You have probably read sayings like “Online Poker is Rigged” dozens of times when browsing poker forums and blogs. But usually, people complaining about the riggedness of online poker are just losing players who were previously riding on the sunny-side of variance in online poker.
It’s therefore time to discuss the top 7 poker myths and to prove that online poker is not rigged.
1. Online Poker is Rigged Because There are Too Many Quads / Straight Flushes / Full Houses
In particular newcomers in online poker who have already played offline poker in home games are surprised by the accumulation of high-quality hands the online poker. As they rarely get to see straight flushes and quads in their home games, and as even a full house is a very special hand, they can quickly come to the suspicion that the online poker room is manipulating the cards.
Those players forget the following: while playing in a full-ring game home game, they will usually only play 30 hands per hour. In online poker, they are playing twice as much, 60 hands per hour. In addition to this, even beginners often play more than one table simultaneously. An advanced player, multitlabling six tables, will play twelve times more hands per hour as a poker player in live poker. Accordingly, he will get to see 12 times more quads, straight flushes and full houses.
2. Online Poker is Rigged Because There are Too Many Set-Ups
A set-up is when a strong hand is beaten by an even stronger hand. Often a player with a strong hand pushes all his chips into the middle of the table and then gets very angry when he loses against an even better hand. Relatively common set-ups include set vs. set, full house vs. full house or flush against full house.
Here again, as mentioned above, the reason for this “riggedness” is the same: as a player plays a lot more hands online, such set-ups are just more common.
3. Online Poker is Rigged Because Poker Sites Intentionally Generate Action
This point is a consequence of the above point: Some players are of the opinion (especially if they are losing players) that poker rooms intentionally generate action by assigning players strong hands with which they will go broke.
Poker rooms use RNG (random number generators). It is technically almost impossible to hand out cards so that “action will be generated” without distributing certain card combinations statistically too often. The RNGs are verified by independent audit firms regularly. In addition, many players store and analyze their hand histories – either with the built-in statistical software of the poker room or with tools such as the Holdem Manager. Statistical differences – even very small ones – would massively decrease confidence in the poker room if discovered. And poker rooms rely on the confidence of the players into their software. No poker room could afford such a manipulation becoming public without severely damaging its reputation.
Moreover, in poker tournaments like Sit and Go’s or Double or Nothing, the poker room gets the fee (the rake) in advance. The provider thus has no advantage from generating additional action – except that if a player busts early he might play another Sit&Go or DON. But here the poker room would profit much more if it just would raise the blinds faster.
4. Online Poker is Rigged Because Always Lose After Cash-Outs
Many poker players complain about this. They won some money playing Texas Hold’em, and as soon as they withdraw their winnings, the downswing begins. Those players complain in forums that poker room XY is rigged and that this is simply a trick of the poker room in order to make them deposit their money again.
This statement is of course nonsense. It is impossible for the poker room to associate the information about your cash-out with the board cards. Many poker rooms such as Betsson Poker use the system of master accounts and poker accounts. To cash your money out, you have to transfer it from the poker to the master account. Because you can transfer the money from there also to the casino or bingo site, it is impossible to know whether you have withdrawn your money completely or not. Furthermore, poker rooms such as Betsson or Doyles Room are parts of large poker networks. There is no way that these poker skins can transmit data about cashing-out players to the central software distributing the cards.
In addition to this, a disadvantage to one player would indeed imply favoring another player – how should a poker room do this?
It’s just the nature of Texas Hold’em that the variance is enormous in this poker game. This has nothing to do with “riggedness”.
5. Online Poker is Rigged Because Bad Players Get Good Cards
Certainly, you are familiar with this situation: you finally figured out who is the whale (a very bad player) at the table. You hold Ace-King and the fish calls with ace-three (suited!), he rivers the flush or makes a pair of threes and wins the pot. While this is unpleasant, this happens often: AKo wins a preflop all-in against A3S only in two thirds of all cases. If you lose against a fish in such a case, this has nothing to do with “Poker is rigged” – it’s just a mathematical fact.
6. Online Poker is Rigged Because I Always Lose with Pocket Aces
Many players at the tables follow the strategy of playing tight or even very tight. You might be one of these TAGs or Rocks at the tournament tables. When such a player finally gets a strong, playable hand he wants to collect more than just the blinds (which is the risk if he just makes a standard 3BB preflop raise). So he decides to limp his pocket aces in order to trap his opponents. This is obviously the wrong strategy. If our pocket aces limper plays against four other players (two players playing their top 20% hands, the small blind, who plays the top 50% of the hands plus the big blind who plays 100% of the hands), then American Airlines have only 55% equity. So our limper will lose almost every second time with his aces. As it is extremely difficult to fold pocket aces post-flop, there is an increased risk that he will lose all his chips because of his playing style. Online poker is not rigged, but players who do not follow the basic strategies will lose money.
