This Site is Rigged!

"This site is rigged!" That's what BigLoser angrily typed in the chat box. I had just drawn three cards in the five-card draw game to the A K to beat his pat 10-high straight. It certainly is true that making a flush on a three-card draw to beat a pat hand is a long shot; he was approximately a 75-to-1 favorite. But it was actually his own fault that he lost the pot. In a fivehanded draw game, he had limped with a pat hand. SuzyXYZ had called, and I had not had to put anything extra in from the big blind. This was good for me, because if the pot had been raised, I would not have played, having only a suited A-K, not even a pair. I drew three cards, BigLoser stood pat, and SuzyXYZ drew one card. Naturally, I checked to the pat hand. BigLoser bet, SuzyXYZ folded, and I raised. BigLoser reraised, and I capped it. I might be beat, but I was certainly willing to gamble one more bet on having the best hand. My flush won a nice pot. Limping with a pat hand is a dumb play for lots of reasons. In this particular situation, BigLoser was hoping that someone would raise and he could reraise. The trouble with that reasoning is that anyone with a raising hand would at least call anyway, and might even reraise, enabling him to cap it before the draw. Also, in this particular hand, the most likely thing to happen is that he would pick up a caller, one bet. He might even get only the big blind. SuzyXYZ had come in to draw to a straight or a flush. She would have come in anyway if he had raise-opened, so he was guaranteed two bets. And if I'd had a decent pair, I would have come in for the extra bet anyway. The other reason to raise-open is to protect the hand. Why let the big blind in for free? The big blind was essentially getting infinite odds to draw and might make a complete hand by drawing three or more cards. Also, I knew BigLoser didn't play pat-hand bluffs, so there was no way I was going to call him after the draw unless I had him beat, and the only way he would get an extra bet from me was before the draw. Finally, when you have a good hand, make others pay for trying to beat it, particularly when they're going uphill.

From that point on, after every hand that BigLoser lost, he typed something like, "Figures," or, "Ho-hum, another one," as if he expected to lose. Eventually, he went all in trying to hit his own long shot, a pair of threes against aces up, and left in a hail of profanities. But BigLoser really had no one to blame but himself. Most of his losses were attributable to his own bad play, and the few unlucky hands he played – most of which couldn't even be called bad beats – were just part of the game. When millions of hands are being dealt every day all over the Internet, you've got to expect some percentage of the long shots coming in.

I mention this because a few online players seem to think a particular site has it in for them specifically. I have seen similar accusations against more than one poker site.

Tangentially, within two days of my online draw game, I had two full houses beat. First, I had tens full pat beat in a pot I raised and the big blind came in to draw to a pair of fives – bad play. But he made four fives and it was capped after the draw. In the other hand, the small blind came in cold for two bets against my nines full to draw to a pair of eights – another bad play – and made quads. Again, the pot was capped. In both cases I was better than a 225-to-1 favorite. Stuff happens. If they draw to enough inferior hands, they're going to make a few miracles. The memory of those miracles keeps them playing the long shots. (After each loss I took, I typed "nh" – nice hand – in the chat box. They love the feedback.) Despite those odds-defying losses, I still was a big winner both days. In fact, in each case, I got back in about three hands what I'd lost in the bad beat – from the player who beat me.

The Internet newsgroup Rec.Gambling.Poker – RGP – has endless postings about a particular site waiting till it discovers you're a winning player or you want to cash out, and then suddenly you start mysteriously losing. One disgruntled player has even constructed an entire web site that looks very much like the home page of one of the better-known poker sites. But instead of links to instructions on how to play, you find page after page, also looking remarkably like those of the well-known site, down to graphics he must have lifted from the original, of descriptions of how they're going to get you. Once you deposit your money, if you're fortunate enough to start winning, you'll never actually see those winnings. I would think the site he's pouring his vitriol on would sue him for libel, or at the very least for stealing their logos.

And then there are the players who are convinced that sites "help" poor players to the detriment of "good" players. Usually, such posters equate "good" with playing a-b-c (that is, predictably). Here is a typical post (edited to disguise identities):

Here is a hand history from PokerHeaven. Read this history and I dare you to tell me this site is not fixed!!! The flop comes J-4-4 with two diamonds. Magnus, with a J, makes a good play and check-raises all in. AlCapon calls the all-in bet with the 5 2?? Does he know what is coming??? No pair, no draw, nothing!!!!!! But PokerHeaven comes thru for him. So, you tell me, is PH intentionally helping the worst players? Or, do their servers see these awful calls and put up the miracle, miracle runner, runner cards? Go ahead, PokerHeaven, tell us this wasn't that bad a beat; Magnus was only like a 200-1 fav. PH is the worst.

