so i was scrolling down the internet and found a site that says pokerstars is a scam ofc you can find numerous of these i would like to post an old email of someone on that site that makes the most sense i want to say upfront that i do not agree or disagree with this atm im just interested in hearing the thoughts of the mobers here
so here is the email:
Dear Sir,
I have just come across your website and could not agree with you more. I do not need to show you or tell you of the bad beats ect i have witnessed on poker stars.
We both know that beyond a shadow of a doubt poker stars is corrupt to. the very core of its business.
I spent two months last year bombarding poker stars with bad beats , 8 full houses in 30 minutes of poker ect ect.
I asked the all about their RNG and even got them to admit in an e mail that thier RGN means the online game they offer is nothing like real live poker, althoufg they denied this for well over 8 months.
Anyway I know that you have heard this all before,!!
However after accusing PS of being corrupt and asked them to prove that they where not all they could do is tell me about Cigital certificate stating that thier RGN had been tested independently.
So i wrote to Cigital and asked them some questions I thought were pertinant. Please see their response below!!!!
My questions are in Blue,
Paco Hope, CISSP, CSSLP
Technical Manager, Cigital, Inc.
Software Confidence. ARE IN RED
Although when I read the details of this certificate it clearly states that you only tested systems that were sent to you and did not actually audit the system as it was being used to deal players cards.Can you please confirm or deny this statement.
(cigital) I confirm that it says what it says. I wouldn't have written it if I didn't mean it.(cigital)
I would also like you to provide me with details of the type of RNG that poker stars use and therefore the one that you have consequently certified.
(cigital)The information provided to us was provided under a non-disclosure agreement. I cannot release any information beyond what they have authorised. I field 2 or 3 inquiries a week asking the same thing, and the answer is always the same.(cigital)
And please can you confirm that the RNG that you have certified on their behalf is a Rng that uses Quantum Random Number Generator system.
(cigital)I'm not confirming or denying any detail that is not in the public reports.
I would ask you, as you consider the question of whether the RNG is totally fair--or whether the shuffle is totally fair, or whether the deal is totally fair--to ask the question "why would they do that?" for any behavior you hypothesise. Here's a couple facts to work with: - PokerStars is a business. They want money. - The money they want is the players' money. - The most significant money that PokerStars gets from players is in the rake.
I would put forward the following theorem (a statement I believe to be true, but I cannot state it like a fact because I cannot check it): - PokerStars does not operate bots that play against the players and take player money directly
Given those facts, ask why they would bother to do something unfair. At a $5/$10 table, if the pot is $50, $500, or $1000, the rake is the same (i.e., the rake is the max). PokerStars makes more money by having more hands played, not by paying any attention to who wins. Since players lose to other players, PokerStars does not make any extra money if player A loses to player B, or if player B loses to player A.
If PokerStars wanted to do something to cheat, they should do things like: keep players going up and down, never too much up and never too much down. That way all their money gradually ends up in the rake. The usual complaints are that PokerStars kicks people when they're down or favors people who are up. I don't see why that makes financial sense for them.
Another good cheat for them would be to influence the deal so that lots of good hands got dealt a lot (i.e., an unusually high ratio of playable hole cards and favorable boards). They'd want to make sure that the hands were good enough to generate some action among the players so there would be max rake every time.
Now, I don't believe for a minute that PokerStars does any of these things. I just don't see a business need to. It's not like they're hurting for money. The usual complaints don't typically make sense to PokerStars' financial well-being. Things like the "cash-out curse" or "doomswitch" or favoring big stacks or people losing when they're all in. None of those make PokerStars any extra money, so why do them?
I just hope you ask that question. I'd love to have an answer to why they'd do something like that.
so all Cigital did was test to see that the RGN that POKER STARS SENT THEM!!!! was working as the manufacturer intended it to. YOU or I can go and by the same RGN. Cigital have never audited the Poker Stars system in anyway, and POKER STARS paid CIGITAL for this cerificate and told them what they were allowed to test.
Please see below my response to Cigital.
Dear Paco,
Firstly thank you for you quick response to my questions.
I find it very interesting that you tell me that you field 2 or 3 inquiries a week, have you asked yourself the question why that is?
Is it bad losers looking for an excuse for their loses or does the phrase no smoke without fire spring to mind!!!!!
