Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

Alright, we don't have to immediatly pile on this guy becuase he's got another "internet poker is rigged" thread. This one sounds like it has potential to be different.

That being said, if they are rigging their cards in a manner as described, I have no idea how they would be caught. All I know is that if you believe there is a good chance the game is not on the level then you shouldn't play. It seems to me that since no one at the table is aware of how the RNGs would be rigged, it would give no advantage to anyone and it's still a "fair game" from the prespecitive that the best player should still win the most money. And if that is the case, then I don't really care if they are subtly rigging the decks to slightly increase rake becuase I'm still profiting.

I also wonder, wouldn't a sign that one site is rigged be the fact that you pay more in rake at that site? It seems like an easy way to detect, just have one person play simultaneously at 2 different sites for a few months and see who pays more. Though, sites rake differently so that may be off.

-'rilla

Originally Posted by LeFou

Well, I don't know what they use to audit hand histories but it's probably pretty sophisticated.

To detect the first method: you just need an auditor that looks at *more than just how often each card appears. You could look, e.g. at
-how often there are 2 suited, 3 suited on the flop, turn, and river
-how often the board contains 2+ big cards

Presumably the auditors (and general public keeping track of their stats) know that boards with lots of suited cards, pairs, and big cards generate more rake. I imagine they'd figure out a way to watch for that.

I suspect that similar auditing would reveal rigging done by method 2.

Now, although we cannot say for damn certain that there isn't and won't be any rigging, there's a good theoretical reason why there wouldn't be:

Any deviation from true randomness that created a worthwhile amount of excess rake would be statistically significant and therefore detectable. By definition, as soon as the "fix" starts getting to be worth the risk, the risk becomes much greater.

Originally Posted by pizzatron

One hand in every seven, two suits are chosen at random, and all cards below the 10 in those suits are taken out of the deck, so a 36-card deck is used to deal this hand, which will be more likely to generate action because of increased high-card and flush possibilities.

Over the other six hands, a 46-card deck is used, with six of the 36 cards from the 'Action Deck' mentioned above, taken out of play at random, until they've all skipped their turn.

This ensures that every card will show up an equal number of times overall, and they can 'prove' the non-riggedness, while still rigging the game.

Originally Posted by CrunchyNuts

There are very clear and rigid probabilities for every occurance in poker. Any deck rigging will mess with at least one of those occurances. There exist extremely large hand databases out there that would certainly qualify as solid evidence.

Originally Posted by koolmoe

One strong argument against any rigging is that there are far easier ways to generate increased rake that don't require rigging the deal.

Originally Posted by koolmoe

Finally, as a winning player, I strongly hope that no smoking gun is ever found, as it is likely to cripple the online poker industry. If there's evidence at the bottom of the proverbial poker lake, I don't want to drain it to find out and risk killing the fish in the process.