Paranoia Runs Deep<br>By Lou Krieger and Arthur Reber

"Paranoia runs deep … " It's been a long time since Stephen Stills sang those words. It was back in the '60s, when the Buffalo Springfield – arguably America's best rock band – was still going strong and the combination of Stills' syncopated picking and Neil Young's high, lonesome, electric whine was like nothing else anyone had ever heard. It was an era of drugs, sex, rock 'n' roll, an unpopular war, and an even more unpopular president – and paranoia sometimes did run deep.

Neither of your authors tends toward paranoia; we're just not wired that way. From what we've seen, neither do most people. At least they don't until you encounter them in cyberspace. You can't read the Internet newsgroup Rec.Gambling.Poker these days without running into messages posted by poker players claiming that many of the online games are "juiced," and that the fix is in to reward poor players by creating a series of bad beats. This, some of the posters claim, is done to keep the poor players from going broke too quickly, or to punish good players who have won at the site and have just withdrawn some of their winnings.

The "post cashout" losing streak is fast taking on the status of an urban legend, like rumors about alligators in the sewers or the one that made the rounds a few years ago – so popular was it, that it became the theme of a Law and Order episode – about people getting mugged or seduced by a really hot number, only to awaken in an ice-cube filled bathtub in a sleazy hotel room to learn that one of their kidneys had been harvested and sold to the highest bidder.

Players select incredulous individual hands and post them to RGP as though an unlikely outcome is proof positive of some chicanery. "How could someone," one RGPer posted, "call a big flop with a hand like 5-3 offsuit, only to catch a 5 on the turn and a trey on the river to make two pair and skewer someone's top pair, top kicker hand?" Well, in our opinion, there are players who make that call time and time again, but somehow in a brick-and-mortar game, because players can see the dealer shuffle and pitch cards, there's more credibility given the hand even while there's still the same incredulous wonder about why anyone would play garbage like that.

But when you can't see the shuffle – in fact, when there are really no cards at all, but only a representation of cards and the shuffle is replicated by the use of a random number generator (RNG) – people are skeptical. And some of them become damn near paranoid.

Most sites, of course, will send a player a summary of his last 5,000 or 10,000 hands if he wants to look them over and see if there was an overage of "funny stuff," although I've yet to see anyone post to RGP about doing just that and finding funny patterns of card distributions over the long run. What's even stranger is that many of the most vociferous players, the ones who are dead sure that online sites are jobbing them, keep playing there.

That's curious, don't you think? If we were sure there was funny stuff going on – we mean really sure, not just slightly suspicious – we'd have to be real fools to keep coming back, keep playing, and keep complaining about it.

These posts share a compelling, strong, and sometimes almost paranoid emotionality. We've enjoyed reading most of them in spite of their paranoid overtones, and think it's time to share our thoughts with you.

A common theme in many of these messages was the belief that the Internet poker rooms, using some arcane, occult devices, were: (a) monitoring the win/loss rates of each player and using this information about play and outcomes, and (b) tweaking the software and "adjusting" it to shift the results of certain hands.

Some of these beliefs were rationalized by a series of arguments based on particular patterns of wins and losses, as we've described above. Others were presented in the form of statements like these: "Well, I know they give really poor players some wins to keep them coming back after a particularly horrible session." These arguments sound reasonable. It makes sense, doesn't it, for the online poker room to protect poor players and punish those with the gall to actually withdraw some of their winnings?

There are elements to these and other similar stories that fascinate us, particularly the psychological forces that lead people to beliefs such as these – even in people who really do know better. Sorry, folks, but these little bursts of paranoia that have been showing up on Rec.Gambling.Poker are just that – bursts of paranoia. Big Brother may be watching you – after all, there are cameras trained on you and everyone else in modern society; you can find them in ATMs, in many stores, and on more than a few lampposts, too – but he is not tweaking the results of an Internet poker game.

But, it surely is worth asking why so many people get these twitchy feelings. We suspect there are lots of reasons, but a couple of them seem pretty obvious and worth discussing here.

Many people just don't understand randomness. One of the things that characterizes truly random sequences of events is that virtually everything that can happen will happen, and over the long haul, they figure to happen at just about the right frequency. This means there will be times when you will win consistently for a time, only to find yourself caught up in an incredibly ugly losing streak, when almost nothing goes as you think it should.

It also means there will be other times when long losing streaks are followed by a couple of nice wins – maybe not enough for you to "get out" for the week or the month, but sufficient enough to make you feel a little better about life.

These are not the result of some devious, all-powerful entity controlling the outcomes of your poker game. They are just the kinds of things randomness – coupled with poor play – produces. And, remember, random sequences of events don't have to "even out." Randomness, even in the long run, is under no obligation to balance your books. All randomness offers is the likelihood that in the long haul, your results and expectation will meet and shake hands. It's nothing more than the best prediction one can make, but that's a far cry from an ironclad guarantee. And probability certainly can't be expected to achieve the results you're expecting to achieve in a relatively short period of time. After all, probability's long run takes a very long time to get here – months and years in some cases, but in any event, it's a darn site longer than an afternoon's play.

People are exceedingly good at finding patterns – so good, in fact, that they often see them even when they don't exist. Take a walk through any brick-and-mortar casino. You'll see players charting the outcomes of baccarat hands, perusing the sequences of reds and blacks at roulette, and logging the patterns of wins and losses at the slots. We've talked to lots of these gamblers, and asked them why they do this and whether they believe it is of value to them. Overwhelmingly, most believe there are patterns manifested in these games, and that they are "almost there" in figuring out what they are – and when they do, well …

Most of those posting about juiced games and rigged results on Internet poker sites are just "being human." They are looking for patterns – often unconsciously – and many believe they have found them. When they get data that suggest something has gone wrong and the patterns suddenly have gone screwy, they assume that "someone must have messed with the software." They had a hand they were about to win, they were beating the game steadily, but once they cashed out, the site tweaked their results to stop them from making big scores. Or, they were running so bad that the unseen, heavy hand in the online poker room's black box was afraid they'd never come back, so they reprogrammed things to produce a couple of wins. You see how easy it is to be just a little bit paranoid?

So, the next time you start thinking your favorite Internet poker site is "out to get you," or that "they" (that ubiquitous force, whomever they are, hovering over us, manipulating our lives) are massaging the chip in the slot, take a deep breath, think of us, and just drop that thought. It's not happening – not now, not later.

It's randomness just doing its random thing, and awful though it may be to contemplate, the site's management couldn't give a fat flying fig whether you're winning or losing. They've got the rake firmly on their side. After all, a well-run Internet poker room figures to make even more money than its brick-and-mortar cohort. It deals more hands per hour – so even with a lower rake per hand, speed enables it to make as much or more money as a traditional game with a higher rake.

It has little overhead to speak of, just a server farm on a reservation or in an office building somewhere in the Caribbean, and its dealers work 24/7 and never call in sick. It doesn't pay to jeopardize its business simply to "punish" some $2-$4 player who cashed out a few hundred bucks, or to reward someone who otherwise would have blown his entire allowance because he's got no idea how to play this game. Just like the brick-and-mortar casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City have too much to lose by gaffing a game, the leading Internet poker sites – many of which have a track record of some years standing that's worth protecting – have too much to lose by doing anything else than playing it square. After all, they know they're going to make money, and they know pretty much how much.

Lou Krieger's newest book, Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games, is available through Card Player and at www.ConJelCo.com, and all of his books can be found at major bookstores and online at www.Amazon.com. Arthur Reber co-authored Gambling for Dummies with Lou Krieger. When not writing about gambling, Dr. Reber is a professor of psychology. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].