Online Poker Paranoia

Rec.Gambling.Poker Posts

Online Poker Paranoia
Bennett Niizawa wrote..
> I raised with 99, flopped a set and lost to a flush. A few hands later,
> I raised with QQ, flopped a set and lost to a flush... maybe the bias
> has switched to the suited cards...

A measure of the irrationality of most anti-online posts is they are all over the board. Some allege coordinated boards, some allege quads, some allege flops of random garbage (keep people from solid hands), some allege big flops to build action pots. All contradictory, no doubt colored by people who think what happens to them happens to everybody.

IsMeansIs wrote...
> Badger says: "The measure of the irrationality of most anti-online posts is that
> they are all over the board." Is that a logical assertion? If a number of people
> make contradictory claims, may we safely conclude that all of the claimers are
> irrational or even simply mistaken?

My statement is absolutely logical (even if you mischaracterize it). Notice "most". Important word, "most". Just for the sake of argument, let's say one of our regular posters here, cdgbs, is right, Paradise puts up too many random-junk boards so that players then can't confidently bet solid hands. Well, if that is true, then all the "truckloads of quads", "too many straights", "all those suited cards" claimants are completely wrong. These claims are like economists, you lay them end to end, and they point in all directions. By definition, most of these claims *must* be wrong. If black is black, then black can't be purple, it can't be green, and it can't be white.

People by all means should post questions and concerns. Others can then respond with their own experience. What we *usually* get though are irrational statements of "online poker is rigged for sure!!!" Statements like that are entirely different than a person raising doubts. Those are posts made by a guy sitting in the corner, his arms crossed, shaking his head, deadset on the fact that Moline is the capital of Texas.
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cdgbs wrote...
> Your [Winner's Guide to Online Poker] is really nothing more than
> a sells pitch for Paradise Poker and it's obvious that the advertising
> money you get from them is very important to you. However, it does
> seem that you are trying to offer some advice about playing online,
> but I don't think you are really concerned about the success of the players
> as much as the success of Paradise Poker.

Which of course is not the point of why I asked you to read it in either case. The point is that players who win online think about things that you don't consider, while you are sitting there thinking "this is rigged".

> But I don't think most of the newer players know of the phenomenal
> turnover rate at Paradise Poker. And there must be some reason why most
> players do not continue playing there long term. And in my opinion, it is
> because Paradise Poker is a sophisticated scam.

Leaving aside this poster's own lack of introspection, one thing about online poker is most players play very poorly. Not counting the highest Holdem limits, from the hand histories that get posted here and from cruising around to various games, the level of poor play is pretty shocking. Now this level may even be compatible to b&m casinos, but I was just looking at my lists of "awful" and "good" players, and virtually all the good players I've noted in my under-a-year of online play continue to play. At the same time, more than half of the dreadful players no longer play (at least at the same level they were, they may be playing micro-limits and I don't know it).

The "sophisticated scam" at work is that good players play and beat the tar out of lousy players, with the house getting a dandy rake in the process.

To all the skeptics who don't want to play online for some reason, it is free to download Paradise Poker and sign up for an anonymous play money account. I'm not suggesting you play, but that you then just surf around the various games (you can do this anonymously) and just watch the amazing play that goes on. It's a real eye-opener, and also should give people a fresh view on their casino opponents (at least below the 15/30 level).

Poor, unthoughtful, non-studious, lazy players get creamed online. Some then bitch about it. But more come along and replace them.

> I'm not sure why you are such a consistent supporter (and promoter)
> of Paradise Poker,

Online poker is a great addition to the poker world and because right now Paradise is the best place to play (in general).

> but it seems possible it is their advertising on your website that
> is your primary motivation.

I like getting paid to advertise; and I like playing and winning. The existence of online poker has made me money, so I like it for that too. But all forms of poker make me money. I'm glad that they all exist (except Lowball...).

> Because what I have seen from my own playing experience and
> from observing the other players there, is that the poker games
> appear to be completely controlled thru the software programming.

You say this, and it just sounds so unsophisticated when it comes to poker knowledge. What are you talking about? One specific would be nice, and ten would be better. Players control the games there, and good players mostly control the games. That in a nutshell might explain why you feel out of control.

> And most of the players eventually stop playing there.

Many bad players quit because they realize they play horrible. Some others quit because they refuse to accept that they play bad and do the work to learn to play better.

> But I once thought that the poker games were still possibly beatable.

The vast majority of good players beat these games. A few good players lose to extreme bad luck or a complete inability to adapt to the cyber environment. However, your statement is ridiculous. Lots of folks beat these games. Accept it.

> Although I believe that I observed the software limiting the amount of the
> winning pots with various ploys.

Just nonsense. Your opponents limit the pots you win. You just don't seem to understand how winning at poker works. To win, you have to lose the big majority of the pots you play.

