Pokerstars SNG

[DetroitHusling101]

Well besides constantly getting my money in good in these donk and go's and losing on the river to 3 outer i've also noticed something kinda weird.
In the 9-10 player SNG when it gets down to like 6 or less it seems like a lot of the time when someone gets a big pair , there's another big pair out there. Maybe to generate action and get the SNG over with so we can all register to another one and pay them more rake? Probally not but still it's getting pretty repetitive to get to the bubble than pick up QQ or JJ or even KK and run into a higher pocket pair damn near everytime.
Oh and all the times i get all in PF with AK , against A-rag , and rag hits.

And kings are about 50-50 chance of winning against Ace-anything.

Anyone else feel the same about these donk n go's or am i just over-reacting to a bad downswing.
I havn't technically lost any money.
I deposited 45 about 3 weeks ago.
By this weekend i was up to over $325 profit.
I've dropped to about $230 profit since saturday.
I cleared my bonus and withdrew all the money besides 45 Monday.
And i've been stuck at between 45-60 since.

What are some other US friendly sites that have good SNG action?
Maybe i should start playing Full Ring...
But i've heard Online cash game is wayyyyy touger to beat than live.

[donkbee]

um, sample size ...?

[taipan168]

Firstly let's knock one thing on the head (and not go there again!) and that's that Stars or whatever other site is rigged to make the game finish faster, boost pot sizes to increase rake, has some kind of doomswitch if you complain too much, etc. All of these are rubbish.

Now onto the main point - variance. The variance in poker can be very very bad indeed and learning to deal with this is an essential part of the game. As I said in one of your previous threads, 30+ buyin downswings and 10+ OOTM streaks are not unusual, in fact they are expected if you play long enough.

Oh and all the times i get all in PF with AK , against A-rag , and rag hits.

And kings are about 50-50 chance of winning against Ace-anything.

You know this isn't true (or at least I hope you do). Say you toss a coin 10 times and get 10 heads in a row. It's possible, isn't it? Does this mean that the coin is rigged or will somehow flip more heads than tails if you flip it 1 million times?

Let me tell you with a story. Say I give you a standard 6-sided die and tell you that if you roll 1-4, I give you $10, if you roll 5-6 you give me $10. Don't you keep on rolling that die until your arm drops off or until I go broke? Sure, you could roll 5-6 several times in a row but over the long term this is a great bet. Now, assume I made the bet $1 million - unless you are very wealthy you shouldn't be rolling the die at all even though you're getting great odds (aka bankroll management is very important).

In the case of AA the analogy is even more stark - it's like me paying you $10 if you roll 1-5, you pay me if you roll a 6.

How many SNGs have you played since you made your initial deposit? What is your ROI over all the games you have played? It sounds like you ran really hot over your first 3 weeks and are now returning to your true win rate.

Regardless, I do have some sympathy for how you're feeling, poker is a very frustrating game - but if you want to play this game for the long term you need to learn to deal with the variance and most importantly, not let it put you on tilt or make you play badly.

[salsa4ever]

would you guys say I'm crazy if I think there is non-negligible chance that stars *does* rig the games to allow the worst hand to improve more often? It's obvious if they give winning players less AA/KK and losing players more. But what if it was done subtly enough, could you detect it for sure?

I mean, the sites have a lot to gain by letting losing players lose less quickly and cycle through the money a few more times generating rake. As for the making SNGs finish faster, well that's a bit absurd.

For the record, I'm a consistently winning player on Stars. I won $3000 playing 15+1 SNGs, and lots more playing PLO8.

As for the response "why would a corporation making billions risk their reputation to make some extra millions?" See: Enron, Martha Stewart, Rene Rivkin, et. al. --> companies and people do things when they think they are beyond reproach. Stars is at the point now where it will take absolute undeniable hard as concrete evidence for people to boycott them and if they rig it subtly, such evidence just isn't going to be appearing. And located in whatever country they're in, it's not as if they can be brought to justice any time soon if caught.

so is it rigged? Maybe, maybe not. For now, I would answer "possibly rigged, but if it is, not enough that a skillful player can't still achieve a healthy winrate (even if it is a little less than if it weren't rigged)"

[biondino]

I'd think you're crazy, yes.

[grnydrowave2]

I like how people think it's rigged but keep playing anyway.

[donkbee]

it's not rigged, ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!

p.s. taipan writes better posts than i do

[DetroitHusling101]

Yeah i don't really think it's rigged. I'm just having a hard time understanding why everytime i get QQ or KK someone has AA or KK.
Happened 3 in a row today.
Not to mention AQ losing to A2 , AK losing to A9.
A9 on a AK9 flop losing to the idiot who wated to put me AI with K-J.
And jacks. Those just get folded PF now.