The poster then attached the hand history, which showed that this was a no-limit tournament in which AlCapon had made his poor call, and 6-3 came to give him a straight. Well, lucky for AlCapon that the site was watching out for him. The poster didn't get his facts quite right, of course. Magnus was only a 25-to-1 favorite. People get this distorted idea of bad beats seeming to happen online more often than in brick-and-mortar cardrooms. There is a bit of truth in that, because online players in general, being more inexperienced than B&M players, do tend to make more bad calls. Also, more hands are dealt per hour than in a B&M, perhaps more than three times as many. In the long run, though, those who regularly make bad plays lose online just as they do anywhere else – but they do so three times as quickly at the same limit. The random number generators and card shuffling algorithms make shuffles online more random than in B&Ms, where the inability of humans to shuffle perfectly becomes a small factor. The big online sites have reputations to maintain. They don't make their money by robbing some players. They make their money from the rake from every pot. The "house" doesn't care who wins. Any aberration in the randomness of hands would easily be detectable. Furthermore, the shuffling algorithms are regularly inspected by independent monitoring companies, among them the reputable Price-Waterhouse.

The poster continues:

Think this was unusual? No, this is NORMAL on PokerHeaven. Don't believe me? Here is another example: This is another PokerHeaven classic from a limit hold'em tourney. The flop comes A 10 9. LaDiDa, with an ace, bets out. Rumpot, with a stone-cold nothing BS hand, raises with the K 7. Does he know what is coming?? But don't worry, friends, PH takes care of the worst players. They put up the miracle-miracle runner-runner cards for him, the 8 6, to give him the 10-high straight. Classic PokerHeaven. If you play on this site, you will see this all day, as the software takes care of the bad players. Do PH and the other online sites do this intentionally, or is it a flaw in their software? I don't know, but ALL the good players I know have stopped playing on these sites because of this.

What does this prove? That Rumpot was maybe trying a steal? That LaDiDa is supposed to be a good player? He (she?) put in three bets before the flop, which represented nearly three-fourths of his remaining chips, from the small blind with an A-4. Someone had raise-opened. LaDiDa had no business even being in the pot. Not only was he in, he reraised, essentially committing himself before seeing the flop to put all of his chips in. But never mind that. LaDiDa bet 100 chips on the flop, and Rumpot raised him all in, another 75 chips. Rumpot started the hand with five times as many chips as LaDiDa, and might have been trying to freeze out any other players. He just might have felt like gambling, thinking that if he got lucky, he'd have a lot more chips. He might have had to go to the bathroom. Who knows? But it doesn't matter. First, the poster again failed to notice something. As bad as Rumpot's play was, he actually had more than a backdoor straight to go for; he also had a backdoor flush possibility. This wasn't nearly as bad a beat as the previous example. LaDiDa was only about an 8.6-to-1 favorite. If the poster were able somehow to get records of every situation in which the players started with exactly the hands LaDiDa and Rumpot had and with the same flop – he could even keep track of all hands with different suits and maybe slightly different kickers, but the same situation, essentially – he would discover that the A-4 (or equivalent hand) would in the very long run win approximately 89.6 percent of the time against K-7 suited with the given (or equivalent) flop. But if you just look for drawouts, you'll see that lots of 3-to-1 favorites get beat – and that doesn't even qualify as a bad beat. But you'll also frequently see 10-to-1 and better favorites get beat.

You can't prove anything with two examples. The poster didn't save hand histories of all the situations in which someone made a poor call, taking way the worst of it, and lost the hand. He used what statisticians call selective sampling, citing only the data that support the sampler's point of view. Yes, the poster made a correct statement, that you would "see this all day," but he drew an incorrect conclusion from the observation.

Players in B&Ms have been blaming their losses on dealers, poor play of others, the deck (as shown by constant requests for deck changes), and so on – anything to keep the opprobrium from coming to roost where it belongs, on their own bad play. Now those who play online have something new to assign blame to, conspiratorial software.

There's a nice word for this. It's paranoia.