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Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring, or hard and impersonal, fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just.” – Lou Krieger
Everyone has pet peeves, those little things that get under our skin and drive us crazy. For some it’s bad drivers, for others it’s something like people that can’t differentiate between “there” and “their”. For me it’s your local card room conspiracy theorist. I’m pretty sure every poker room I’ve ever stepped foot in has at least 10 of these people. Anyone that has ever played with me knows I talk a lot and keep a light attitude at the table. I enjoy talking about everything from sports to politics, however one topic seems to always come up…. online poker. I understand it’s a natural thing since we are playing the game and I would love to discuss so many things about it. Unfortunately there’s generally only one theme to this topic and for me it’s the end all of things I just cannot stand. I attempt to have an intelligent and rational debate with these people every time it comes up. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, people that are in every other aspect of life very intelligent all have their own online poker conspiracy theory. No matter how many times I try and provide the reasons why this is nonsense, all that ever ends up happening is me sitting in a packed card room wanting to just scream…..FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ONLINE POKER IS NOT RIGGED!!!!
Before I write about anything else, I feel this is a topic that must be addressed. I’m sure as fellow poker players you have heard all the same ones I have. Most of these theories somehow relate to generating more revenue for the poker websites. Some believe that “action” cards are more frequently dealt online so the sites can produce more rake. Others actually believe that the second you make a withdrawal the “doom switch” gets activated causing you to get sucked out over and over again until you have to put the money right back online. One of the funniest ones in my opinion is the short stacks win a higher percentage of the time theory although I do get that one in real life too. I hear these stories of boats getting taken out by quads, one outers on the river, and losing flips 10 times in a row, but it is almost always accompanied with the statement “that never happens in real life”. I have found one consistent pattern with the type of people that believe these things, and with very few exceptions it has held true. Most of the time the people who lash out about online poker being a scam are just plain horrible card players to begin with, there just misinterpreting the reason why they seem to always lose.
Every online poker sites is located outside United States borders. This is obviously because of some little red tape in the laws at the moment. Most of them operate on some island either in the Bahamas or off the coast of the United Kingdom. This creates a situation of very little regulation and pretty much allows the industry set its own rules. So what is keeping the sites honest? It would seem that a smart programmer could have an easy time setting you up to go set over set all day long. And it would be very easy except for the one reason stopping this kind of behavior… the players themselves. Poker is a self regulating industry with the the majority of the regulation is coming from the customers themselves. Poker players are smart and the internet is a constant stream of information, with poker being no exception. Every day millions and millions of hands are being tracked, recorded, and compiled by players all over the world. While a sample of a few hundred thousand hands that a single player might have can never prove much of anything, a sample of hundreds of millions shows exactly how honest the poker websites really are. To put it simply, if poker websites were manipulating the randomness of the cards over a huge amount of recorded hands it would be extremely obvious and the player community would easily figure it out. A perfect example of this was the Absolute/Ultimate Bet super user scandal that took place a while back. If you are not familiar with the story the real short version is that a former employee that was one of the software writers for the site hacked the software from work and set up an account that could see everyone’s whole cards. The amazing thing about this story is that it was the players, not the website that caught the crook. Dozens of players that had lost thousands and thousands of dollars to this player started talking to each other and comparing hand histories. It didn’t take long for them to figure out that the level of play and win rate this person was having was statistically impossible. While this was an isolated case on a small website it’s true that there is no way of saying this will never happen again. However if it does you can be assured that the poker community will be on top of it.
Now for the second very good reason why online poker is not rigged especially on the major sites we need to take a look at the software. The Absolute/Ub case was very unusual because a rouge employee was involved. For some computer mastermind at home to somehow hack the poker sites software and either see your cards or know what’s coming out of the deck is virtually impossible. For example: PokerStars random number genitor uses a combination of player mouse motion, the world time clock, and a commercial random number generator from Intel to produce a 249 bit random seed for their algorithm. In simple terms PokerStars does not even know what card will be coming until the point where it’s actually dealt. This fact that time and the players mouse movements are variables is interesting because in theory if u click call at a different microsecond the outcome of the turn and river is changed. The same goes for cards you folded preflop, if you called the flop would have been different. Thus no more need for complaining about folding quads that you would have flopped.
The final reason why there is no conceivable way that online poker is rigged is the most simple of them all. The websites have too much to lose, in this industry creditability is everything. Sites like Full Tilt and PokerStars are literally cash cows. These companies pull hundreds of millions of dollars every year in rake. While it is true that all companies are greedy, the risk of trying to rig the game is gigantic. Not only would you have to sneak it past the players, you would have to keep hundreds of upper management personal, software engineers, and probably even the janitor quiet about it. All it would take is one case where the integrity of the game was compromised. With the power of information on the internet the entire industry could come crashing to the ground. Again we go back to the super user scandal with Absolute/Ub. After the word got out the site went from top 5 in traffic to almost nothing overnight. Even tho this company has paid everyone effected back, apologized for the actions of a former employee, and vowed to take steps making sure this never happened again the damage was already done. This one little hiccup destroyed the company.
I know this was rather long but I felt it was something that needed to be said before anything else. In order to take online poker seriously we must first believe without a doubt that the game is fair. In reality the reason our brain tells us that crazy things happen more frequently when we play online is most likely because we’re just seeing more hands. There is a huge difference between playing 30 hands an hour live and multitableing online. The reason people feel they get sucked out on more online is because they do, it’s just that the reason behind it is they are playing many times more hands in general. Until you can stop blaming your losses on the website you will never be able to start taking accountability for your own game. It’s very easy to say you keep losing because it’s rigged, It’s a hell of a lot harder and more productive to say I keep losing because I need to get better….
So the next time you see me feel free to say hi, bring up the football game or election. But for crying out loud don’t try to explain to me why online poker is rigged.