As to your question why would they do any of the things you mention when they are making collossal amounts of money anyway?
Well I predicted that the banks would fail well before they did, why? Because we live in a world where enough is never enough and all companies drive there employees for more and more profit until something gives?
I will make another prediction to you now , within the next 2 years a major Poker site will be investigated by a Government organisation and will be found to be in some way dishonest.
It is incredulous to me that a multi billion dollar turnover business is regulated and goverened by the Laws of a tiny island that is also a tax haven known as the Isle of Man. It is beyound comprehension that as far as I am aware the British government does not and has not carried out a full and thorough investigation of online poker sites and I will not stop pushing until this is done!
Why you may ask? Have I suffered big loses on online Poker sites?
The answer is a very Big no I have lost a $1000 in total over 3 years playing on line while traveling the world. During this time I also played far more live games where I was far more successful.
That is why i started this investigation into online poker because Poker texas holdem no limit should be the same or at least very similar to playing a live game and quite simply it is not.
Why not? Well the closest answer I have to that question so far I will quote from you!!!
"""Another good cheat for them would be to influence the deal so that lots of good hands got dealt a lot (i.e., an unusually high ratio of playable hole cards and favorable boards). They'd want to make sure that the hands were good enough to generate some action among the players so there would be max rake every time."""
I could not have put it better myself !!!!!!
This is the fundemental difference I have noticed between online and real life poker the amount of big hands! In fact when you get a big hand such as Ace Ace you actually get scared rather than excited because you are waiting for the bad beat. Or it goes the other way you flop a Full house and know that one of your opponents will hit a ace high flush "viola" big pay day. These hands are common place on Poker stars but incredibly rare in real life poker and that tells me one of two things.
One Poker stars are doing exactly what you suggest or that the RNG cannot shuffle a pack of cards well enough to make online poker the mix of Luck and skill it should be!
If the first is true they will eventually get caught and prosecuted I have absolutely no doubt about this!!.
If the second is true then all it takes is for the Poker sites to point out that there is a big difference between playing live games and playing online so that players are fully aware how they are risking there money. The fact is that Poker stars verhmently reject this and say that the only difference is the amount of cards they deal a day therefore bad beats occur more often! This is complete rubbish as in real life you play with one pack of cards and the fact that millions of other packs of cards are being dealt around the world has no effect whatsoever on the pack of cards at my table a really poor defence to the accussations they field every day. There other defense is that because of the speed of online poker you feel like you are getting more bad beats because you are playing so many hands. The fact is I have only played 5300 and only play one table at a time and have witnessed and experienced dramatically more big hands and bad beats on Poker stars than i have experienced and witnessed in real life having played far more hands!!
In fact as you are aware there is now a great deal of televised poker tournaments and like all tv programmes they what them to be exciting yet they struggle to find the big hands that we all want to watch yet these big hands will happen to you for good or for worse far to frequently for it to be a coincidense or good or bad luck!
Therefore I have asked myself the questions you have asked me and have come to this conclusion!
Are they encouraging Big hands, i feel that this is the most likely but I do not know.
Is there a massive difference between playing online and playing live that changes the game due to the way that cards are dealt?
WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT!!!!!!
Is this due to corruption or the RNG? I do not know!
What i do know is that these sites need to be investigated by a Government organisation sooner rather that later in order to establish once and for all whether we should trust them anymore or any less that we now trust banks.
By the way Poker Stars have defended themselves using you company name as 100% proof that there site is honest which is why I wanted confirmation or a denial that you only certified an RNG they sent you and not certified there whole system as they imply.
In fact I believe I could order the same Rng from the same supplier and get you to certify it for me.
Finally I find it incomprehensible that a multi million dollar business when questioned about their integrity point you to there secutity page, where they use your brand name to claim that their site is 100% fair would also have this link "How We Learned to Cheat at Online Poker: A Study in Software Security! As a justification of its integrity, security and fairness!( If you have not already read this i suggest you do)
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions.
Only time will tell which one of us will be proved right.
Your sincerely,
Osama bin Laden
Freelance Journalist.
I Have also e mails from poker stars responding to this Cigital e mail and I know Poker Stars then prevented me from talking to any other Cigital employee.
