The fairness debate

Well, what you said is somewhat true but does not address the issue I brought up. Yes, people will play almost any 2 cards and call all day long so you see very strange hands at showdown. The hands I have been posting have nothing to do with that though so they cannot be explained away by the players. I’ll use the most obvious and easy to spot example of a flop containing 3 of a kind. It doesn’t matter what any of the players hold or what they decide to play or fold. The flop is totally a function of the deal. This type of flop is supposed to happen once every 424 hands. If you see it happen 6 times in 400 hands one night, that would be odd but could still happen once in a blue moon with a random deal. If you see the same thing several times, then the odds of it being a natural occurrence are lower. If multiple people on multiple tables see this happening at a rate 6-7 times more frequently than the odds say it should, that’s just fishy.

Out of curiosity, what evidence do you have that the software is fair? There is an old certification for the RNG here but that says nothing about the other programing and nothing about what is currently going on. Many people here have provided examples of uncommon deals. Each player has given anecdotal evidence from separate tables in separate games at different times. All of these anecdotes add up to a decent amount of evidence that the deals are not random. Not 1 single piece of evidence has been brought up to refute that suspicion and while I am sure you are a nice and well-meaning person, your claim is not backed by anything concrete.

I have seen more statistical anomalies here in my ~30K hands than I have in 10 times that many playing for cash online. Unless I see some evidence to explain what I (and others) have seen, I will continue to believe that the program is not random but instead juiced for added action. This would not be the 1st or only site to mess with the action. It boosts excitement and that may be good for business.

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Yesterday I saw a hand but didn’t save it.
Two people went all-in preflop. One had AA. Other had KK. Board came up all spades. LOL.
Those deals have nothing to do with calling stations.

According to wizardofodds.com, the odds of making a Royal are 1 in 30,940.

I’ve made 4 of them in 128,716 total hands. I know this isn’t definitive proof of anything, but it is a piece of evidence suggesting that the deal is fair. It’s hard data as opposed to “feelings” and a few anecdotal stories.

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I should add that I didn’t take all 128,000 hands to showdown, and might well have made a few more if I did. Still, I think we are at least in the right statistical ballpark here.

Thanks for presenting evidence. That’s more helpful than opinions. Since we can’t export hands, we will probably never be able to prove if the deal is juiced or not definitively. Still, if people want to track what they see vs what a random deal should produce, here is a link: https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-tools/odds-and-outs It will give you the odds of certain flops as well as of certain hands. I would like to hear if people are seeing cards at a rate consistent with what the odds say or not. I would like to see more hard data presented here.

Because the number of times you make a hand depends on how you play, its not the best way to look for statistical anomalies, IMO. I would only look at the cards dealt to see if that is different from what a random deal says should happen.

I’m not agreeing, or disagreeing. But anyone who is/wants to do the math needs the whole picture, so please make sure to calculate all the tables being play simultaneously, Since it’s one program running all games at one time.

The Juicee River (how to catch a fish)

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This is not an accurate statement. The entire purpose of statistics and probabilities is to be able to make certain assumptions based upon samples. Cardano, Fermat, Pascal and Huygens were kind enough to develop a methodology for reliably dealing with situations where absolute counts were impractical or impossible. We can make determinations based on the likelihood of certain events as observed vs the frequency in which they should occur in theory. In addition, the deal on one table should have absolutely no bearing on the deals on any other table. They are independent of each other here just as they are when using physical decks in a card room.

This being said, a few samples of 400 hands here and there are not sufficient to make inferences about the RNG here one way or the other with any degree of confidence. You would need more samples of greater sizes to reach any sort of confidence level worthy of consideration. You also can’t cherry-pick samples to include those times when strings of odd events happened and exclude those times when they did not.

This debate has gone on for a long time and I don’t see there being any meaningful movement one way or the other about the fairness of the RNG here. Some players are certain that the things they see cannot happen randomly. Other players defend the RNG with absolutely nothing to back their statements up other than an emotional attachment to the site. Its pointless to try and bridge the gap between the two sides because there is insufficient data on one hand and you can’t argue emotions on the other. My advice to everyone is to simply have fun and not worry about it so much. This is not a gambling site, its an entertainment site. If you look at most play-chip poker sites, they actually have disclaimers that basically say “this isn’t poker so relax”.

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My share:

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/447124068 : made straight defeated by runner runner full house.
https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/447459722 : three full houses in one deal.

I was busted out of four out of last five Hold’em tournaments with such harsh hands.

I was spared of such treatments for sometime, now it starts again.

It kind of annoyance, because it feels like power indulgence.

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For a change I am posting a good hand:

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/447546533 : I was holding 78H, flop came as 456H, Omaha. One of the best I have had.

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Couple of days back, out of sheer frustration, I tried another site, cash and supposedly decent. My god, its not just rigging, its milking.

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Details please. I play on 3 other cash sites and have never seen anything like what goes on here. What site were you on and did you see anything wrong with the deals?

