Tin Foil Hat Wearers

I can put up with being cold called during the football by someone in India that is looking to save me money on my utilities, I can chat for hours to visiting Jehovas witnesses but when it comes to the people who go on about how poker sites are rigged I am losing the will to live. For this to be true, sites would have to go out of their way to design hands to generate maximum value, which is not an easy undertaking. The benefit to them? Well in theory they would make a little bit more money but since once you get to the higher limit cash games the rake is fixed anyway they would really only make money on the smaller tables. Each site is thoroughly audited, the total hands played are analyzed against expected statistics, i.e. does a pair of Aces get dealt the expected once every 220 on average, what is the frequency with which the big hands occur and so on. The more logical among you will have deduced that since the sites continue to operate, these audits have not thus far revealed any deviation from what would be expected, In fact they are so close to what you would expect that we can say mathematically there is no evidence that any hands are engineered.

Surprised? Of course not, why would companies making money faster than any others in history bother putting their businesses at risk for the little extra that they might make, they are not that hard up just yet. People have told me that sites are rigged almost everyday I have played, I am sure they have offered you the benefit of their experience and I have no doubt that a lot of them, if not all, believe it wholeheartedly. Ask them for proof and you realize that you might as well been asking a theological question. You will before long come across the truth that for these people this is a question of faith not proof. They have anecdotal evidence galore, and fail to realize that for all such evidence there is vastly more that would not support their theory. I point out to them that if I am to believe that sites rig hands because of something unusual that happened to them then surely they should be convinced that the contrary must be true because of all the hands I have played which fit what you would expect.

One person told me that since he was a winning player on Pokerstars and was thusfar a losing player on Crypto that proved something was wrong. Its still a little short of being a smoking gun but I have to say from what I saw of his game, I was more suspicious of his claim to be a winning player on any site!

Another opponent matter of factly shared this gem with me, apparently the second best hand always wins in tournaments, I thanked him and asked him why he didn’t just play weaker hands as a result? In the finest spirit of scientific pioneering he went on to demonstrate his theory during the tournament, I suppose you have to say he was at least partially right, he managed to win two all-ins with the weaker hand before the third exposed a flaw in his thinking. Having crashed out I felt he would use the time to change his view from the second best hand always winning to often winning. Perhaps he needs to keep experimenting I would be happy to help in any level cash game of his choice.

These people are everywhere so are psychics, mediums, witches and spoon benders, Aledan refers to them as tin foil hat wearers, which I think says it best. After all if the sites are rigged then they are not allowed in on it, sites are always rigged against them! Imagine trying to stay balanced, knowing that sites are going out of their way to take money off you just to give to other people! The struggle to stay sane may well have been lost by the majority of them so please forgive their ranting about the beat you just put on them. They may well all be paranoid but that doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t hate them.

As for Bots, some of you will remember we had our own bots on the DOJO and I think we can all agree that they were easy as hell to rinse, if people are using Bots I say fair play to them and wish them luck, I follow the principle that if you want a job doing right get on and do it yourself. That said I am offering anyone at all to PROVE sites are rigged on this forum, I am happy to eat humble pie if I am wrong so feel free to post anything you consider to prove it. Hope you wont be offended if I don’t hold my breath.