So the only response that Poker Stars could come up with in answer to allegations that a best their system was flawed and at worst corrupt was to direct me to this website: How we learned to cheat at online poker: A study in software security! And to Cigital certificate that they paid for and all it tested was an rgn they sent them. That is it a Billion dollar gambling business and THATS IT!! WHAT A JOKE!!
I have loads of e mails from poker stars questioning their integrity with hundreds of hands of bad beats and unbeleiveable hands ect ect, they really do not have an answer.
I am like you desperate to do anything that i can to expose these people for what they are crooks!!!
I have just e mailed the Goverment of the isle of man asking what audits they have carried out on Poker stars game integrity and am awaiting a response, although I think I alredy know the awswer NONE , they are only interested in the money and tax they earn from the gaming industry not the millions that iss being stollen everyday from innocent players who only want to play a FAIR game of poker.
The UK goverment intends ti insist that all online poker sites have to have a UK licence in the future, but we all know what that means , 5 years or another corrupt goverment gets elected and they scrap the idea.
The only waynI can see of stioppingthese crooks is for everyone to write to thier goverment represenative demanding the law is pushed though and a full audit is carried out on these Billion dollar businesses.
If you want to talk to me some more on how you can help make this happen them please e mail me. if not I hope you found the above at least interesting reading!!!
Kind Regards,
Osama.
Edited by arrow-knee- (29 January 2016 @ 07:54 GMT)
Joined: Feb '13
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 2372
He says he wins in real life and is not a big loser online, then goes on to say he is only $1000 down. He then says he sees way more big pots online than live and it cant be because he plays more hands because he has only played 5300 hands online.
Joined: Nov '14
Location: Macedonia, The former Yugoslav Republic of
Age: 43 (M)
Posts: 1169
B4 u call on anything Icy, if PS is so sure their software is 100% secure and duplicates live game as much as possible and without a doubt in their mind, why fear an audit??? We hear this line very often, if u did nothing wrong, u got nothing to hide, right... Lets see if that also goes for big corporations and banks, or its just for the common folks, coz i know when it comes down to rewarding and punishing how the governments operate, just remind yourself of the 2008 economic collapse, who got punished and who got BONUSES... So i say, actually the government security agencies use this phrase and say "WELL IF U DID NOTHING WRONG, U GOT NOTHING TO HIDE" audit the bastards
Joined: Nov '14
Location: Macedonia, The former Yugoslav Republic of
Age: 43 (M)
Posts: 1169
Well it does matter, come on now, why is this hard, they got nothing to hide right, come on lets do this and end the matter once and for all unless that aint the case coz i can not imagine a private corp acting out out of greed, there is no way in hell that could happen they are all saints, and act ONLY according to the law... guess that`s why they put all their money offshore, so that they dont pay tax`s like the rest of us, or do their business from islands where "THE LAW" is heavily in their favor, or non existent, or how much u can pay to get away with it... Nahhh u right, this could never happen
Joined: Feb '13
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 2372
im not saying it couldn't happen
but the guy who wrote that said...
'im not just another losing player' - he is 'that poker isn't fair' - without any proof 'that he has played online poker for over 3 years' - then says he played only 5300 hands 'that he understands poker' - but doesn't understand 5300 hands is nothing
Posted by IceQueenAce: im not saying it couldn't happen
but the guy who wrote that said...
'im not just another losing player' - he is 'that poker isn't fair' - without any proof 'that he has played online poker for over 3 years' - then says he played only 5300 hands 'that he understands poker' - but doesn't understand 5300 hands is nothing
ah someone is sharp yes inded i catched that aswell still decided to post this because of the cigital response its not actually about the guy itself its more about the conversation he has with cigital and strange things do happen on ps in my opinion its because pokerstars counts over all the hands dealt on pokerstars and live no matter where u play its only 1 deck thats shuffeld is this corrupt no because it would be very hard to make a site where u have a rng per table actually prob be close to impossible woudlnt be sure how you get that to wrok but yeah thats the plain difference in online and live but as sbep says strange things do happen on ps
like my last game 3$ spin and go after playing a few minits i have a q6 were at the flop and there is an 368 on the table rainbiow this guy raises 40 again on wich i raise him all in the guy thinks for a min he calls he shows A2 os 4th card 2 5th card ...2 im down to 70 chips all is not lost make a few danger plays and im back at 300 to 350 in chips this time i meet the same guy on flop with a 68 of spades flop is 2 10 8 pot is 100 chips i check he checks 4th card 10 at this point im sure he has nothing so i wanna take the pot raise all in he thinks again for a minute and he calls again no flush chance here i show 2 pair 6 and 10,s he shows A7 one pair 10,s 5 th card.........ace......
