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Joined: Jun '10
Location: United States
Age: 33 (M)
Posts: 23
Some sites are set up, PlayersOnly I've had some things happen to me that arent coincidences.. you go through cycles of running HORRIBLE, and i mean HORRIBLE, and cycles of running amazing, it's all about balancing them out which I'm still trying to master.
Joined: Feb '08
Location: Netherlands
Age: 52 (M)
Posts: 818
Posted by hoodi420: Why does it not surprise me this thread is at the top?
Yeah crazy how long this thread is running I guess the word 'rigged" is like honey to a bee for most people. They are is stil searching for arguments to explain why they are losing. I think you scored a 'platinum thread' Hoodi
Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 42 (M)
Posts: 852
Posted by JazzyJeff:
Posted by hoodi420: Why does it not surprise me this thread is at the top?
Yeah crazy how long this thread is running I guess the word 'rigged" is like honey to a bee for most people. They are is stil searching for arguments to explain why they are losing. I think you scored a 'platinum thread' Hoodi
Why thank you Jeff! It's amazing to me, there were only 12 "Of Course" yesterday,today 13. Like they say,there's a sucker born every minute.
Joined: Mar '11
Location: Germany
Age: 54 (M)
Posts: 217
Posted by hoodi420: To the "Of Course" Players, when you lose with your KQs to pocket fours, it is not a bad beat.
Of course not - man, I once had an beautiful old yamaha western guitar, played it all day long. Then I went camping. It was a hot summer day in the nineties. Me and my girl made it down to the sea to cool down a bit. I left my guitar beneath the tent and didnt mind anything ugly might happen in the wilderness. Meanwhile I was laying at the water, the sun climbed up and bent the wood of my one and only. When we came back I took my guitar again and wanted to play "Lady in black" - that was a bad beat, I can tell you.
Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 42 (M)
Posts: 852
Posted by Doberhain:
Posted by hoodi420: To the "Of Course" Players, when you lose with your KQs to pocket fours, it is not a bad beat.
Of course not - man, I once had an beautiful old yamaha western guitar, played it all day long. Then I went camping. It was a hot summer day in the nineties. Me and my girl made it down to the sea to cool down a bit. I left my guitar beneath the tent and didnt mind anything ugly might happen in the wilderness. Meanwhile I was laying at the water, the sun climbed up and bent the wood of my one and only. When we came back I took my guitar again and wanted to play "Lady in black" - that was a bad beat, I can tell you.
Joined: Feb '08
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 51 (M)
Posts: 10
The “Doom Switch” – Myth, Reality or the Matrix? Just recently I was replying to a thread on a well known poker forum about a player who was getting his AA’s cracked by A3, A5, A9 etc and there followed the now almost inevitable comments about the Random Number Generator (RNG) being rigged and I started to think about the mythical ‘doom switch’ and what exactly would be needed to accomplish it. There have always been accusations about sites being rigged and dodgy random number generators, but unlike the obvious benefits of rigging online casino software to manipulate payouts there really is very little benefit to a poker site. After all, we make our cash from the rake. Of course, the ideal is to have a room full of players who have the same bankroll and the same skill level so that the money just gets circulated around from player to player with the rake slowly eroding the total amount of cash. Sites don’t really want Sharks eating the fish and withdrawing the cash from the site/network. Something that the new structure of the Bodog Network is attempting to prevent with some changes and amendments to the standard, ‘traditional’ format of payments to skins on the network. Reward the sites that bring in the fish (depositors) and stop the Rakeback wars; A unique view on the situation but one that will bear close scrutiny as they build the network. Anyway, back to the ‘Doom Switch’. We've all been on the receiving end of really bad beats and we remember the bad beats but not the times we hit our runner-runner double gutshot to take down the huge pot. It’s simply human nature to remember losses rather than wins. If you win you are briefly elated and then you move on. If you lose you’re left with a painful reminder (your poker balance) hand after hand.
Bu then, we've all had it, you’re running great and then all of a sudden it's bad beat after bad beat. You start to question how things could suddenly have gotten that bad. You’re playing the same, your opponents are still there, and they can’t have changed (can they?)
A couple of things here; Are you REALLY that good a poker player that you consider yourself to be invincible, or was it a convergence of good cards, opponents of a lower skill level than you and a little bit of luck that put you on a winning streak? Take away any of these 3 components and your game won't look quite so good. Most arguments for poker being a game of skill conclude that poker is roughly 80% skill and 20% luck. AA vs any random hand is 85% to win, but against 4 random hands, AA will only hold up 55% of the time, so when you’re pushing ‘All-In’ with your aces you’re not as big a favorite as you may think. But of course you’re an incredibly skilled poker player who reads your opponents perfectly and makes all the right decisions aren’t you?
So, if you believe it’s not you, then it MUST be the system being rigged against you ….right? So, the theory is that there is a ‘Doom Switch’ which controls whether you win or lose. Deposit lots, and lose without cashing out and you’ll still get good cards because in the long run you’re a losing player. The more cash you win, the longer you play for and the more you grind (and rake). Deposit a little, win lots and then the poker room flicks the ‘Doom Switch’ on you which means you now no longer win a hand but your opponents hit miracle cards to beat your awesome power hands. “After all, how dare you be good enough to be able to cash out?” “You’re taking money out of the network and that’s just not right!” ” The poker rooms don’t want to see winners do they? “There must be something in the system that controls if you win or lose to make the poker room more money. It’s got to be easy for them hasn’t it?” But, in order for the 'doom switch' to work the system would have to:-
a) Be able to calculate and keep track of your hands in order to manipulate the cards (but what happens if everyone at the table has been 'doom switched'?
Then who wins?