> So, it would be much more difficult to build up a bankroll and move
> to higher level. And this is something that I believe the software is
> trying to prevent. And not many players seem to do this.

Why would they not people to play higher? The rake is more in the bigger games.
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Koji Myint wrote...
> The players are just better at Paradise in comparison to players
> at comparable limits at live casinos. For example, some players
> say that $1/$2 players at Paradise are as good as $10/$20 players
> at live casinos. I played at a live casino yesterday for the first time
> in about six months and was indeed surprised at how weak and loose
> the players were.

I see people say things like this, and I suppose it's all of matter of perspective and where you play, and what you play. Loose game LA players are wonderful to play against, but they are tougher than the weak players I face on Paradise in the Omaha games. Loose/bad is a much tougher opponent than weak-tight/bad. Loose opponents can hurt me. These weak-tight players have no shot. They are like slot machines.

Holdem of course is a different game. A bunch of weak-tight players are only going to be beatable for a relatively smallish amount of money. But by no means do I think it is correct to think of a weak-tight player who mucks ATo as "better" than a loose aggressive player who raises with 76s. This sort of thinking is, I think, what comes from misunderstanding the basics of the game which comes from a reliance on starting hand charts. Starting hands don't matter nearly as much in Limit Holdem as betting ability and post-flop play.

> It's easier to go on tilt online and you can lose more once you are tilting.
> I do not think this is true for myself, but many other players say this is
> true for them. The increased speed of play punishes you more for tilting.
> The speed of play also makes it easier to go on tilt as you have less time
> to think about each hand. Others suggest that the lack of personal contact
> makes it easier to go on tilt: you do not feel as embarrassed online.

I think this is a wash. Increased speed is irrelevant if you are comparing the two. People go on tilt more online because they play more hands, period. I also think the lack of personal contact can't possibly lead to *more* tilt, that's just illogical. Most tilt occurs because of machismo: "you can't beat ME like that." I doubt there is hardly any player who would tilt more in 1000 hands online than in 1000 hands in a b&m casino. And then of course the restricted online bankroll makes it much harder to tilt because many players simply will run out of money.

> Playing two tables divides your attention more than you think and
> you may not therefore be playing as well as you think. Playing two
> tables, I find that my play is more formulaic and that I do not get as
> good a read on my individual opponents. I can spot the maniacs, etc,
> but I do not catch the subtleties about the others.

Except for the very best players, and I mean *very* best, I'm convinced playing two tables is big loser for almost all players. A lot of the inept weak-tight players are as inept as they are because they don't focus on one game. If you aren't beating online poker for quite a lot, you shouldn't play two games (if you care about the money).

Decent but not the very best players could increase their expectation by playing two games, but my observation is that good-but-not-great players are subject to much greater swings than if they only played one table. Big swings tend to hurt players in lots of subtle ways: they play less (take breaks for a few days) when losing; they play on tilt when losing; they quit good games when booking a winner, etc. Bad things get badder, good things get more minimized. For many, they might get a higher hourly rate, but end up playing less hours because they are being driven nuts by the variance.

cdgbs wrote...
> Paradise Poker is nothing more than a rigged toy, and I just can't stand to
> play the thing any more.

If you are playing bad and losing, quitting may be a good idea. Thinking sensibly and improving your game is another option.

> And it is not a good place to develop skill at poker. Because it encourages
> poor playing strategies, since the skill involved becomes more of an
> attempt to beat the software instead of playing poker.

Perhaps if you are a paranoiac. You may know better about that than the rest of us. Paradise, and online poker in general, does a great deal to hone a certain type of poker skills -- most obviously the non-visual ones. But again, if you are unwilling to do the work to stop playing bad, just stop playing.

> And I think you should seriously consider whether your defending
> Paradise Poker is really in the best interest of inexperienced or
> experienced players, losing their money to a very clever scam.

You lost some money to the rake, and the rest to Jim Geary, Michael O'Malley and PBOCOP. They couldn't scam a six year old in a coma.

Online poker is the best tool ever available for people who not only want to learn to play poker, but to learn to play *better* poker. Not only are there low limit games, there are free games, and maybe most valuable of all, players who want to learn can just *watch* other people play -- including watching the 10-20 to 20-40 games where the level of play is at least somewhat more complex than at the low limits. This is just a tremendous opportunity for new players, especially since you can request hand histories to review how good players played good, and how poor players played poorly.

Unfortunately along with this wonderful opportunity does come weak players who would rather practice self-denial than practice how to play winning poker.
---

cdgbs wrote...
> After playing and watching many games at Paradise Poker, I find it
> difficult to believe anyone would consider the card dealing there to
> be legitimate or honest.

Interesting thesis. Let's see if you support it in any way, shape of form...

