Rigging question

[T. Pascal]

Question about rigging (and I don't mean for sails):

If online sites are crooked, or "juiced", or unfair, then why haven't
you figured out a way to take advantage of that, and profit from it?
If a roulette wheel were biased, you should be able to become a
billionaire. Even Russ G., the best in the business cannot crack
their scheme. The online sites are waiting to be taken down, go to
it!

[Jason]

I think the prevailing (BS #1) theory is that the sites somehow manipulate
the cards to keep everybody in the game as long as possible. If so, then
the cards to come would vary depending on who else is at the table and how
far up or down they were.

If so, then you'd want to sit at a table with total sharks so the site would
favor you.

There you have it, conspiracy theorists, if you want to win sit and play
against the best players. Good luck. :)

Theory #2 is that we're playing against bots who know what you hold and what
cards are coming. Impossible to beat. Of course, the many consistent
winners disprove this theory.

Theory #3 is action flops, meaning the flop will hit many players to ensure
max rake. If this were true than you'd want to play more speculative
hands.such as suited aces and connectors. Theory #3 might be combined with
Theory #1 which would make sense, so in that case you'd play speculative
hands in really tough games. Good luck, you'll really need it. :)

"T. Pascal" <t_pascal@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:2611b663.0309190721.408d2603@posting.google.com...
> Question about rigging (and I don't mean for sails):
>
> If online sites are crooked, or "juiced", or unfair, then why haven't
> you figured out a way to take advantage of that, and profit from it?
> If a roulette wheel were biased, you should be able to become a
> billionaire. Even Russ G., the best in the business cannot crack
> their scheme. The online sites are waiting to be taken down, go to
> it!

[Scott Seidman]

"Jason" <anonymous@fake.com> wrote in
news:XjFab.1188$163.93@newssvr22.news.prodigy.com:

> I think the prevailing (BS #1) theory is that the sites somehow
> manipulate the cards to keep everybody in the game as long as
> possible. If so, then the cards to come would vary depending on who
> else is at the table and how far up or down they were.
>

There's absolutely no reason to guess at this. Somebody who plays a ton
can gather a few thousand hand histories. Somebody else can write a perl
script to pull out the dealt cards, and string em together. Then we can
look and see if the distribution is random.

Personally, I don't understand why the house would twiddle with the cards.
They get their rake. The more people that fold, the more hands per hour
are dealt, and the more rakes they take. The reputation that a site would
get for actioning up the deals would lose them more money than playing it
straight.

Then again, I've stated before that you should never underestimate
stupidity. It took the Vegas casinos some time before they figured out
that playing it straight was their most profitable course, maybe the online
sites don't have this yet.

Scott

[Jason]

My reply was mostly a joke.

I don't think the sites themselves are cheating, and don't really care
anyway since I'm winning online. Even before I had a handle on the game and
was a loser I didn't blame the sites, probably because I don't have an
unrealistic ego to defend.

I really could care less so long as they stay solvent and I can continue
cashing out.

I suppose if someone could prove the cards are not rigged it would be nice,
since that would keep the losers in the game longer.

> There's absolutely no reason to guess at this. Somebody who plays a ton
> can gather a few thousand hand histories. Somebody else can write a perl
> script to pull out the dealt cards, and string em together. Then we can
> look and see if the distribution is random.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

On Sep 19 2003 10:45AM, Scott Seidman wrote:

> There's absolutely no reason to guess at this. Somebody who plays a ton
> can gather a few thousand hand histories. Somebody else can write a perl
> script to pull out the dealt cards, and string em together. Then we can
> look and see if the distribution is random.
>
> Personally, I don't understand why the house would twiddle with the cards.
> They get their rake. The more people that fold, the more hands per hour
> are dealt, and the more rakes they take. The reputation that a site would
> get for actioning up the deals would lose them more money than playing it
> straight.


Not only that, but with the enormous number of fools who routinely call
with hands like 67o, and then bet full-tilt all the way to the river (and
no, these aren't bots...unless someone has developed a bot that can carry
on a meaningful interactive chat conversation), there's absolutely no need
to juice anything. There's no shortage of action happening with no help
at all.

_________________________________________________________________
Posted using RecPoker.com - http://www.recpoker.com

[Beast]

T. Pascal wrote:

> Question about rigging (and I don't mean for sails):
>
> If online sites are crooked, or "juiced", or unfair, then why haven't
> you figured out a way to take advantage of that, and profit from it?
> If a roulette wheel were biased, you should be able to become a
> billionaire. Even Russ G., the best in the business cannot crack
> their scheme. The online sites are waiting to be taken down, go to
> it!

