Poker Stories: Rigged...but not like you think

Yes mathman I understand the odds. The probability aspect.

Answer me this though, use your example of the A of spades needing to be hit after the flop.

The cards are dealt out to 9 players. 18 cards gone from the deck everyone bets. The dealer then discards one card (19th card) and deals the flop (3 more cards gone) and lo and behold you need that A of spades to win against a stronger opponent. Before the turn card is played the dealer discards a card (the 23rd card in this particular deck). If that card happens to be the A of spades then you won't hit.

Now, does the RGN do that? Discard a card before dealing the flop, the turn and the river?

If not, every once in a while players will hit cards that would have been impossible in live game. If the RGN does discard like in live play everything is still the same with online and live gaming probability and all.

In online games thousands and thousands of hands are dealt in short period of time. Enough hands where this MAY slightly change the variance between live and online poker. Maybe.

I don't think anyone knows if the RGN deals out cards with discards like in live play and I am only wondering what effect that would have is all. I still love playing online and I am learning a lot. I am just wondering, not criticizing or anything like that. It is still all porbability but if the cards are constantly moving and changing position I don't see how those odd can be even remotely calculated (of couse you have a 1 in 52 or whatever the number of cards remain but that seems too simple of an odds and does not accurately reflect the reality of the situation, but hell what do I know.)

What is that called? Akhim's therom? Something about putting a cat in a box and closing it up and pumping poison gas in it? You know the cat is dead but technically the cat is not dead until you open the box and see it, otherwise there is only a probability it is dead. Poker seems a lot like that, may be if you wish hard enough the card you need will come up.

And yes, I have many flaws in my thinking for sure.

"If you pray hard enough water will run uphill. How hard do you have to pray? Hard enough to make water run uphill!"

People in this thread seem to get caught up in the mechanics of the shuffle and lose sight of the basic nature of the game. There's 52 cards. There are some that you know (your hole cards and the board cards), everything else is unknown. The math works out the same regardless.

You wouldn't walk into a casino and worry about how many times the dealer cut the cards, washed them, or rifled them. You'd look, see that the deck got shuffled and you'd play based on what you know and what you don't.

The very nature of online poker is going to require a different mechanism for determining the outcomes, since you can't pay an office full of people to sit around and deal cards to tables and post the results. Being concerned with how the system creates the dealt hands, flop, turn, and river is worrying about the wrong thing.

Play the percentages. Play the situations. Play your opponents. Don't worry about playing the site. After all, if things were broken, you'd see hundreds of people posting databases of data showing things are broken. It doesn't happen. All you get are the people who type in all caps about how they "think" or "feel" that it's rigged, fixed, setup, etc., but when pushed for proof, they change the subject to your Sharkscope stats (like that's the bible of poker skill), OPR stats, post count, etc. Anything to keep from making a sensible, thought-out, logical argument.

believe whatever u like but note that no on-line poker room makes any claims about random DEALING, only SHUFFLING! That is a very significant difference. And insofar as miracle suck outs are 10 times more frequent on-line.....

Having said that, there is the possibility of synchronizing with any RNG that starts and stops (i.e. shuffling) so it SHOULD be the case that the RNG continues to shuffle post deal. That way the time players take to act adds a variable that should make synchronizing virtually impossible in real time

I think the hand is real because, I have no proof but I am about 80% sure that i was dealt (2) 7 of hearts at an omaha table before. I thought I noticed right as I was mucking it. It has always bugged me as I thought i was just seeing things but now after seeing his post I think I really did have the same card. Ive been playin online for about 6 years now and I agree with the guy who posted that there are so many hands being dealt online that you are gonna see much more strange plays but after seeing his pic of the (2) ace of spades and the same thing possibly happening to me, brings up alot of questions. But on the other hand im addicted to online poker and even if it was rigge3d id still play lol.

Well gl all and hopefully yall stay safe from the bullcrap that happens while playing online. Peace!!!!!

flaw in my thinking like mathman said.

Don't spend your time worrying about the state of the deck live compared to online. There are a fixed number of unknown cards. Your outs might be the top cards in the deck. They might be the bottom cards. They might be in someone else's hand. All you know and need to think about is the probability of hitting one.

No, it would not have a different affect on live and online play. Lets say the opposite for one second. Lets say the 1 outter WAS the next card to come after the burn. You have 100% chance of hitting it then. In fact I could use your argument and say that live has a better chance of hitting the 1 or 4 outters whatever.

Lets say the burn cards WERE NOT the outter we were looking for. Then we know the probability of them hitting would be greater then online since we now would have 3 less bad cards in the deck to hit. Which equals a greater probibility that we make a hand.

If you don't understand what i'm saying here. Everything is random. We have no idea where our card is. Online gives it the correct odds of coming whether its in someones hand or not, and live it could be anywhere in the deck.

ITS FIXED AND THATS THAT

and yes, during home games the shuffling is poor, and I may play cards based on what came up last hand. At casinos, they have the table shuffle in most places. Humans don't shuffle completely random I agree.

As far as everything being random, with online play, absolutely, the RNG's make sure of that. In live play think about this for a moment.

As the cards are being shuffled the cards are being randomized. Once the shuffle ends that is it, the hands of all the players are set though no player knows what that hand is. All the cards have been determined once and for all. The dealer deals the cards in stages and the player that thinks his hand is going to be the best stays in obviously. That is the luck part of poker.

Ya the cards are set in stone, but the cards are there randomly. Think of it not as saying there is a 10% percent chance a card will come up, but a 10% chance that card is next in the deck.

other then that alex your last post really has nothing to do with what were talking about but I pretty much agree I guess.