> And to see, supposedly, good players defend Paradise. It makes
> you wonder just how good at poker they really are, and why don't
> they recognize the unnaturalness of the card distribution. Could it
> be more than just a computer's RNGs' idiosyncrasy. I think so!

Recognize what about the "unnaturalness"? Do you have some specific evidence? Do you have even a thesis about *how* it is unnatural? And then...

How many hours of poker have you watched online, and also in land casinos? Novices really should gain some experience before drawing enormous conclusions from virtually no data.

> I've always thought Paradise Poker must be a simple rake scam,

Good that you went into this with such an open mind...

> where they were only interested in keeping you playing to increase or
> maintain a higher rake. However, I've recently thought that it might
> actually be a much more sophisticated financial scam.

Yup. Very sophisticated. It's called "poker". People who don't study, try hard and think sensibly lose to people who do.

> And I reached this conclusion after I began to recognize that my
> winning hands usually were not very solid and risky to bet into.

Being a novice is nothing to be ashamed of, but you don't even seem to understand the basics of poker here. What is this sentence supposed to mean?

> And this seemed completely different than what I would have
> expected in a rake scam. So, it seems the software is programmed
> to limit the amount won for whatever reason.

LOL.

> But I've also noticed there is something else that seems to be
> a pattern at Paradise. And could be the reason that most of the
> players eventually stop playing there.

The reason many people stop is because they lose, and they lose (mostly) because they play like crap. The reason more and more and more people play online, at Paradise in particular, is because the games are fair, fun and good.

> And that is, the newest players (for a short period of time) seem
> to win a higher percentage of hands than the other players. So the
> longer you play there, the less likely you are to be a consistent winner.

Totally illogical. All cardrooms value regular players. You see this all the time in casinos. Jerks get away with murder if they are regular weakish players. The idea of any cardroom systematically punishing regulars is nonsensical.

> I thought this could all be a part of the financial theory behind Paradise Poker.

This one is too easy... The financial theory behind Paradise is: give good service, be loved by your customers, get huge rake with very minimal overhead.

It is incredible that someone would look for other explanations for a financial theory of business without addressing this most likely one. People lose at poker because they aren't very sensible. This post is a classic.

> So the more players that play there, and the more popular they become,
> a larger amount of the total deposits they are able to hold onto. And this
> cycle just continues, in an aggressive scam.

I'm sorry, but you just aren't a very logical person. Try thinking about this for a minute. Suppose there are 10,000 Paradise players with an average deposit of $500. Five million dollars.... Or roughly equal to ONE MONTH of rake. A pitiful drop in the bucket.

> And also, I'm not saying this to criticize the potential of honest online
> poker rooms. I'm just saying that I don't think there are currently any
> legitimate poker rooms on the internet. And I hope someday there will be.

Translation: "maybe I'll learn to play decently and think logically someday."
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Terrence Chan wrote...
> All this talk, and still no hand histories. You must be worse than people think.

Online poker has some of the best games anywhere if only because the poor players won't examine the flaws in their game even when there is an easy tool available to do so that isn't available in regular casinos.

AXo, 95s, 97o, calling bets with pocket underpairs... these are bad hands. Stop doing them. Learn to play better, and then start counting the money you get from online players who insist on continuing to do these. Stop blaming ghosts for your poor play (or even your bad luck).
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Ninja wrote...
> See what I mean? There's no point in arguing with these mopes.

What argue? When a person loses, they either have extremely bad luck for a time, or they play bad. The more likely choice is - You played bad, you lost. Show some evidence otherwise. You won't because you can't because you played bad, and they run a $60,000,000 a year business on the square because it makes sense to.
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Pat Hand wrote...
> Far too many players think they are playing conservatively when,
> in reality, they don't have a clue about probabilities, actual odds,
> pot odds, etc. In my opinion, given a reasonable sample of your hands,
> if you are playing more than one out of seven hands on average,
> you are playing too many crap cards.

In other words, if you ain't bored to tears most of the time waiting for a hand you can play, you are in too many hands to begin with.
---

cdgbs wrote...
> The player turnover rate at Paradise Poker is suspicious enough itself.

Why? Bad, losing players quit. How is that suspicious?

> And I realize it's difficult to believe that they would rig their poker
> games (unlike an online casino's blackjack) since a poker room usually makes
> their money from the rake. However, after playing at Paradise many hours, it
> should become obvious that your win rate is being artificially restricted.

If you mean restricted by how many hands are dealt an hour to keep the win rates below 6 big bets an hour, well then maybe...

> Your response to this post (and to the other dissenters of Paradise Poker)
> is always the typical poker lecture attitude, that you must be a poor player.
> But it just isn't true for a lot of players. There are many players who do not
> do well at Paradise Poker, and there must be some reason for it.

Yes, and it is the *exact* same reason many players do not do well in casinos... they either do not play well at all, or they do not play as well as some of the others, and end up losing approximately the rake. How is this not hard to understand? Some people *obviously* have to lose. How can this not be so?