Just reporting in with a pattern update…

Apparently the meta has shifted from trip flops to double paired boards.

Film at 11.

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glad I wasn’t involved in this hand. poor pocket 9’s. gets a good flop only to get crushed on river.
https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/448761864

Obviously it’s impossible to defend the RNG without seeing its inner working or any actual data analysis, but I still defend the site simply because it’s easy to explain the statistical anomalies that so many other posters on this thread bring up. Over the course of a large number of hands with lots of loose-passive play, there are going to be a ton of quads over quads and AAAAK boards and back-to-back river 1-outers. It’s impossible to know if the site is fair, but posting weird hands or boards certainly doesn’t do anything to prove that it is not.

I also know from experience that the RNG doesn’t somehow force players to go broke or buy chips or lose their bankroll. And I know it is possible to win a lot of chips without buying any. So, I want to push back against the cognitive biases and the players who have expectations that they would win if only the game were fair because they are just wrong.

So, ultimately it is about having fun. If I really believed that the cards were “juiced” as some people here do, I would not play here because it would add an element outside of the realms of skill and probability. It is a social poker site, so it makes sense that many people do not care whether the poker is “realistic” (because it’s not realistic, even if the cards are dealt fairly), but then what is the point of coming here to complain about it?

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@JoeDirk - I have to agree with pretty much everything you said here. Moreover, I’m not sure it matters one way or the other to the average player whether the RNG is perfectly fair or if the hands are “juiced” for action. In the worst case scenario, all juicing would do is increase the variance. If someone is playing at the margins and doesn’t practice any sort of bankroll management, then it could be problematic. Other than that, it shouldn’t affect long-term win/loss rates.

From what I’ve come to understand, there are numerous sites that don’t even pretend to have a fair deal. I have no way to know if that’s accurate or to what degree if it is but I can see the rationale for increasing the action in order to sell chips. You can make good business arguments for doing it either way on a play-chip site.

What’s the point in complaining? I can’t speak for everyone but I do know the player you are referring to very well. From the conversations we’ve had, the action doesn’t bother him so much. He finds it amusing that people take anything that happens here too seriously. I can understand that. There are many players here that have egos that far outweigh their skills. There are quite a few who claim to be experts or pros just bumming around and practicing here. Most of those claims are ludicrous on their face and fall apart ever farther if you examine the players actual play or the comments they write here in the Forum. I don’t let these things bother me but they obviously rub others the wrong way.

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If someone thinks the pRNG is skewed, they should use this to their advantage. How can one think it’s skewed and not know HOW it’s out of whack?

For example, if you think flushes hit twice as often as they should, you should play more flush draws. If the deal is off, these players should win way more than others. Clearly, this isn’t the case.

It’s way easier to place the blame on some uncontrollable outside factor instead of making a critical examination of your own skills. That’s just human nature, but do note that those playing winning poker don’t usually complain about the deal.

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I don’t want to sink back into this particular topic but I can think of any number of ways to mess with the RNG that are not exploitable by the players. Using the example of the 3-of-a-kind flops - if you noticed that these flops were occurring at 5x their predicted rate, how would you exploit that knowledge? So, while I agree that a good portion of the complaining is simply a case of people not understanding probabilities, this particular argument doesn’t work as a reason for why it can’t be skewed.

Stating one or a few examples doesn’t invalidate the point in general. True, there would be ways to skew it that can’t be exploited, but most of the complaints I have seen involve draws getting there on the river, which could be exploited if true.

If winners can win consistently and losers lose consistently, it’s hard to put that on the pRNG. This is my basic point.

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I agree with this point. Most of the arguments people make about the RNG being flawed are claims that there are too many flushes or board pairs or rivers hitting. There are adjustments that could be made, like playing more suited cards to get flushes or calling turns with more draws to hit rivers. If the board pairs too much then play fewer straight and flush draws and continue more with pocket pairs or two-pair hands. These adjustments are nonsense and will cause you to lose more because they are predicated on the cards falling in systematic ways, but many of the people here seem convinced that they are recognizing these patterns, so they could play accordingly.

I think it’s a facetious argument to make because nobody would seriously suggest abandoning good play based upon these perceived differences (unsubstantiated with actual statistical analysis), but this argument effectively turns the tables on at least some of the conspiracy theories. If people are so sure that these things are happening, then they could exploit them. If they can’t exploit them or it seems absurd to even suggest exploiting them, then how could they be happening?

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Breaking news from the useless anecdotal evidence news room…

From my latest ring game:

Including the above hand, the board double paired 7 times in 52 hands. If I recall correctly, that should happen about every 20-25 hands, give or take? Similar frequencies have occurred at several tables I’ve sat at in the last week or so.

So yes… I do set mine a lot more, and I do tend to stick around if I hit two pair. If the board has paired up once and is not to my advantage, I’ll probably have a higher chance to fold. Don’t hate me because I’m on the spectrum, man.

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