On-line Poker rooms- are they all above board?

[MrShoko]

Hi. I'm fairly new to on-line poker and this is my first post here on this site. I play STT's and some MTT's and not for huge stakes ($3-$5) mostly on PaddyPowerPoker. Recently a friend who is supposedly more experienced at poker told me that he reckoned that on-line sites can be rigged such that new members will recieve better hands or more wins at the start and that they hit worse "luck" and more bad beats after some time. He recommended changing sites fairly often. I didn't give this theory much credit but I am wondering now. Obviously I have hit a bit of a bad patch. Just wondering if others felt the same as my mate or whether they think its just crap and that I should just get over my recent losses.
Thanks for any advice. Also great site you guys have here.

[Sid Lambert]

While there is no way to tell for certain, i seriously doubt that this tactic would be used for several reasons.

First, if anybody did a study and found such a scew for new players, the site in question would get such bad press as to destroy their business. Not to mention if any of their employees found out and this info was leaked. Online poker has enuf to worry about legally as far as governments trying to mess w/ them to begin with...no reason to muck w/ an already very profitable business.

I've started several new accounts and not found this to be the case, nor have I heard of any other experienced players claiming this to be so.

I'm not entirely sure this idea would be good for business (i'm assuming that's the motive) since after the numbers come back to normal, ppl may just quit after losing their initial deposit.

If anybody could gather evidence supporting this hypothesis, i would listen, but my would suppose that it is nothing more than a suspicion. I have heard of no evidence thus far.

If you are curious about how poker rooms make the random hands, we have an excellent article about it called Online Security and another on Random Seed Size

another tidbit that i like to point out that isn't obvious is if you ask a human for 10 random numbers between 1 and 10, they usually look like this:

4957271846

whereas a computer's numbers often look like this:

6844912377

notice the repeats and the seemingly patternized results...thats cuz the human actively seeks out not to have patterns or repeats, whereas the computer doesnt care...i think this phenomena often times make ppl think that there is something sinister at work in the random number generator, when in fact, its just the nature of chaos

[MrShoko]

Hi Sid. Cheers for the posting your reply. I read those articles. V. interesting. I realise that it doesn't make sense for these sites to do this kind of scam especially with only so much to make from it. But still its good to have someone else spell it out for me. Cheers again.
I guess I should spend more time concentrating on playing and less on conspiracy theories.

[Skribbles]

I guess I should spend more time concentrating on playing and less on conspiracy theories.

Very good plan. Too many people use the excuse that sites are rigged and thats why they are losing money. Little do they know they just are not very good at poker.

[Sid Lambert]

well, not all conspiracies stay theories goofy stuff does happen sometimes, but I try to find evidence...asking questions is almost always a good idea too imho

anyways, welcome to the forum