Is Full Tilt Poker rigged? Is Poker Stars rigged?

Question

Is Full Tilt Poker rigged? Is Poker Stars rigged?

Answer 1

No, they aren't.

However some smaller sites are. For example World Poker Exchanged is rigged for their cash games but not tournaments.

In general, watch out for too good to be true rakeback offers. nobody is giving away anything for free.

Answer 2

Rigged, No, but the tournament software is slanted toward the larger "stack". This is done to eliminate people at a faster rate. They don't want the tournaments to last more than 6 hours.

Answer 3

There are many bad sites out there, and many of are "rigged", or simply dishonest. Here is a link to a blacklist:

http://www.thedoverpro.com/blacklist.htm

Some of these sites do have cheating software! And some sites like Absolute and Ultimate Bet have been caught cheating their players.

Pokerstars and Full Tilt are large popular sites that have not had any scandals. However, there are some players who play tournaments there that wonder why there are so many bad beats on the site. One theory is called the Poker Action Flop, which is a hand that is dealt at a critical tournament point that results in a lot of betting action which ends with an inferior hand winning with an improbable out draw. Here is a link to the theory:

http://www.thedoverpro.com/poker-action-...

Good luck at the tables!

Answer 4

The hands on both sites are randomly generated by some of the best RNGs in the world. They even go as far as to factor in the mouse movements of people playing and the temperature of their computer servers to further randomize the games.

So do I think the games are rigged? No way. Besides, I wouldn't be winning if they were. Furthermore, it wouldn't make any sense to rig the games, they make money regardless of who wins.

Answer 5

Was Ultimate Bet? Was Absolute? Probably just a matter of time before we know for sure about any of the others.

Answer 6

Full Tilt, PokerStars, or other top name sites can't afford to "rig" their sites.  Poker sites, like real life poker tables make money from tournament fees and rake.  When you lose your chips to another player, they don't get any more tournament fee from you, or rake on the next hand if you have no chips.  It also costs the site money to use payment processors.  If players are constantly adding funds, it becomes a bigger overhead expense for the site.  

The UB/AP that was referred to has nothing to do with rigging, but rather unscrupulous employees who found a way to make a few extra bucks by stealing/cheating.

Other people will argue that even other sites just HAVE to be rigged because of the bad beats they take.  But, there are reasons for this, as well.  The anonymity of the Internet allows bad players to play bad cards without having to show their face.  Combine this with the increased hands per hour and you are bound to see more bad beats.  It's a part of the game.  It is also easier to go on tilt and chase losses online.  Bad runs happen online and in real life.  I haven't won anything in live tournament play since March.  Granted, I haven't played as much as I used to, but I am not going to argue that the various live game I play at are rigged.

Answer 7

That`s a casino blacklist and you can get on it for various reasons other than being ``rigged.``  Casinos can be tempted to rig their site since they can make more money from players and you`re playing agaist them so it`s certainly something you want to watch out for and make sure you stick to the top reviewed sites.  My top recommendation for online casinos by the way is http://banner.sierrastarcasino.com/cgi-b...

As for poker sites I`ve never heard of any blacklisted and especially for being ``rigged.``  Poker sites have absolutely no reason to rig the sites as they do not care in the least who wins hands or money as they make money by taking a percentage of every pot.  And if something does come out it will cost them millions or even their business so they take the utmost care to do everything they can to ensure the shuffle and deal is fair.

In reality while there`s no absolute random number generator the ones out there are statistically extremely close particularly the ones that rely on random noise like mouse action from players at the table and the like.  Rest assured though that the shuffle at any online site is much, much more random than you could dream of getting by having a human or even a machine do it.

King Cobra Poker

http://kingcobrapoker.com/

Answer 8

Whilst it is correct that computers can not TRULY generate a random number, they can do pretty d**n well using a PRNG (please see http://www.muppetpoker.com/?p=23 for an explanation on how these work). To effectively crack the code (or rather, find the algorithm) would require wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much time & data for any single person to do without the help of a few of today's supercomputers. Please revise your sources. Any reasonable programmer could use a simple seed (i.e. time) and do a few calculations and there is simply no way that someone would be able to decipher the algorithm.

As far poker websites using a PRNG with CPU temperature as a seed - I've never heard of it. Who's temperature is it using? It won't be yours, or another clients - it'd have to be the servers.

As far as poker sites having no interest in rigging hands? That's garbage. Cold-decking is an age-old trick to increase pot rake. Heck, even decent card mechanics do it in home games. I know I've done it before.

Anyway, back to the actual question. Simply put: we don't know. We assume that they'd use a PRNG or some other form of random number generator, but we're not the developers of the game. Heck, sometimes I've seen hands on PokerPro (a computerized poker game) at a local casino where I think that they just HAVE to be cold-decking.

This is something that you have to be wary of when playing online. There is no guarantee that the poker room you're on isn't cold-decking you. That is, you don't know whether they're drawing you into large pots in order to collect more rake. I've shot off a couple of emails to a few developers before in order to find out what sort of system they use when they're generating cards (when I was developing my own poker room), but there was either no reply or a very vague, general answer.

In a nutshell, nobody knows. Not even everyone who posted with a certainty before me.

Answer 9

I have heard there was a case where a person found out the equation and learned how to beat the system. It is a fact that computers cannot generate random numbers so there is always a chance that the cards being dealt aren't fair. But as fair as being "rigged" i wouldnt call it that.