Online Poker is Unregulated and Can Be Rigged

[pokerprop]

Okay first to make absolutely 100% clear - this is not an angle, I didn't write that post, pay for it, or have any knowledge it was coming I posted it minutes after receiving it and enjoyed reading it (I skimmed it and didn't even read it in full until it was posted - my first full read was via the same link). I have some thoughts on it, but I'm not capable of responding for the author.

[parttimepoker]

Oh, I don't think you wrote it. I just can't respond to it where it's posted. I don't expect you to defend / respond for the author.

I guess what I'm mostly interested in is the discussion of how a poker room would cheat to successfully (and most efficiently) accomplish the goal of rigging a room against winning players.

Having that discussion in general terms - and less within the context of whether or not the MMGG room will engage in the practice, which is destined to be speculation until the room exists - seems useful; by figuring out what tactics scamming rooms might use, you're better equipped to recognize the cheating when it does occur than you would be otherwise.

[pokerprop]

Good topic (though funny is someone predicted as soon as I posted saying the only people likely respond to that post were you and Bill). Anyways NFL football starting - I've been ill for 3 months and just hit point my body is shutting down but awake at the moment, I do have some thoughts on that for later this week.

[nobody123]

I guess what I'm mostly interested in is the discussion of how a poker room would cheat to successfully (and most efficiently) accomplish the goal of rigging a room against winning players.

Having that discussion in general terms - and less within the context of whether or not the MMGG room will engage in the practice, which is destined to be speculation until the room exists - seems useful; by figuring out what tactics scamming rooms might use, you're better equipped to recognize the cheating when it does occur than you would be otherwise.

A random and simplified suggestion:

if
-player1.earnPerUnit > MIN_WIN && player2.earnPerUnit < MIN_LOSS
and
-playability( player1.hand) > MIN_PLAYABILITY && playability( player2.hand) > MIN_PLAYABILITY
and
-finalHandValue( player1.hand ) > finalHandValue( player2.hand )
and
-finalHandValue( player2.hand ) > MIN_HAND_STRENGTH
and
-handWithinDistributionSigma( player1.hand ) && handWithinDistributionSigma( player2.hand )
then
swap( player1.hand, player2.hand)

playability: determines how likely a player is to put money into the pot with a hand based on past hands, or general heuristics in the case of small samples. For almost all players AA would have a playability of 1. For a less skilled player A7o might have a playability of 0.7, for a more skilled player perhaps 0.1.

finalHandValue: the hand value a certain hand will make once the community cards are accounted for

handWithinDistributionSigma: checks whether the distribution of a certain hand for a certain player falls within a certain minimum level of confidence for randomness.

I believe everything else is fairly self explanatory.

The only traces of this sort of manipulation would be weaker players running above their expected values in all-in scenarios and winning players running a bit below their all-in expected values and losing to coolers a bit more often than expected. Card removal, hand distribution pre and post, hand strength, and virtually all other player-available measurements of fairness would fall within reasonable boundaries. Analysis of any form of aggregate data would show everything looking reasonably normal. It should be clear this basic idea can be greatly expanded. And variance is always a fail safe as it provides effectively boundless plausible deniability.

[parttimepoker]

Great first post

How much would the example above push to losing players in a room of, say, Bodog's size? To accomplish the goal of keeping bad players in play longer, it has to offset a significant part of the losses a casual / bad player would otherwise experience.

At what point does the losing player receive enough rigged winnings that they shift from qualifying for the boost to not, and does their sudden "change of luck" then negate the whole point of the riggedness by causing them to bail on the room because "they just can't win there anymore"?

Do bad players decide to go all-in more and more often in more and more marginal situations as they experience the boost, given that they're winning more than they should when all-in? Does this ultimately offset the boost in terms of the ultimate goal of keeping the casual player at the tables longer?

