@gn2056: I hear you friend, it can often seem that the probabilties are not what they should be, but when you think it all through logically you realise how incredulous any poker rigging on stars for example, which you mention, actually is. 1.The largest site in the world has too much to lose by not operating fairly, if it was ever discovered that their site was not fair they would be finished almost over night.2 If the site did not obey the law of probabilities, it would be impossible for the high stakes regulars to earn the consistent profits they do, yet they do just this time and time again.

A phenomenon of online poker is it can often seem that you are getting too many improbable hands draw out against you. This is due to the number of hands you are playing when you play online, the number of hands means you are more likely to eventually witness unlikely hands win against your likely favourite hands. The other factor is a psychological one. We tend to remember those things that have a reason for sticking in our memory. Losing a large pot to an improbabale draw would stick in your memory then the next time you witness a similar outdraw it reinforces that memory. We tend to forget the times that the cards obeyed the likely outcomes to perfection or those hands that we occasionaly suckout with ourselves. At times it can seem strange that you may witness 4 or 5 suckouts in consecutive hands, granted. Yet for some reason it does not seem strange that a winning hand may win 20 times in consecutive hands, when according to the law of probabilities it should only be winning a little over eight out of ten times. Again we tend not to notice this unless we look for it.

The only sure way to beat the variance is to practice sound BR managment. Of course with your AP experience you can hardly be blamed for having no faith, but I think you're about as safe as you are when you play in your own house, when you play on PS - in terms of fairness of cards being dealt.