One of the reasons why people continue to believe the game is rigged is the lack of visual evidence. In a live game, we SEE the dealer and his actions. People WATCH the dealer and in a legal cardroom or casino, TRAINED personnel are focusing on the dealer’s every move. That’s how a live game’s integrity is protected.
With a computer, everything is hidden. We never see the deal and there are no observers, trained or otherwise. The validity of any RNG will always be questioned. That isn’t just a programming flaw, it’s a product of human nature.
There are ways to validate the RNG on a personal level, but anything the site does will always be suspected as self-serving. It is just unfortunate this site either doesn’t want players to evaluate the RNG’s validity or have decided eliminating such information saves programing dollars. I think it shortsighted but understandable since this is chip action. There is no cost to the player.
That fact too is a major contributor to the rigged conspiracy. Chip action on sites like this have no consequences for inept play. Lost all your chips? Wait twenty-four hours and get more. Bets that would force a reasonable player to fold in a money game just draws more action. There are just too many incentives to chase to the river when there is no cost.
Look at everyone’s favorite hand, pocket aces. There is an 85% probability of winning the hand at the pre flop stage. In a cash game you bet to eliminate the field. In chip action, heavy betting may well result in all nine players seeing the flop. Pocket aces still dominate, but the odds are now 50 - 55% when you face eight other players. It’s still the best hand but not as dominating as it was against a single opponent. Once the flop comes up, the odds can shift dramatically and that too can lead to the rigged game concept…
If there is no way of being caught rigging it, then rigging the game would produce better and more reliable results for Replay. Not saying it is or not. Having no evidence that the game is not rigged is no better than having no evidence that it is.
That would require either a personal or profit motive on the part of Replay.
Since you can obtain chips free, where is the profit motive? If players were forced to eventually purchase chips in order to play, the site would loose its customers. There are far too many chip sites on the internet that would welcome players with the appearance of a fairer RNG. True, the site does profit from sales of chips but many would balk at paying for a free game.
What would be the personal motive? Ranking here is as much a product of longevity as it is profit. It cannot be used anywhere as a means of measurement. Favoring a specific player would become counterproductive as players would either fold or withdraw from a game with an obvious anointed winner.
@CairnDestop ,
Good post. This has been and will be continually re-hashed. The flaw lie’s in the deffinition of “shuffle” replay uses, and how hands are/arenot linked. Replay Poker is not Rigged or Enhanced… Its Flawed…
That being said, all online poker sites will always have this problem, as thier code is protected, and what we all see is what a site “could” want us to see… Add to the mix, “free poker” and you get what most sites have… donks…
If you then add to the mix different strategies for Leaderboards, and you add yet another layer of WTF is he/she doing…
All you can do is Adapt to your surroundings as best as possible ( ie- the replay river, or flush heaven ), just as you adapt to other players styles, or how leaderboards are scored.
Cairn- of course. this is the profit motive as you said yourself “True, the site does profit from sales of chips”
Now here is a very powerful motive that you asked about-- Payroll for 15-20 employees that has a 100% probability of having to be paid.
Replay is 100% rigged, but not in anyone persons favour just rigged for river action, not to mention quad 6s twice in a row in holdem ??? surely they don’t expect us to believe that,
If I owned a site like replaypoker I would do it to make MONEY, not to provide a free game.
So I would allow players to bet with 2500 free chips every day but also hope that they would buy extra chips.
This is not likely with regular players who don’t see the need to buy extra chips when they have a couple of million in the bank, so where do you make your money???
From the new players.
I would allow them to win much more often than established players.
Then, knowing how addictive gambling of any sort can be, I would expect them to BUY chips to continue playing.
Sorry if I let the cat out of the bag, guys.
Thanks for the heads up Frank. Please be sure to post here if you do start your own poker site. I for one would be interested in checking out how a tilted poker game compared to RP.
I think a lot of people are looking at the possibility of unfairness the wrong way. Replay does not skew play one way or another. The question still remains as i have insisted can other players influence play. This is a real possibility. The most common are chip sharing or gang play. One that i have still not received a satisfactory answer to is the question of players getting a look at your cards. If you are networking that in reality is what online poker does is it not a valid point. There will be cheaters even on a free site for the simple reason that it can be done. I wish i was more computer wise then i could explore this ie checking data streams etc. Still very much enjoy the game and people here.
I agree with much of what u said however we will never know if its rigged or not will we? only if u own the poker site or are a pit boss or own the casino will u know. But does it really matter if u have learned to play with many different strategies to win? , rigged or not your poker skills outweigh everything.
Very true. I have changed my play style game to game and seem to be holding my own. Still things seem to happen out of the norm.Take a look when there are spectators and the time clock goes out of sync. Is this a tell on your computers part that somethings not right? this seems to be the time when things get goofy. Good talking to you.