I don't think a formula for shifting winnings from good players to bad ones is hard to develop (and I appreciate your example). I think developing a formula that accomplishes the hypothetical goal of keeping casual players at the tables longer via shifting wins from good players to bad players is the tough part. If you want to make games softer, it's simply not the path of least resistance to doing so.

Heck, you could just hire some people to start throwing haymakers at your room in forums that are primarily read by the higher-volume players or the industry types that often have relationships with higher-volume players. Lay out some dire scenarios about the room, including a solid case for why winning players are likely to be cheated if they choose to play there, and bam - winning players stop playing there.

Now that would be a low-cost, low-risk strategy for making your room softer, wouldn't it. Hmmmm.......

[pokerprop]

I'm probably not the only one who got this email - would love if anyone who still has it could share it. I backed up all my emails when I sold poker prop and while always burn that stuff to CD - my laptop crashed right after and I was trying to clean the gmail account to turn it over in a hurry and lost most archives for that one email account. In any case I don't think there is much to it, but back well before UIGEA (probably early 2005) someone claiming to be the former prop manager at Absolute Poker spam emailed tons of people an extremely detailed post accusing AP of rigging games (I'm about 90% certain it involved altering distributions in All in situations I forget who it targeted) it gave a link to download the hand histories but it was broken. It was written off as a hoax and loled with poker is zomg rigged responses - I remember finding it on a blog a couple years later but then not being able to find it since. I'll poke around at some point. Actually quick google search I'm not sure if this post is related or not but I think as the result of this email many props had even higher suspicions. Even if nothing to it (most likely the case) just reading his accusation again might have some value because his explanation was extremely detailed. If anyone has this doesn't want to get involved in discussion use tor browser make a new account and PM me.

Question: Is it illegal to rig poker games? What are the actual gambling commissions policies. Each one usually rattles off objectives of protecting the vulnerable and naive, protecting minors, keeping games free of crime -ensuring game fairness. But what does that last one mean? Can we only defer rigging a poker game is a violation or is it actually spelled out? Clearly casino games are not fair, in that there is a mystery house advantage in most of them (example slots with adjustable payouts). Of course playing blackjack, craps, roulette etc. we'd expect these to follow games rules and be completely random.

There was recently the BLR Technologies rigged casino issue (details) where sites were running rigged crap games. From everything I read on this it sure sounds like the cheating capabilities were built in as a selling feature and casinos could choose to set their advantage at anything they'd like. (this should not be possible for a game like craps).

Funny is because today I read a thread at SBR about their craps game being rigged. SBR might not appear to be an operator but you can both purchase SBR points, and can sell them for cash right via their website and use this site to play in their sportsbook and casino. Most might get points other ways but SBR is an operator to extent. In any case someone was saying you'd crap out quick every other roll playing there and since they increased the payouts and that the game now appears aggressively rigged. I decided to test it tonight only because I read people claiming to be regs saying it was now obvious it was juiced:

________
Point 9
out 7
_________
point 4
11
out 7
________
point 6
out 7
_______
7 win
______
7 win

5 of 9 rolls were a 7, I didn't continue any further but was enough to know something is probably wrong because this was minutes after others made made this allegation. The software used here is very popular and distinct I've seen it at other casinos, and it's not the same software rigged craps games were recently discovered at. There is some minor room for doubt with SBR one, I mean I could roll 7 five in nine times about about 0.9% (just under 1% of the time) and it's a very small sample - but more likely than not the game is rigged. So this brings up the question fixed games that should be random and shouldn't be rig-able are rig-able.. How and why? Knowing this does the idea you couldn't do it because you'd have the kill the programmers, hope no one talks or w/e change that notion at all? Of course we now need to ask are the games actually rigged or are they merely faulty? I could continue on here.. but plenty to process for here for now. People can thumbs down me all they want - but I guarantee you guys there is a story here, and a great chance for anyone wanting to do the work and run with it to become famous. If you do perhaps I'll become your number one fan!