Elementary Dear Watson ! The reason is simple, software can be configured
to be biased in many different ways at a many different times. A roulette
wheel that is biased, is always biased the same way and therefore advantage
can be taken of this.

[Beast]

>> Well, the most obvious answer to "How to verify that they are not rigged"
>> is for them to open up their source code to the software they use. This
>> would allow independent 3rd party review and ensure that their algorithms
>> are not flawed.
>>
>> This is a common practice in the security world when it comes to
>> encryption, where it is not the code that is their value, but the key
>> used in encryption.
>>

Absolutely 100% correct. Why don't the sites do this? Instead they pay
some thrd party company to tell us that everything is OK with the RNG.
Mmmm.

>
> Hi Ladejarl,
>
> I and many others would LOVE to believe that this is the
> truth but do you remember the trouble that PlanetPoker was it had when
> thier code was cracked not too long ago?

Which of the following do you prefer?

a) software that is hidden and is cracked but only a few people know about
it and expoit it

b) software that is open to all for inspection where expoits can be quickly
identified and fixed.

> _________________________________________________________________
> Posted using RecPoker.com - http://www.recpoker.com

[John Harkness]

On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 19:54:22 +0100, Beast <theeasternbeast@aol.com>
wrote:

>>> Well, the most obvious answer to "How to verify that they are not rigged"
>>> is for them to open up their source code to the software they use. This
>>> would allow independent 3rd party review and ensure that their algorithms
>>> are not flawed.
>>>
>>> This is a common practice in the security world when it comes to
>>> encryption, where it is not the code that is their value, but the key
>>> used in encryption.
>>>
>
>Absolutely 100% correct. Why don't the sites do this? Instead they pay
>some thrd party company to tell us that everything is OK with the RNG.
>Mmmm.
>

Because the second they give anybody their encryption key, they'd have
to change it?

John Harkness



>>
>> Hi Ladejarl,
>>
>> I and many others would LOVE to believe that this is the
>> truth but do you remember the trouble that PlanetPoker was it had when
>> thier code was cracked not too long ago?
>
>Which of the following do you prefer?
>
>a) software that is hidden and is cracked but only a few people know about
>it and expoit it
>
>b) software that is open to all for inspection where expoits can be quickly
>identified and fixed.
>
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> Posted using RecPoker.com - http://www.recpoker.com

[Beast]

John Harkness wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 19:54:22 +0100, Beast <theeasternbeast@aol.com>
> wrote:
>
>>>> Well, the most obvious answer to "How to verify that they are not
>>>> rigged" is for them to open up their source code to the software they
>>>> use. This would allow independent 3rd party review and ensure that
>>>> their algorithms are not flawed.
>>>>
>>>> This is a common practice in the security world when it comes to
>>>> encryption, where it is not the code that is their value, but the key
>>>> used in encryption.
>>>>
>>
>>Absolutely 100% correct. Why don't the sites do this? Instead they pay
>>some thrd party company to tell us that everything is OK with the RNG.
>>Mmmm.
>>
>
> Because the second they give anybody their encryption key, they'd have
> to change it?
>
> John Harkness
>
>
>
>>>
>>> Hi Ladejarl,
>>>
>>> I and many others would LOVE to believe that this is the
>>> truth but do you remember the trouble that PlanetPoker was it had when
>>> thier code was cracked not too long ago?
>>
>>Which of the following do you prefer?
>>
>>a) software that is hidden and is cracked but only a few people know about
>>it and expoit it
>>
>>b) software that is open to all for inspection where expoits can be
>>quickly identified and fixed.
>>
>>> _________________________________________________________________
>>> Posted using RecPoker.com - http://www.recpoker.com

John,

you are completely missing the point. Nobody is asking for the encrytpion
key, nor the RNG source. Simply displaying the algorithms that use these
would be enough. Hence, the sites maintain their security and the
community can decide whether the algorithms are fair. Sounds like a
win/win situation to me. Now, why is it not being done?

[Runner Runner]

t_pascal@my-deja.com (T. Pascal) wrote in message news:<2611b663.0309190721.408d2603@posting.google.com>...
> Question about rigging (and I don't mean for sails):
>
> If online sites are crooked, or "juiced", or unfair, then why haven't
> you figured out a way to take advantage of that, and profit from it?
> If a roulette wheel were biased, you should be able to become a
> billionaire. Even Russ G., the best in the business cannot crack
> their scheme. The online sites are waiting to be taken down, go to
> it!