[biondino]

Salsa, serious answer. Poker sites can only ultimately be audited by an in depth study of the mathematical stats over billions of hands dealt, but this study will be accurate to a very tiny degree. Even a *rumour* of skewed stats or failed audit would cripple the site and possibly the industry. Yes, corporations and individuals always want to squeeze every penny, but they too have a risk/reward balance and there's no arguable way the reward in this scenario outweighs the risk.

Think of it this way. You think of the perfect murder - absolutely unsolveable - but, it needs an accomplice to work. Would you not then worry, for the rest of your natural life, that the accomplice might rat you out, or accidentally implicate you? I know I would, and that, I suspect, is how Stars must feel, both metaphorically and literally. EVEN IF they could flawlessly hide a cheat algorithm, it wouldn't be the work of the CEO alone, working on the code one night in his office. There'd be a group of conspirators, any one of whom could blab, blackmail, etc. etc.

It's not impossible to imagine a rogue programmer leaving a backdoor into the code - perhaps this is similar to the current AP scandal. But a company making a concerted effort to cheat its cash cow - it's just not feasible,

[salsa4ever]

okay that's a pretty convincing argument.

but it just seems the noobs get more luck against me than I do against them. Could be my selective memory, but I'm usually pretty objective about these things.

The anecdotal evidence suggests that Stars is just significantly harder for to beat than any other site. Is it *completely* down to better players? Again, I don't know the answer. For now I just choose to not play at a site that has no rakeback and seemingly a lot of absurd bullshit.

[donkbee]

Yeah i don't really think it's rigged. I'm just having a hard time understanding why everytime i get QQ or KK someone has AA or KK.
Happened 3 in a row today.
Not to mention AQ losing to A2 , AK losing to A9.
A9 on a AK9 flop losing to the idiot who wated to put me AI with K-J.
And jacks. Those just get folded PF now.

Dude, there are things you can't even imagine that haven't happened to you yet. Everyone's been 3-outered, 2-outered, whatever. It's part of poker. You gotta learn to handle it well (I'm still working on this, I'm sure almost everyone is), or else you just can't play poker without going insane.

When you get 2 outered twice in a row on a FT in a tournament, then you can write bad beat posts. But do this in gabe's forum ...

[taipan168]

but it just seems the noobs get more luck against me than I do against them. Could be my selective memory, but I'm usually pretty objective about these things.

This is a very powerful thing. It hurts so much more to have a pot which you'd already added to your stack snatched away from you by a bad beat than it makes you happy to suck out on somebody when you got your chips in as an underdog - so we tend to remember the times we got sucked out on much more vividly than the times that we sucked out on somebody.

The anecdotal evidence suggests that Stars is just significantly harder for to beat than any other site. Is it *completely* down to better players? Again, I don't know the answer. For now I just choose to not play at a site that has no rakeback and seemingly a lot of absurd bullshit.

If you'd played 1 million+ hands at Stars which showed that your expected win rate for hands such as AK vs A9 and KK vs 88 was significantly different from what was expected, you'd have a case. Can't find the link now, but some time back somebody on 2+2 did a study over about 10 million hands on various sites and found no statistically significant deviation from the expected win rate.

That said, the players could be better on Stars. Because it is the site with the highest traffic and is also open to US players, at least in the games I play ($27/$60 turbo 1-table SNGs) there are a LOT of good multitabling regulars. Even the presence of 2-3 of these per table can significantly reduce your win rate compared to a site where the games might fill more slowly but have less regulars.

[losttrem]

In addition to the selective memory issue, there is another point to the problem. Of course donks are sucking out more on you, than you do to them. For the "luck to even out" a good player just doesnt play enough bad cards. If you don't play that K9s from MP against an UTG raise, you'll never hit your miracle two pair on the river. Which is a good thing. Getting sucked out on frequently means being the favourite more often then not.

[martindcx1e]

In addition to the selective memory issue, there is another point to the problem. Of course donks are sucking out more on you, than you do to them. For the "luck to even out" a good player just doesnt play enough bad cards. If you don't play that K9s from MP against an UTG raise, you'll never hit your miracle two pair on the river. Which is a good thing. Getting sucked out on frequently means being the favourite more often then not.

this

[Jack Sawyer]

Poker can be a cruel and unjust game. Anyone who has ever played will countless of bad beat stories. There will be (lots of) times opponents suck out on you playing hands they should never have been in in the first place. There will be times when you cannot catch a hand for anything. What can you do about these situations?