I started to 'study" poker algorithms using search engines, not just one search engine…cos one of is , emm, rigged.
Anyway, ventured upon that big number, how many combinations in 52 car deck, starts with number 8, and goes on forever…long number.
So, having discovered there is a number for the number of combinations in 52 cards, the next question is, does a program, or programmer utilizes this specific number for the random selector in the code ?
I am no programmer, but I understand mechanics…and that’s all it is, mechanical “random selection”.
Having played in a few free online poker sites, ( Replay is now my personal fav ), I thi9nk the programmers are limited, with all due respect, by financial limitations of their employers, that it will take a huge effort and resources to have some sort of code to play with in the entire 52 card combinations.
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There are 52 cards in each deck, meaning that the total possible combinations would equal 52! (52 factorial) which is equal to 8.06e+ 67 . This number is MASSIVE. So massive that I really doubt that many people would be able to wrap their heads around it without explanation. End quote
This is only a problem if we are trying to play poker with all of the possible combinations at the same time. Fortunately, for one hand of poker, we only need one combination and we simply need a random way of generating the combination we’re going to use.
Here is an example of a way to do this that does not require any large numbers or large storage and can be easily implemented as a computer algorithm.
Take a deck of cards and arrange the cards in order Ace through King, grouped by suits. This is an unshuffled deck.
Let N be the number of cards left in the unshuffled deck. So at the beginning, N is going to start at 52.
Generate a random number (call it R) between 1 and N. We can do this by spinning a wheel with N numbers on it, rolling an N-sided die, having a monkey throw a dart at a board with N numbers… the specific method doesn’t matter as long as it is random.
Find the Rth card in the unshuffled deck. Pull it out and place on top of a new pile. We can call this pile the “shuffled” pile.
Now there is one less card in the unshuffled deck so N has reduced by 1. For example, the first time through N goes from 52 to 51 cards.
Repeat steps 3 through 5 until there are no cards left in the deck. (In step 4, put the card you take out on top of the shuffled pile).
At the end of this process your shuffled pile will contain all 52 cards in a random order. As long as your random number generated in step 3 is truly random, each one of the 8.06x10^67 possible combinations is equally likely to have been selected. Now you can play poker with this deck.
So the large number of possible combinations is not really an obstacle to implementing this in a computer. This algorithm is not even a very efficient way of doing it, but it does have the benefit of being simple.
The interesting part is step 3 - generating the random number. There are no dart-throwing monkeys built into computers so we need another method. There are hardware devices that can generate a computer-readable true random number based on truly random physical processes such as thermal noise or radioactive decay. There are also “pseudo-random” number generators (pRNG) that use an algorithm to generate a series of numbers that are statistically indistinguishable from random.
Replay uses a pRNG - if you look in the footer of the site you can see its certificate of randomness.
Some people on this site believe that in spite of Replay’s public statements and certification, the random number process used here is not random at all but instead rigged to generate hands of certain kinds. Some people here do not believe that. Thus this recurring debate.
It has been said before, but Tacos… the perfect, randomizer that noone can refute is the players at the tables themselves. Use a non-techie, 1000 yr old method…
Substitute ( after hand 1 of new table ) , in step 1 , your “clean deck” with the correct “dirty deck” from the last hand. The human randomness of keeping track of cards folded , then using that as the deck to start with the following hand… solves really any randomness issues.
The RNG might pick the same order, like 1,14,43,19,22… but effectively the cards in those spots are changing due to human input @ the table itself, therefore it no longer matters if the RNG pics that same order 10 times in a row… you get 10 different outcomes, by using a “dirty deck” rather than the same 10 outcomes by using a “clean deck”. By combine’n the RNG and human Randomness together, thats the happy medium… or my opinion of the holy grail of “Randomness in online poker”.
Modern slot machines, utilize a method where the machine constantly picks data, and its only after you push the button, it gives you the “next” data set… I contend that thats both not as random as picking sets in order, but actually mathwise, skews the odds ever so slightly in the house’s favor.
If your RNG is correctly random then it doesn’t matter what order you put the cards in the starting deck.
I’m not sure that I understand how using the previous hand’s deck would generate randomness because the actions players take are not random. For example, a hand like 62o is going to get folded more than AA. In general hands with higher cards are going to get folded later in the hand. Plus, most of the hands in the deck are not involved at all in the play.
Different # of players at the table = different number of hole cards dealt.
Hand ends before river, turn, or flop cards are dealt = fewer cards dealt, next hand’s deal would start with what would have been the previous hand’s community cards.
So instead of AKs being dealt to one hand, it might spread over two hands or the last hand dealt and first flop card. It’s like adding a “salt” to your password. In other words, it makes it more difficult to detect patterns in the pRNG. Remember, the p means pseudo. Because of the way computers work, it can never be true random.