All a site has to do is reduce the skill element. They don't have to
make it "crooked", so to speak. Remember if we all just played
showdown poker online the money would go round and round and into the
rake. The site can juice the flops or not but it is more important to
prevent the money from leaving the site by reducing the skill element.
Please see my thread on "Centering the money". Also realize that
these changes would not be universally applied to every hand. Only a
percentage of the hands would be rigged and this is done randomly so
that a skilled player cannot "pattern" the rigging.

No particular players need ever be targeted in a good way or bad.
Simple, easily doable, non-traceable under currently used auditing
methods, enormously profitable, and last but not least...not even
illegal in any useful jurisdiction. Naw, all the shills are right,
they wouldn't do that.

Flame on, or ask good questions, I have answers, there is no defense
or even provable detection if a site wants to do this.

RR

[mongeron@sunpoint.net]

Scott Seidman <namdiesttocs@mindspring.com> wrote:
> There's absolutely no reason to guess at this. Somebody who plays a ton
> can gather a few thousand hand histories. Somebody else can write a perl
> script to pull out the dealt cards, and string em together. Then we can
> look and see if the distribution is random.

Well, I have played a ton and still keep playing. I have the hand histories
of every hand I have played at a certain site (about 168 000 hands). I then
performed a few operations on the hand histories.

First, I calculated the frequencies of flop, turn and river cards. The result
was that the distribution was even. Of course there is the small statistical
fluctuation which makes a small distortion to the mean.

Second, I took every board card, and used a byte value from 0 to 51 to
represent it. I then made a file, which contained all the cards as one byte
integers. I run this file through the randomness check utility
(http://www.fourmilab.ch/random/). The program showed, that the entropy
of the file is 5.7 bits / character. 2^5.7 is 51.98, which means that
the values were distributed randomly between 0 and 51.

The other tests that this tool makes didn't provide too much useful
information, since the tool expects that the range of byte values is always
from 0 to 255. Therefore it cannot be easily applied to this dataset.

- mongeron

[Scott Seidman]

mongeron@sunpoint.net wrote in news:vj1341-hgc.ln1@router.intra:

> Scott Seidman <namdiesttocs@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> There's absolutely no reason to guess at this. Somebody who plays a
>> ton can gather a few thousand hand histories. Somebody else can
>> write a perl script to pull out the dealt cards, and string em
>> together. Then we can look and see if the distribution is random.
>
> Well, I have played a ton and still keep playing. I have the hand
> histories of every hand I have played at a certain site (about 168 000
> hands). I then performed a few operations on the hand histories.
>
> First, I calculated the frequencies of flop, turn and river cards. The
> result was that the distribution was even. Of course there is the
> small statistical fluctuation which makes a small distortion to the
> mean.
>
> Second, I took every board card, and used a byte value from 0 to 51 to
> represent it. I then made a file, which contained all the cards as one
> byte integers. I run this file through the randomness check utility
> (http://www.fourmilab.ch/random/). The program showed, that the
> entropy of the file is 5.7 bits / character. 2^5.7 is 51.98, which
> means that the values were distributed randomly between 0 and 51.
>
> The other tests that this tool makes didn't provide too much useful
> information, since the tool expects that the range of byte values is
> always from 0 to 255. Therefore it cannot be easily applied to this
> dataset.
>
> - mongeron
>
>

Congrats on the work! Hard to argue with real data.

Scott

[T. Pascal]

Beast <theeasternbeast@aol.com> wrote in message news:<bki7eg$24if7$1@ID-196621.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> T. Pascal wrote:
>
> > Question about rigging (and I don't mean for sails):
> >
> > If online sites are crooked, or "juiced", or unfair, then why haven't
> > you figured out a way to take advantage of that, and profit from it?
> > If a roulette wheel were biased, you should be able to become a
> > billionaire. Even Russ G., the best in the business cannot crack
> > their scheme. The online sites are waiting to be taken down, go to
> > it!
>
> Elementary Dear Watson ! The reason is simple, software can be configured
> to be biased in many different ways at a many different times. A roulette
> wheel that is biased, is always biased the same way and therefore advantage
> can be taken of this.

>
So the online software is rigged to be unpredictable, and
unexploitable. Sort of like... almost exactly like... a fair deal?

[Peg Smith]

In article <Xns93FE6220C8051scottseidmanmindspri@130.133.1.4>, Scott Seidman
<namdiesttocs@mindspring.com> writes:

>Congrats on the work! Hard to argue with real data.

Somebody will, anyway.

Peg