Or all but 1 player is supposed to be on a winning streak? Then who wins?
This would then assume that the system is working on a sliding scale and you have to be at some point on this scale. So following that logic, every time you sit at a table the system has to work out where you are in relation to everyone else on the scale in order to deal the cards in the right way.
It then has to assess how you play in order to give the right cards to you in order to get you to follow how the system wants you to play to get the desired result.... (This is a little reminiscent of being under hypnosis and being told to perform certain actions on demand).
b) Then it has to know who is going to deposit again if they bust out because there’s no point 'doom switching' someone who is going to leave forever if he’s broke; so ideally the RNG now has to know your bank balance and your inclination to deposit. Our RNG would really need to understand your social and economic standing as well as your proclivity to gamble and to recover from damaging situations both in financial terms and the damage to your ego.
So the RNG needs to know your income, expenses and available funds for playing poker as well as your mood and how badly you will be affected by your losing streak. Are you going to say "To hell with it" or are you going to come back and try again? How much money does your mortgage cost? How much are your car payments? Has the downturn in the economic climate affected your income? The list goes on. … (This is starting to sound more and more like George Orwell’s 1984)
Now, in order to have this system run effectively all these calculations have to be done for every single player in every single hand, second by second. (This is becoming a very omnipotent system!?!)
But what about tournaments? Is the system allowing you to get so far in the tournament before turning the cards against you? What happens if you decide (of your own free will?) to go ‘All-In’ and you get callers who also go ‘All-In’? Where on the 'doom switch' level should the winner be?
Is it possible that the system could allow an incredibly bad player to win a huge tournament against much better opposition without it looking horrifically fixed?
It wouldn't have to be just 1 hand to accomplish this; it would have to be every single hand.
The conclusion of this is that the entire tournament would have to be mapped out in advance in order to know who is going to win, which means your choices are no longer your own and you're being manipulated by the system (Is it me or is this starting to sound like the Matrix?). So actually, you’re not playing poker, you’re trying to fight against the system which has pre-determined who’s going to win! So if this is the case, there’s no point playing poker and it’s already decided, so in theory you could just sit at a table and the system would do all the work for you. After all, it already knows if you’re going to win or lose, doesn’t it? Are you going to be ruled by a machine that controls your poker destiny?
Now obviously I've gone to the extreme with this analysis but if you follow the lines of argument all the way then this is the direction it leads.
I'm sure there's some things I've missed and some points that can be debated but in closing... if designers of software were able to build this sort of code into the RNG without it being blatantly obvious to even the most minimal of scrutiny (most sites do have their software independently audited by companies like PriceWaterhouse Coopers) then they should probably be working for NASA, FBI or someone! If on the other hand this is exactly what you’re doing, you’ve built the system exactly as I’ve described and I’ve just ruined your ingenious and carefully constructed plan then I’m sorry and I tip my hat to you!
When poker sites 'rig' their games, they make playable hands appear more often, and have diverse boards in play so as to make the impression of playability more distinct. If they didn't do this, their revenues from rake would be much less.
Remember, online poker is a business. As with any business...the bottom line is key.
Joined: Jan '11
Location: New Zealand
Age: 73 (M)
Posts: 8
Poker sites can only function on integrity first, everything else second, otherwise they would have no players. Live games take longer to achieve the humungous bad beats, because the computer dealing is so much faster, and all games have quick time limits = imagine a live dealersitting there with a stop watch, yeah right.
Joined: Mar '11
Location: Germany
Age: 54 (M)
Posts: 217
Posted by dBigMac: After all, we make our cash from the rake.
Very interesting article. So I suppose you are talking as a representative from one of the rooms and know how to debate about it, because your arguments were built up by doing the business? If that is the case it would be my pleasure if I might ask you some questions about the article and your opinion about some additional aspects of the "rigged threads" in common. If I am right, I am happy to meet you, because that´s it, what I wanted to achieve, to get a representative joining these discussions.
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Posted by dBigMac: It�s simply human nature to remember losses rather than wins. If you win you are briefly elated and then you move on. If you lose you�re left with a painful reminder (your poker balance) hand after hand.
That´s exactly what happened to me at PartyPoker. I lost and lost game after game and got donked out by any two card bullies time after time. I could play tight/agressive or very passive and carefully, keeping in mind not to get catched with a week hand out of position and so on... it is impossible for me to win there after I made my deposits. A painful reminder. I decided not to play there again because it doesnt makes sense to me anymore.
So, if you believe it�s not you, then it MUST be the system being rigged against you �.right?
There are so many possibilities. It also could be that one is just the victim of a bad hack going on or that there are criminals with super accounts grabbing their share.
(This is starting to sound more and more like George Orwell�s 1984)
And I dont believe that such a software has to consider all the parameters you talked about, it just has to be a lean thing. Holding the tight/agressive players back from winning to much and giving advantage to the gamblers, it often happens. It wouldnt need to update the "scale-position" in realtime for every new hand. It´s enough to set a littele index for every player at the beginning of a session. Also it should be enough for it to set a certain trend. It dont has to map a whole tourney to be effective on the long run.
Additionally I ask: Who says that really every player would be _scaled everytime_ ?
if designers of software were able to build this sort of code into the RNG without it being blatantly obvious to even the most minimal of scrutiny (most sites do have their software independently audited by companies like PriceWaterhouse Coopers) then they should probably be working for NASA, FBI or someone!
If we would take it for sure (at least for a moment) that such a "doom switch" exists, we also could consider that there are people involved who are able to hide from any scrutiny. Money rules the online business, that´s it. And with good software designers its likewise the poker players, there always will be a better one, someday and forever.
I guess the word 'rigged"
