Not really. What it means is that after a few tens of thousands of cards have been dealt from the single shuffling of the deck, if you could remember them all clearly and seek a pattern you'd start to see some repeating and predictability. But since the randomizer is reset with each hand, you'll never see that problem. There aren't tens of thousands of cards dealt in one hand of poker. In fact 52 would be the absolute max, because you'd run out of cards. That's a few orders of magnitudes less than is needed before patterns start to appear.
While there are some problems with getting purely random numbers generated in a computer, the problem doesn't effect poker. There are a limited number of ways the cards in a deck of poker cards can be arranged (52!, to be precise), and randomizers are plenty good enough to select randomly from that limited set. Randomization in computers only becomes an issue on really large-scale problems like trying to add a random element to fine-grain weather predictions, where there'd be many more permutations of possibilities than in a simple shuffling of a deck of cards.
Edited By TPRJones on 1182974906
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
Yeah, it can be deciphered, but not during the limited span of a poker game.
I read a bit more on it online randomization. it seems some sites were crackable in 1999.
They've all switched to hardware randomization now. I don't know how that works.
I read a bit more on it online randomization. it seems some sites were crackable in 1999.
They've all switched to hardware randomization now. I don't know how that works.
Well, nevermind what I wrote above. If the code is this simplistic, then there is a problem. I was assuming someone reasonably competant was writing the code, but it looks like that might not be the case. Ick.Paul wrote:it seems some sites were crackable in 1999.
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
TPRJones wrote:I was assuming someone reasonably competant was writing the code...
Never, EVER assume the code was authored by anything other than a monkey.
Edited By Malcolm on 1183004730
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
After being obnoxious about my positive thinking, I was the first in my group to be knocked out. I didn't even make it to the break.
At the break both of my friends were short stacked.
On friend asked me, "You've been going on and on about how you'd beat us all tonight. How are you going to win now that you've been eliminated?"
I chimed back that I was still going to be the big winner for the night, and that I've been considering writing a "How to Come Back From Elimination to Win the Tournament" book.
I refused to admit defeat. I was taking the positive thinking BS to the extreme.
A few minutes later they had a drawing. I'd forgotten about that. Sure enough, they drew my ticket! My $1 investment in that ticket netted me $46!
Then the tournament started again, and one friend was eliminated a few minutes later. The second friend tripled up, enabling him to last just long enough to finish my last beer (great timing!).
So in the end not only was I the big winner money-wise, but I was the most efficient player (winning $0 in the tournament before them).
I hope this positive thinking stuff isn't legit.
Edited By Paul on 1183141540
At the break both of my friends were short stacked.
On friend asked me, "You've been going on and on about how you'd beat us all tonight. How are you going to win now that you've been eliminated?"
I chimed back that I was still going to be the big winner for the night, and that I've been considering writing a "How to Come Back From Elimination to Win the Tournament" book.
I refused to admit defeat. I was taking the positive thinking BS to the extreme.
A few minutes later they had a drawing. I'd forgotten about that. Sure enough, they drew my ticket! My $1 investment in that ticket netted me $46!
Then the tournament started again, and one friend was eliminated a few minutes later. The second friend tripled up, enabling him to last just long enough to finish my last beer (great timing!).
So in the end not only was I the big winner money-wise, but I was the most efficient player (winning $0 in the tournament before them).
I hope this positive thinking stuff isn't legit.
Edited By Paul on 1183141540
You should go pro.
Apparently going pro isn't that difficult. Just have the cash to enter tournaments and by sheer dumb luck you'll do ok.
Some friends of mine have a friend who is a pro player and he's a real cementhead. One of the stupidest people you'll ever meet. Yet, he makes a living playing poker. The funny thing is that when he comes back here to visit and plays with friends and family, they destroy him.
When I was out in Vegas recently, he had entered the first tournament of the World Series and was out before the first break. Two weeks prior he won $100,000+ by finishing in the top 10 or so. He got knocked out by the Aussie.
I'll get his name for you, so you can keep an eye out when you're watching on TV.
Apparently going pro isn't that difficult. Just have the cash to enter tournaments and by sheer dumb luck you'll do ok.
Some friends of mine have a friend who is a pro player and he's a real cementhead. One of the stupidest people you'll ever meet. Yet, he makes a living playing poker. The funny thing is that when he comes back here to visit and plays with friends and family, they destroy him.
When I was out in Vegas recently, he had entered the first tournament of the World Series and was out before the first break. Two weeks prior he won $100,000+ by finishing in the top 10 or so. He got knocked out by the Aussie.
I'll get his name for you, so you can keep an eye out when you're watching on TV.
“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.” - Dr Thomas Sowell
Basically you're a pro if you declare yourself a pro.
People at amateur tournaments and amateur cash games pretty much give their money away. So anybody who know what they're doing can make money at it (over the long haul. Though, cash games are a lot more profitable).
Now, making enough to support yourself, that's a different issue.
The 10k events start slow. Pros often skip the first few hours because losing the small blinds at the beginning isn't important. Then they hit the table fresher than the other players, while exuding an "I'm so good I don't have to worry about losing chips" image.
So basically, players have a lot of time to feel each other out. Minor weaknesses can be exploited over the long haul for repeated, small profit.
The tournament I play in we're given 1,000 chips. After an hour of play the blinds are 50/100. Fifteen minutes of play later they're 100/200. Seeing as how the standard opening bet is three times the big blind, you *must* amass chips in a hurry. So luck it a big factor. If you are dealt crap all the time, or the flop is bad to you, you can become crippled quickly.
Edited By Paul on 1183148681
People at amateur tournaments and amateur cash games pretty much give their money away. So anybody who know what they're doing can make money at it (over the long haul. Though, cash games are a lot more profitable).
Now, making enough to support yourself, that's a different issue.
The 10k events start slow. Pros often skip the first few hours because losing the small blinds at the beginning isn't important. Then they hit the table fresher than the other players, while exuding an "I'm so good I don't have to worry about losing chips" image.
So basically, players have a lot of time to feel each other out. Minor weaknesses can be exploited over the long haul for repeated, small profit.
The tournament I play in we're given 1,000 chips. After an hour of play the blinds are 50/100. Fifteen minutes of play later they're 100/200. Seeing as how the standard opening bet is three times the big blind, you *must* amass chips in a hurry. So luck it a big factor. If you are dealt crap all the time, or the flop is bad to you, you can become crippled quickly.
Edited By Paul on 1183148681