-1

It seems which ever site I play the swing from me being ahead, to the other player winning the pot seems to happen a disproportionate amount of the time. One, two and three card outers seem to happen a damned sight more than they should. Time and time again I get my money in with the best hand and my opponent sucks out. It feels like the algorithm rewards stupidity and penalises sensible play. Does anyone else feel this is the case online? It rarely happens live in my experience. Do different sites use the same software on the whole?

I don't want to bitch too much, but I would like to ask, what are the odds of being beaten by a pocket pair (Kings in this case) when I have flopped a full house? (Sevens and eights and six players seated). I can't seem to find the answer. Also, is there an easy way to work this out?

Improve this question
6
  • 1
    I wish I had a BB for every bad beat story I have heard. Swings happen in poker. Does not mean it is fixed. Sites have a lot more to lose than you not running a clean game.
    – paparazzo
    Commented Mar 1, 2018 at 21:41
  • See poker.stackexchange.com/questions/8062/…
    – paparazzo
    Commented Mar 1, 2018 at 22:09
  • I wish I had a quid for every time I heard that response. I'm not saying it's fixed, I'm saying it's different and set to perform in a way that encourages loose play. They base themselves in offshore tax havens with lax laws for a reason. I'm happy to accept the obvious skew for the luxury of playing a little online poker in my underpants. I'm more interested if anyone has any information on the formula they are using.
    – Grumble
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 2:06
  • It is not fixed it is just rigged to encourage loose play? And you see this on all online sites? Too bad they don't have poker calculators for these rigged decks so you could at least get rigged odds. It must be a secrete as I have never seen a poker calculator for rigged odds. Every poker book, calculator, and formula I have seen is based on a clean shuffle. Seems to me if a site would run a clean game and subject themselves to an external audit to certify they are clean then players that want a clean game would flock to the site. Back to why a site would do this?
    – paparazzo
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 7:54
  • Like @paparazzi said there is no reason for the site to reward bad players like that. Why would they do that? To somehow make sure the bad players play more often and somehow make more in rake? It would seem much more realistic that they value their reputation more than a slight increase in players. Can you imagine the consequences if people find out the site is rigged? Big poker sites would never risk that.
    – Raymond
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 9:40

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Most people greatly underestimate variance in poker. There is a reason people rarely play chess for real money. There is essentially no variance and losing players can't lie to themselves about being losing players. Poker on the other hand leaves a lot of room to lie to yourself.

Full house vs overpair: Boat vs Overpair

Poker variance for a slightly winning player over 100k hands: http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/ enter image description here

Improve this answer
3
  • Thanks for that, around 5-8% is about what I figured, so that fits. That particular hand I'm not too fussed about, I just wanted to know the odds. My general level of aggregation where online poker is concerned is that the outcomes seem to follow a repeated pattern that live poker doesn't, overly wet boards, runner runner, gutshots, and quads seem to be more of a rule than an exception. Does anybody have any information on the algorithms they use and how they work?
    – Grumble
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 1:54
  • 1
    Some poker sites have technical pages describing the algorithms they use(PRNG, seed size, how the seed is generated etc.). Its been awhile since I played online so I couldn't provide you with any links.
    – Jon
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 2:15
  • 1
    So you just want to complain about the site being rigged? I answered your question perfectly. You don't know how to calculate the equity of one hand vs another, yet your able to find statistical anomalies in a sites RNG software?
    – lessharm
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 0:14

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.