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Is online poker fixed?

I'm just wondering what other people think about the integrity of online poker? I know all the reasons why it's said that online poker should seemingly show more bad beats than normal, but I can win pretty consistently live and never fail to lose online. I can't even begin to build a bankroll every time that I attempt online play again. I know that you should see more bad beats and crazy hands in general because of the fact that there are around 3x more hands dealt per hour in an online game than live. Play also is always a little bit more loose online due to the fact that people just have to click a button rather than face you in person with their embarrassment due to a bluff when they are called. I also know that it makes little sense for an online card room to have play be unfair due to the fact that their rake is capped anyway, so it does little good for them to build pots. However, they could, especially in smaller limit games such as a $.25/.50 NL game, make a bit more money by causing bigger pots. I think they could also take stats from people and work on transferring as much money as they can to people that they know are going to continue play with said money on the site until it is raked. The reason that I ask is this. Yesterday I sat to play and 7 hands into my game I picked up JJ....I know it was wrong to move in with, but I did it anyway. I moved in preflop and found TT and QQ calling me. Next, tonight I played again picking up QQ 12 hands into the game. I moved in after a raise, which still isn't the right thing to have done from a middle position, but nevertheless came across AA and TT again! This happens every time that I play online. Whether it's constantly to me or me watching it happen around the table. Much more than the numbers say those big hands should vs. each other. It makes no sense to me. And to bring me to my last point. It's much easier to find large games online. Loose big games too. I'm talking $50/$100 NL and larger. In that case, why is it that professionals continue to play live rather than in their underwear behind a computer screen. It's like they know something. Even when I do see them play, like Phil Helmuth with Ultimate Bet, they just seem to be stopping in for a couple hours of fun. Like they are trying to force it to seem like online play is for real just to support a site that they have interest in. They then return to the casino floor to make their real money. Even Doyle Brunson seems to continue to play live rather than doylesroom.com. What's the deal with that? Can anyone shed a little light on this subject? I'm dumbfounded by online poker. What are your opinions?

Public Comments

1. very very good question. I'm pondering this myself as I just started playing for real money on pokerstars. I started with 100 dollars, and got it up to 170, and was feeling really good about myself, and then all of the sudden, later that week I lose like 50 of it back in just one hour, with hands like kings and ace king, against idiots with 9 10 off suit calling your raises preflop. I got the sense that the site was trying to redistribute my money to the "less fortunate" players, and my theory on this was, they want to keep the money as evenly distributed as possible, that way they keep the maximum number of people playing for as long as possible, which means they maximize their rakes. If all the good players weren't screwed over, then they would eliminate the bad players, and fewer hands would be played, and their rakes would lower. I'm not sure how effectively that strategy might work for them, or how many hands are rigged. I read a good poker article on how to win online poker, and the guy said he played for thousands of hours on partypoker, and was convinced without a doubt it was rigged. He said, every time he would start to get a good stack going for him at a table, he would get dealt a hand like aces or kings, and another player with a short stack would be dealt queens, and he would move all in against the queens, and the queens would allways win with a flush on the river. He said this would happen time and time again, and not just to him but the other players, and he developed the same theory as mine. I'm not sure if they rigg tournaments though.
2. Interesting that the two hands you are describing are two hands in which you admitted to playing incorrectly. You never had QQ vs AA in a live game? Then you don't play very much. I just had KK vs AA 8 hands into a tournament at the Borgata. Live, real people... so rigged.
3. You sure bought up a sensitive subject, and you are not alone in wondering about online poker. Bad beats seem to be common on online sites, and there may be a reason for it. Some say that the bad beats are deliberately set up by the online poker rooms. There is a lot of speculation among online poker players about something called the Poker Action Flop Theory. It was first mentioned on the WPT by Paul Phillips and it has a lot on online players thinking. Here is a link to the article about it, read the page and see if anything there sounds like the type of bad beats you have experienced. http://thedoverpro.com/poker-action-flop.htm Maybe this explains why Doyle Brunson doesn't play in his own poker room, lol. Good luck at the tables!