7. Online Poker is Rigged Because Playing at a New Poker Room Always Stars with an Upswing
Switching the poker room won’t change the fact that variance in online poker is extremely high. Luck plays an important role, at least in the short term. Some players however think that switching to a new poker room will give them “better luck”. This is a myth and that cannot be explained objectively.
On the other hand, there are some advantages from signing-up at a new poker room:
- The motivation to play poker can increase
- The concentration and the willingness to play its A-Game is higher
- All poker rooms offer new players a welcome bonus with their first deposit. This bonus often amounts to several hundred dollars donated by the poker room
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1. Online Poker is Rigged Because There are Too Many Quads / Straight Flushes / Full Houses
Here’s a recent experience on one of the top 5 poker site. The site claims that they use the same RNG for all poker games; freeroll, play and cash. While in a $500 freeroll with about 3,500 entrants that runs about 6 hours I had the following happen. I saw Quads show down 3 times on the table I was seated at, all in less then 15 minutes. What’s your explanation?
Hi AlanThe probability for making Quads is 0.024% for a single player. So you should make quads roughly every 4,200 hands. In a 10seated tournament, this will happen roughly every 420 hands or about once every 7 hours (assuming 60 hands/hour).Although it happens very seldomly to see three times Quads within 15 minutes, this can happen. It can also happen to you that you play for 30 hours and never see Quads, but it will be more unlikely that you would consider this as “rigged”. So from a mathematical point of view, this is just variance.
Marco,
Actually, your calculation to make quads is grossly incorrect. It appears you used a calculation from a 5 card hand (as in 5 card stud).
In Holdem poker there are 7 cards from which to make a 5 card hand and therefore there are a total of 133,784,560 possible combinations of 5 card hands.
There is a total of 224,848 ways to make quads from those 7 cards. Making the percentage to get quads BY THE RIVER, 0.00168067.
Quads will be made once every 5950 DEALS, understand that is dealt DECKS, not individual hands.
You are assuming that each HAND is an individual deal as you say that in a 10 handed table you would see quads 420 times.
You are dividing the actual odds by 10 players, which is incorrect.
Regardless of how many players are at a table, quads will statistically be dealt once every 5,950 times (or once every 100 hours, not 7 hours).
Although it is possible that it will be dealt more, that of course is true. However the odds of seeing quads dealt 3 times inside of 15 minutes at the same table is a statistical improbability.
And of course, those odds are skewed more in online poker because of the fact that online poker is a computer generated game that fails to follow true statistical odds.
Seeing more hands in an hour does NOT answer the question, as regardless you can not change the odds that a particular hand will win, just because you see more hands in an hour.
In other words you are claiming that if I were to watch 10 tables, thereby seeing 600 hands per hour (at your calculation of 60 hands per hour), then I should see quads hit about once every 10 hours watching 10 tables at once?
Furthermore, any pair will win approximately 43% of the time by the river, therefore using the same calculation, 258 hands at showdown will be a pair, nothing higher.
I think anyone who has played online poker sees the fault in that statistic. As flushes and straights do tend to hit more often and not often do you see a pair only win.
I left a link in the address there for the Wizard of Odds site so you could further study some of the statistics in the game.
Good Luck,
Todd
Hi ToddThank you very much for taking the time to elaborate that probability. While I enjoy maths, I see that others like you are better in calculating probabilities and odds I should have visited your site before writing that comment. Great site btw!Marco
Todd, I’m afraid your figures aren’t accurate at all. For a start 133,784,560/224,848 is 595 and not 5950. Also, it is pretty obviously true that the more players there are at a table the more often one of them will have quads. I’m not sure how you can seriously dispute that.
First your answers to the first two question on an absolute basis are acurate, the more hands played the more of each hand you will get. I think what most people are complaining about is not the absolute number but the percent frequency that these hands show up over a long term. On a long term percentage basis the hands you get playing ten tables should show up roughly the same percentage of the time as a home game at one table. The same with question 2, are they more frequent on a percentage total hands played or not. if not then there is your answer to both and it is a mathmatical number either they are more frequent or they are not.