None of you are grasping his concept. It goes beyond the basic fundamentals of how you play the game, odds, etc....

He is saying that in a live game, while you may have 1 out in terms of probability, and of course this is how you should base your decisions at the table, your "literal" chance of hitting that out is zero if the card is at the bottom of the shuffled deck.

Now compare that to online play, he's assuming that your 1 out does not stay at the bottom of the "deck" but remains a possible selection for each remaining card to come, like a number on a spinning wheel. If that is the case, it does have a different effect on the results between live and online play in the long run and would result in more long shots hitting, although it should not change the way the players calculate during play.

you are absolutely right sir, best bet is to have as many outs as possible I would think! Better odds. That is why it seems such a miracle when you go all in post flop just to find yourself with only one out and it hits on the river! The odds are nuts that that card just happened to be in the 26th position in that particular shuffle at that particular moment in live play. In online if the cards are constantly shifting position then it is not quite the same miracle....

I understand what you are saying Alex. Let's suppose (for simplicity), that after the flop, your only out in a hand is the Ace of spades.

You are saying that in a live game, if the Ace of spades is in the bottom half of the deck, it has zero chance to hit on the turn or river. In an online game, before the turn or river is dealt, that Ace of spades is randomly shuffled (constantly), so if it is still in the deck, it can hit at any time. Its placement after the flop could be the "bottom" card, but by the time the turn is dealt, it can/will change positions. However, in an online RGN, i don't think the cards really have positions. They are chosen, not placed.

And there is a flaw in your thinking. In a live game, that Ace of spades is still randomly placed, it just doesn't change positions. But the chances of it falling on the "next" card is still the same. The fact that it does change positions in an online game still does not affect the chances of it falling on the next card. The only difference is in the live game, the placement of the Ace of spades is predetermined, but still random because no one knows where that predetermined placement is.

The bottom line is, in any given hand, live or online, you see your two cards and the board cards. So after a flop, you see 5 cards, none of which are the ace of spades, so the chances either way of seeing the ace of spades on the next card is 1 out of 47, REGARDLESS if the ace of spades is really at the bottom of the deck, position 29 of the RNG, or in someones hand.

This is why many people argue that online RNGs are actually "too" random. The "placement" of each card changes constantly, and the result of each board card can change in a matter of milliseconds.

You probally remember the flushes and straights more then you do seeing trips.

Also, you will see trips show'n down a lot less more than straights and flushes I believe for a few reasons. One, it's easy to let go of trips if its obvious your beat with say 4 flush cards out. Its harder to lay down the low flush or stright. Also, It someone catches trips (not a set) it's unlikely others hit the board hard to and are more likely to fold.

Please don't get too frustrated with me,

A mathmatician can prove mathmatically that it is POSSIBLE for a full grown elephant to stand on a tree branch in and 80 mph gail but it is not probable at all,

What I am asking is if the RNG does not discard cards before flop, turn and river like in live Texas holdem does that change the probablilities at all? From your replys it appears that it does not.

Everything is possible but not everything is probable. Players comment that live play is different than online play, I do not know as I have not played enough Live play and online play to make that determination. If it is different I am only thinking about why is it different. IF, if it is different and the probablities are the same in both online and live then the answer MAY be in ever so slight differences in the dealing of the cards like I have been saying about discards and not all the cards are in play in live poker.

Thats all, I am not criticizing, the probabilities are consistent in all the online games for sure because the RNG makes sure of that.

I am only throwing out a thought on the differences between online and live dealing of the cards IF there are any.

Yes, the probablilites are set that a given card will be coming up at any particular time in live play as well as online play based on certain facts like is that particular card in someone else's hand, was that particular card mucked, does the particular card even have a chance of being drawn (live poker),etc.

In live games the deck is shuffled and then "set " until the hand is over then reshuffled for the next hand

Online the deck is "shuffled" at all times . After the hole cards are dealt , it shuffles them until the flop ... then begins to shuffle again until the turn ..same until the river . This is considered a security feature (to keep the rng from being cracked I believe) , I have read this more than once .... don't remember where .

I have enough trust in the members of this forum with the knowledge I lack that this site is not rigged , but I will say that I believe this constant shuffling of the deck is strange to me .

Now this is an interesting question to me . On the surface it would be easy to say it can't do anything else but use 26 cards , but I do understand what you are asking here. I would feel better if I could find this in print on a reputable site (I can't find any info about this online) or if IABoomer , BNS , mathman , RIDDUM or one of the other forum members who have earned my trust would chime in with an answer .

LMAO Donk!

Alex,

As you have alluded to online and live seem to have quite a different feel to them. Much of this can be attributed to a few distinct differences:

1) Number of players. A B&M cardroom may have 10-20 tables with 80-180 players, while on line you are dealing in the thousands

2) Type of players. With so many more players in the on line arena, you get quite a varied type of player. For many it is much easier to sit down at their computer and play with nowhere near as much effort as going to a cardroom.

3) Stakes. The lowest stakes in B&M is usually $1-2NL or $1-3NL. For on-line those are fairly high stakes. In on-line you have 2c/4c or 5c/10c as the low stakes, which will attract many more "casual" players.

4) Point of playing. Relates to #2/3. Depending on the level you are playing at, the point for the other people to be playing can be very different live vs. on-line.

To your concern about the "burn" card happening live vs. on-line. It still has no effect on the probability of a specific card hitting or not hitting. Unknown cards are still that "unknown" and your odds of hitting any unknown don't matter. To that end, would it matter if a live game instituted a 2 card burn rule, would it then be mathematically different from a 1 card burn, or a no card burn?