If you participate in any sort of poker forum, you’ll quickly notice how many threads are dedicated to ... more]]> #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; }

If you participate in any sort of poker forum, you’ll quickly notice how many threads are dedicated to people whining about online poker, saying it is rigged against the players. These posts tend to come from new players, but we’ll look at a few reasons why people make these sort of wild accusations in the first place.

There are a few theories on why online poker is rigged, but they all tend to come from the general school of thought that poker sites rig hands to generate more money for themselves. These theories talk about bad beats, suckouts, and getting dealt fewer hands than they should. The most common theories include:

The first timer theory. People believe that pots are rigged in favour of people who have recently deposited, which means that these people will spend more time and money playing poker, creating more money for the site. The converse of this is the “doomswitch” theory, whereby somebody becomes ‘doomed’ as soon as they withdraw money.

The “big stack” theory. The wildest one, this one states that big stacks have an advantage over small stacks, and that pots are rigged in their favour.

The big pot theory. This theory states that the site intentionally sets up two big hands against each other more often than it should mathematically occur (such as AA vs. KK, a set vs. a straight ect.). The larger the pot, the more the rake, so thus the site profits more. This theory has most of it’s application in poker cash games.

So why would people post this theories? One reason is the amount of volume online compared to that of live. In a normal live setting, one can expect to be dealt a maximum of 30 hands an hour with a good dealer. Online, the pace is usually double that. At a single table, about 60 hands an hour are dealt. Coupled with the fact that most people play 4+ tables at once, this volume is significantly larger to that of live. I personally get about 600 hands in a 2 hour session of play – equivalent to 20 hours of live play. Thus, because people see far more hands, the number of bad beats and suckouts that one sees will be increased exponentially as well.

Another reason is the skill level of online players. Live play is generally far worse to that of online play. If you were comparing the two, 200NL live is generally accepted to be equal to that of 10/25NL online. Thus, someone who wins a little playing live, expects to be an awesome player online at much lower stakes. When they get stacked numerous times by players better than them, they complain. Rather than looking at their own game and how they play, they blame the software, simply because it is much easier to blame something you can’t control.

So is it really all rigged? At this point, from my experience, I would have to say no. These huge internet gambling sites are dealing with millions of dollars and thousands of customers a day, and if something were crooked, they would stand to lose millions of dollars. Some players play poker for a living, and thus rely on these sites to be trustworthy. If onine poker is rigged, how are the online poker professionals making a living? Thus, each site is regulated by commissions, which make sure that each room is not doing any underhand action to increase their own profits. The RNG of each site (random number generator), which determines how the cards fall, is also monitored by special commissions.

To this day there have been no proven allegations as to online poker being rigged. There have been some glaring mistakes made by some sites, such as the super-users on UltimateBet and Absolute, and the incorrect shipping of pots on Cake Poker, but this is separated from the rigged theories of online poker, and the sites tighten up on their security all the time. Until solid evidence over hundreds of thousands of hands is shown that details the rigged nature of the online game, there will be no evidence that proves that online poker is rigged. As the old adage says – ‘innocent until proven guilty’. Get a boss media rakeback deal when you play online poker and get a monthly bonus every month for your playing time.