What's the Truth? The facts about online poker myths.
FuckOnlinePoker gives you the skinny on what's fact and what's fiction. Hopefully this will rest your mind a little.
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The cards are not random. FALSE. Online card rooms use very sophisticated random card generators to deal each hand. The programs are written with several levels of sophisticated randomizing agents which produce better shuffling then a brick and mortar card room dealer. After the hole cards are dealt, the remainder of the deck is still randomized until the flop is called for, then the generator randomly selects the 3 flop cards from the remaining part of the deck and puts them on the board. This process is repeated for the turn and river, therefore the board cards are not even predetermined at the beginning of the hand. When online poker was in its infancy, Planet Poker's system of randomization was not very good, and keen observers were able to recognize a pattern and could therefore predict future cards. Since then the degree of randomness has been greatly increased so that it is now totally impossible to find a pattern. Online card rooms such as Pokerstars use independent auditing/accounting firms to monitor their card generators to ensure they are 100% random at all times.
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Online poker is rigged because I see more 4 of a kinds, straight flushes, and full houses beating full houses then I would ever see in a casino poker room. FALSE. The reason you see way more amazing hands online that you rarely ever see in real life is that when playing online, you play about 5-6 more hands per hand then you would at an actual casino. For example, in a given night, you may play 250 hands in a casino over 8 hours. Playing 8 hours online at just one table, you have played about 1,500 hands. If you multi-table, then you would be playing double, triple, or even quadruple that during the 8 hours. Therefore, with so many more hands played during that time period you have seen many more incredible hands, but it is relatively the same percentage of incredible hands that you would have seen in a brick and mortar casino. For example:
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This heads up pot limit omaha hi/low sit and go hand on Full TIlt Poker just seems like a perfectly set up hand. I flop the straight flush with a 2-3 low while my opponent flops top set with a 2-4 low. After we both check on the flop, the board pairs on the turn and all the money goes in. My opponents only 'out' is a 3 to win the low and chop the pot. The blank on the river ships me the pot and I win the sit and go. At first I am thinking to myself, that hand was almost too perfect, but then I consider that I play a lot of these heads up sit and gos and eventually a hand like this is going to occur. Though at first it may look unrealistic, but if you take into account the number of hands I play then it makes sense that even miraculous hands like this are going to occur.
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Poker sites are rigged because they intentionally create 'action' hands to make more money. FALSE. The thought behind this misconception is that action hands involving several players make more money for the casino because the pot is larger therefore the rake gets maxed out. This belief is totally the opposite of the truth. Online casinos make less money because of multi-way action hands. Normally, a heads up hand that goes to showdown will max the rake out. On the other hand, during a multi-way pot the casino rake has already been maxed out, i.e. the usual $3 once the pot got to $30, all additional money going into the pot does not benefit the casino. So the extra time it takes for an action hand to be played the casino is not making any additional money. Furthermore, multi-way hands usually involve more thinking, so players often take longer to make their decision. Simply put, it would be in the online casino's best interest if all hands were quick heads up hands that didn't have a lot of action or thinking involved.
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I am playing against a bot (robot, computer). TRUE. Poker bots do exist and are used by players. But, the fact is a computer can play great in games with perfect information, such as chess, where during each decision all the information is available. However, poker is a game of imperfect information, with players concealing their hole cards and using varying betting patterns, it is impossible for a bot to know what is the correct play everytime. Currently, the bots that people use are very unsophisticated and normally lose consistently. They consistently make the wrong decision and in online poker, consistently making the wrong decision brings financial ruin. Recently, top poker pros played against the best poker computer in the world in heads up matches, the pros beat the computer program during the competition proving that even the most advanced computers are still incapable of playing against skilled poker players. Furthermore, online poker rooms and players often detect accounts using bots - sometimes its as obvious when a player plays for 30 hours without a bathroom break or never chats- and those accounts get banned. See Bots for more info.
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Multi-accounting occurs in online poker tournaments. True. However, these players are getting caught and their prize winnings are getting revoked. See Multiaccounting for more info.
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Hackers can see my hole cards. False. With the exception of the Absolute Poker Scandal, the software running the online poker rooms have protections in place that make this impossible. The data showing the cards you have is only available locally on your own computer, and is only returned to the server during the showdown of a hand.
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Players are colluding. True. Unfortunately this has always been one of the biggest problems with online poker. Two, three, four or even more people can be exchanging information with each other during the hand via telephone, instant messaging, or being in the same room. They can trap other players in the hand and use the extra information to give themselves an unfair competitive advantage. However, their is some reasons to believe that this is not happening as often as one might expect. First, the online casinos keep amazing records of every hand played. These hand histories can be analyzed both manually and automatically by computer programs to determine whether two accounts are playing an unreasonable amount at the same table together. These account get flagged and closed down. Therefore, for collusion to work the two cheaters would have to play a significant amount of hands at different tables, and with most colluders cheating because they can't win normally without cheating, they usually lose their money at the other tables anyway. The hand histories also can show when a hand is played abnormally. For example, if the flop is AQ6 and three people are in the pot, one with AA, one with AQ, and one with 66, and the one holding AQ folds unrealistically on the flop, that would be telling evidence that he was communicating with the player with AA. Or, if with the same AQ6 flop, one player has the AA, one has K7, and the other A6, and the player with K7 reraises over and over again but folds before the showdown essentially making the 66 player lose as much as possible, then that is strong evidence that the AA and K7 were trapping the 3rd player with A6 to win as much money as possible. When the hand is reviewed, it is glaringly apparent that the two players were working together, the online casino then shuts down the two accounts and the money is returned to the player who was cheated. Additionally, colluders usually play at the higher stakes where they can make the most money, so low stake games are normally free of collusion. See collusion for more info.
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After cashing out I always seem to lose, is this something the site is doing to penalize me for cashing money out of the online poker site? False. It is just merely normal fluctuations, however, thinking with this mentality may make you play differently and cause you to play differently. Read this great article on the truth about the cashout curse by a World Series of Poker bracelet winner.