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
too long. next.
oh btw i did read a couple of paragraphs, but then something inside of me told that "you should scroll down for no reason at all"... i did and i found out that this post contains quite a bit too much information for my uneducated brain cells to shuffle through.
Joined: Nov '14
Location: Macedonia, The former Yugoslav Republic of
Age: 43 (M)
Posts: 1169
Well not the author`s fault u all have short attention span, or are to lazy to read "WHAT IS THIS....ALL THIS LETTERS...WHAT DO U MEAN I HAVE TO READ" pretty sure soon some1 will come up with a software, if there isnt one already to copy and paste the text in to so it can read it to your lazy ass`s but then ull start complaining bout pain in your ears from hearing all those sounds that form that text and take whatever is the laziest way out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqM5L5JQseI
Posted by pochui: oh btw i did read a couple of paragraphs, but then something inside of me told that "you should scroll down for no reason at all"... i did and i found out that this post contains quite a bit too much information for my uneducated brain cells to shuffle through.
tl;dr too Boo-Hoo PS did the same as the american banks with the rating agencies pre-2007. Not sure worth a brand new topic tbh.
Joined: Jan '10
Location: Indonesia
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 1875
Posted by arrow-knee-:
Posted by IceQueenAce: im not saying it couldn't happen
but the guy who wrote that said...
'im not just another losing player' - he is 'that poker isn't fair' - without any proof 'that he has played online poker for over 3 years' - then says he played only 5300 hands 'that he understands poker' - but doesn't understand 5300 hands is nothing
ah someone is sharp yes inded i catched that aswell still decided to post this because of the cigital response its not actually about the guy itself its more about the conversation he has with cigital and strange things do happen on ps in my opinion its because pokerstars counts over all the hands dealt on pokerstars and live no matter where u play its only 1 deck thats shuffeld is this corrupt no because it would be very hard to make a site where u have a rng per table actually prob be close to impossible woudlnt be sure how you get that to wrok but yeah thats the plain difference in online and live but as sbep says strange things do happen on ps
like my last game 3$ spin and go after playing a few minits i have a q6 were at the flop and there is an 368 on the table rainbiow this guy raises 40 again on wich i raise him all in the guy thinks for a min he calls he shows A2 os 4th card 2 5th card ...2 im down to 70 chips all is not lost make a few danger plays and im back at 300 to 350 in chips this time i meet the same guy on flop with a 68 of spades flop is 2 10 8 pot is 100 chips i check he checks 4th card 10 at this point im sure he has nothing so i wanna take the pot raise all in he thinks again for a minute and he calls again no flush chance here i show 2 pair 6 and 10,s he shows A7 one pair 10,s 5 th card.........ace......
So ... Do you think that is a prove poker site is a rig or scam ? Sometime I think so ( when I lost ) but .. do you ever think why your opponent bet with crap card ? Did you ever do that ? Me ? yes, when I had strong feeling that I had winning card in my lucky day. Do you ?
Joined: Feb '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 59 (M)
Posts: 5712
I love threads like this because they share selected facts based on personal bias to seek to prove a point that is of relevance to the author.
Now, consider this little gem.
Does it matter?
Does it matter if poker stars is rigged? The basic question to determine this issue would surely be, if it is rigged, who is it rigged in favour of, and is that person or group of persons related in some way to pokerstars? If you can identify that pokerstars has rigged it's processes to favour a small(ish) number of identified players for whom they have rigged the process, then you may be able to say it is rigged. However, if it is simply rigged so that you, and many others lose when you think you should have win, then you will find that you do not have any evidence that it is rigged.
You are just losing.
Try to determine also, what you exactly mean by the term rigged. This may help you to understand the answer to your question.
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
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Posts: 14136
Obviously they will select facts based on the relevance of their own experience, for the poker site they are talking about. What else would they do. And i doubt that all these, start searching or creating such threads, posts, blogs, etc, before they have even played in that particular site. So they are basing it somewhere, dont they ?
) but .. do you ever think why your opponent bet with crap card ? Did you ever do that ?