Here is some actual data regarding this post:
http://intellectrush.blogspot.com/2010/12/busting-online-poker-myth-pokerstars.html
Thank you posting this link. Certainly you must have spent hours and hours with analysing the data, really great work, which confirms what I believe: online poker is NOT rigged.
To be the devils advocate (in favor of those who think it’s rigged), your article won’t convince them. I personally think, it’s not “rigged” but that it’s also not truly random as a real deck. I get that it’s about the quantity of hands and also the fact in real poker you don’t have too many donkeys or kids just staying in the pot.. so more folds in real life, meaning, less chance to see those awful beats.
But, I feel.. it’s not that online poker is “rigged” or cheating. It’s that, you must play into it’s style. Meaning, those bad beats that happen so often, just means, you have to be more willing to fold. Seems in real life, you a bit safer making that call.
Can’t tell you how many times I made a great hand, to raise big then get re-raised. But, does that mean it’s “rigged”??? No, it means you just fold. But in real life.. that same hand I’d be more confident with.
And this doesn’t need 6000 hands online to occur. It happens almost every session I play.
When you write, “It’s impossible…”.. this is a computer. I’m a computer science person.. it’s my field. NOTHING is imopossible. I can write code that knows when a withdrawal is made, flag it, store it in the user database, and upon dealing cards, detect flags, and having preset hand scenarios.. even if it’s millions or billions.. that can come out.
Again, it could be hard to detect because, really, it doesn’t matter if you know to fold.
But, what that means is your playing TO the game, not the other players (as much)
It can be done in such a subtle, tricky way, that you can NEVER prove it’s actually not truly random.
VARIANCE is like “insanity” in court cases… you can’t touch it. It explains things in a way that can never truly be discounted…
POKER is about intuition and feelings. The only true random poker would be a live video, much like the lottery shows the balls falling out of the dispenser.. but, of course that’s not a good solution.
So, even if it’s NOT rigged in any way possible, the mere feeling it MIGHT or COULD be could cause a person, mentally, to be hesitant to make a call.. it adds doubt, which kills the psyche involved in playing this type of game.
It’s about loosing when you are 90% favorit 18/20 times. Dosnt make sense, thats not variance.
It is rigged. I don’t even question it no more. I play live too and know these things happen live.. shoot tonight it happened big time.. I joked to the table “that hand looked so much like an online hand!” And of course, they all laughed knowing I was tongue-in-cheek. Even the regular players at casino don’t trust it. And they’re Asian, all them hard core sharks I talked to just do not trust it. Nobody does.
But to be honest, I still play online, I just play different. I wait until it’s “rigged in my favor”. I figured it out. But I know the type of ways it works. Like the poster said above, you play into the rig. You realize it’s rigged. Then, duh.. use that to your advantage.
I mean think about it. It’s rigged, so figured out how it’s rigged, then play by that?!?! Easy peesy.
This is the ‘secret’ and why no pros or winning players will admit to it!
Oh and please oh please nobody put money in there. Just play freerolls and freebies for prizes, you can find a few that offer free play.. just gotta get past the ‘donks’ (i hate that word) but take advantage of free games with cash or prizes. Why support them??? Take advantage of them just like they do with us. If I put money in there, I would hope proof comes, then I’m suing the heck out of them.
Also, consider this. Live, the best players often are really aggressive, but they play big hands too. Lot of times they are lucky, but they play it right while they have it.. and that affects their image throughout the game.
If a player is more tight live, because they’re just more intimidated by those guys.. well online they could be more brave, it’s just like online dating, a LOT easier to be confident and daring than you are live…
They KNOW people are like this. They know people who are tight and play cautiously live (IE–not as good live) are more likely to play aggressive online.
(In other words, that voids the actually aggressive players who do well live.. because now, “everyone” is playing like them)
So, knowing this, they need to put some control into it, as some form of .. I dunno, well a way of saying “hey buddy, you think you’re aggressive online eh? Well.. I’ll show you” and this is why you get all these ridiculous bad beats.
It’s a slap in the face. That same hand would’ve likely held up live…
But I think, these people are sort of angry that people who weren’t as good live now go online and are suddenly good.
Just like with the ‘online dating’ example, it’s as if the ‘confident pretty’ people are angry that ‘ugly losers’ go online and suddenly act and appear as confident as they do and actually GET the dates (snatching them away from those who would’ve in real life)
There’s some resentment there… and if “pretty confident” people controlled a dating site, would they then not want to add some control to keep these “fake confident losers” from snatching all their potential dates??