> And I have just tried to offer an idea to explain the perplexing experience
> of playing there.

What *exactly* is perplexing about the fact that some players lose? They rake the games. Players as a group *must* lose.

> after playing there many hours and recognizing some of the odd idiosyncrasies
> of their software, such as restricting the amount of winning hands.

Um, somebody wins every hand! C'mon, think this out. If they restrict what *you* win, that means somebody else has to win.
###

Online Poker Shills
JGuetti wrote...
> But if the house percentage is indeed all that matters, then what is important
> is action. And if you wanted to encourage action, you would use shills.

I don't think you understand shills. Shills do not promote "action". Shills are normally anti-action as possible. Shills sit. The perfect shill would sit in a seat till a real player showed up, breaking absolutely even except losing the rake. Shills are used to hold games together. When you hold a game together, you certainly don't want action.

> I assume that everybody knows what a shill in a gambling game is,
> and knows too that they can behave in many ways, from crude (simply
> calling just about every bet and taking a full or near full load every hand).

This doesn't make sense either. You are saying a shill will lose $50 in a hand just to juice up the rake $2?

> Now where would that leave a player like me, i.e. an old time, class "B"
> player who probably never will become class "A" (too old to learn new
> tricks? to be sharp enough? gutsy enough?), who, unless on tilt, plays
> tight-aggressive, and whose main motive (given that he waits for what
> appear to be the best beginning cards) is to control the run of the game,
> i.e. to keep the cards as near they were at the beginning of the hand,
> when he thought he was best, to keep people from "drawing out" on him?

A shill has no chance whatsoever against a tight aggressive player. My dream game would be against eight shills. It's hard to imagine a better game.

> But with a shill or two in the game this simply cannot be done: the
> nearest analogy I can think of is that old B player thinks he is playing
> straight poker but there are wild cards in the game. Now sometimes
> these take hold, and the shills do the drawing out; but in any case the
> run of the game is entirely altered and much harder to predict, even
> if you recognize the shills (for of course their play will affect the plays,
> draws, positions, etc., of the others). And now old tight-aggressive
> class B player has his entire edge taken away. I would very much like
> to know what people think about this.

Again, you just don't seem to know what shills do, or why. I don't know about all the online sites, but Paradise clearly states they don't use them. If you have trouble filling or holding games, you use shills. If you don't, shills are hopelessly ill-advised. Better to have 80 full games of live players where you rake with no risk, than 100 games where you (the casino) have a few dozen losing players losing way beyond what extra rake occurs.
###

More Conspiracyism
danny wrote...
> This theory explains the wide swings and the ridiculous bad beats.

What wide swings, and what ridiculous bad beats? danny, why don't you start focusing on why you have lost on Paradise? You have posted thoughtful questions regarding holes in your play. These holes are huge. It appears you have large swings mostly because you do not play very well. You yourself posted the evidence of this, the only evidence of anything you have posted. These "bad beats" you talk about could be anything, but like many people you probably play too many weak hands so put yourself in a position to lose more pots, and you probably have an unrealistic definition of bad beat.

Bill wrote...
> Instead of everyone telling Scobi to go away -- why don't we discuss
> this rationally and maybe we can get to the bottom of this?

Most of us want to discuss online poker rationally. Scobi isn't rational, and he ain't even in the rational ballpark. But that is irrelevant. Let's talk about what you brought up.

How many hand histories do you have to offer as corroborating evidence of what you "feel"? If the answer is none, why is the answer none? Many players have taken the time to study their hand histories, either via a commercial program or on their own. No one has *ever* posted any evidence of the poker hands at Paradise or elsewhere online as anything but routinely, mundanely what should be expected.

Normal.

You assert something differently. Where is your data? If you have nothing, you should ask yourself why you have nothing. The fact of the matter is you have nothing because you haven't taken the time to study and learn the reality of your situation. THAT is what we should be discussing -- what steps you can take to move from being superstitious to being informed.

Much of the conspiracyite ideas can be translated into words like:
"Change the deck."
"I'm moving to that lucky seat."
"That dealer made me lose."

The conspiracyite comments are the first cousins of these above nonsensical comments that people say all_the_time in brick and mortar casinos. This blaming of others for their own poor play is a fundamental part of a very large segment of the poker population. It should be no surprise that it carries over to online play too -- except the jargon is different... nonsense about "feel".

Blaming the dealer in a casino or online is completely silly, and should be stated as such if a person really would like to help these people learn to play better poker (and thus have a larger, vibrant, worldwide poker industry).
###

And Finally...
Scott wrote....
> These internet card rooms have been set up by persons who could not get a
> gaming license of any kind in the 48 states, because they are not honest.

Forty-eight states? I'm writing President Roosevelt about these online shenanigans right now.