Dear Pokerstars.com

Lately you have been dealing me terrible starting hands. I mean Q5? 104? What am I supposed to do with that? Why have you been giving me awful starting hands for 2 days straight? Don't you realise my lack of knowledge of poker is enough of a handicap without you giving me these awful starting hands too?

Does someone @ pokerstars.com hate me?

I can play piano very well. If you would quit giving me bad starting hands I would be preapared to play soothing piano music to you over the phone while you go to sleep every day for a year. I can play piano very well and my singing is ok (not great but ok) so I think this is a fair trade. I could even play ne-yo or justin timberlake covers if thats really what you want. This is how desperate I am to fix this problem.

If you could fix this up asap I would appreciate it.
Thanks,

Neil

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Hello Neil,

We are sorry to hear you have had a few bad beats recently. We appreciate your offer to play us piano music, and I can assure you that no one hear hates you - we have many piano music fans at PokerStars so that could not be the case!

Please keep in mind that bad beats are a part of poker, and happen to all players, whether they play poker in a casino, at PokerStars or any other online site.

It is important you understand that PokerStars only runs its games by dealing the cards, which we do in a fair and honest manner. Once the deck is shuffled, it is set, and the order in which the cards are dealt cannot be changed. The software that shuffles and deals the cards cannot control who wins and loses. It just deals the cards and the rest is up to the players in the game.

The fact is, our software produces a shuffle that is completely random, which favors no player over any other. The methods we use ensure complete randomization of the cards, and complete unpredictability of the cards to come. You can see the description of these methods at:

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/features/security/

In addition, we analyse hands dealt daily to see if there is any statistically significant variance from expectation.

We even gave the software source code to two independent analysis companies, BMM International and Cigital, who reviewed PokerStars' shuffle and found it to be fair and random. You may read about these analyses at:

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/rng/

We have dealt over 36 billion hands, and have freely given out individual real money hand histories any time somebody has requested them. Not once has anybody found any indication that our shuffle is not 100% random, and many who have undertaken such studies have posted their findings to the Internet. You can find two of them here:

http://tinyurl.com/4lfeg

http://tinyurl.com/2nvav

We hope this information helps you to understand that PokerStars' games are fair. We value all of our players, and take the integrity of our site very seriously.

Regards,

Joanne

PokerStars Support Team