Absolutely nothing.

All you can do is suck it up and keep composure. Poker can be a streaky game. Over the long run, however, the cards will even out.

The key to a successful poker strategy is to maintain your discipline to play good poker strategy no matter the conditions or the situation. You cannot afford to get frustrated by a bad beat. You cannot afford to get frustrated by a string of bad beats. Do not let your emotions get the better of you, or you will be tilted (like a pinball machine).

On the other hand, when things are going your way, do not allow yourself to get confident or careless. Play your game no mater what.

Sure, there will be times when you have setbacks. No matter how good you are, there will be days yo lose (unless you have a superuser account ). But if you develop the discipline and mindset to play solid poker consistently, then over the long run you will be successful.


I know all about losing a lot in a short span of time and getting tilted. Believe me, I know. Losing generates tilt, tilt generates more losing.

[sejje]

Yeah i don't really think it's rigged. I'm just having a hard time understanding why everytime i get QQ or KK someone has AA or KK.
Happened 3 in a row today.

Once I jumped up a limit (I play cash) and the night I moved up, six times in the same night I ran KK into AA. I also had a few other bad beats and set under set confrontations. Despite that, I was lucky in a few spots and escaped the night losing 5 buyins, which felt like 10 as I had just jumped.

I didn't whine and cry about how the poker site was rigged. I did, however, whine and cry.

Let's just all admit: crazy shit happens, the game is not rigged.

Salsa: I'm sorry you posted that. And it would be obvious to the stat hounds at the other forum no matter how they did it. Also, why is saying they're making SNGs finish faster absurd, while saying that the site is rigged to make losing players win not absurd?

[TLR]

In order to claim a site as big as stars is rigged someone needs to show me some hard evidence (3 hands is not a hard evidence), if someone with a record of over 10 million hands or so will show something which is statistically inaccurate then it may be worth looking into it

From pokerstars support:
PokerStars shuffle verified by Cigital and BMM International
PokerStars submitted extensive information about the PokerStars random number generator (RNG) to two independent organizations. We asked these two trusted resources to perform an in-depth analysis of the randomness of the output of the RNG, and its implementation in the shuffling of the cards on PokerStars.

Both independent companies were given full access to the source code and confirmed the randomness and security of our shuffle. Visit Online Poker Random Number Generator for more details.

You can ofcourse claim those 2 organizations are in on the consipirasy, or that pokerstars submits one source code and runs another, but I doubt that.

[TLR]

Courtny, Taipan - it may be worth to do a sticky of ' online poker is not rigged' with all the standard stuff and point to it whenever we get one of those threads (seems like any other week or so)

[donkbee]

noted, I'll get my stickies fixed soon.

[TLR]

Yeah i don't really think it's rigged. I'm just having a hard time understanding why everytime i get QQ or KK someone has AA or KK.
Happened 3 in a row today.

This is a really pointless discussion, but lets run some number.
Assuming your claim is correct (3 times in a row you got QQ and ran into KK/AA), if there are 6 other opponents at the table, the chance of one or more of them getting dealt KK/AA is about 5%.
The chance of that happening 3 times in a row is 0.05*0.05*0.05, which turns out to be something in the area of a bit more then 1 in 10,000 times.

The chances you will get pocket A's and get pocket TT-AA the next hand is a bit worse then that.
So next time you get AA and then TT-AA you can claim pokerstars is rigged in your favor

[DetroitHusling101]

Three SNG's in a row is what i meant. Being the hands that i get knocked out on. Not 3 hands in a row.

[Jack Sawyer]

Three SNG's in a row is what i meant. Being the hands that i get knocked out on. Not 3 hands in a row.

Oh, I get it. You're having a hard time. Allow me to entertain you.
Like this?
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...=519077#519077

Or, like this?
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...=543003#543003

[salsa4ever]

Yeah i don't really think it's rigged. I'm just having a hard time understanding why everytime i get QQ or KK someone has AA or KK.
Happened 3 in a row today.

Once I jumped up a limit (I play cash) and the night I moved up, six times in the same night I ran KK into AA. I also had a few other bad beats and set under set confrontations. Despite that, I was lucky in a few spots and escaped the night losing 5 buyins, which felt like 10 as I had just jumped.

I didn't whine and cry about how the poker site was rigged. I did, however, whine and cry.

Let's just all admit: crazy shit happens, the game is not rigged.

Salsa: I'm sorry you posted that. And it would be obvious to the stat hounds at the other forum no matter how they did it. Also, why is saying they're making SNGs finish faster absurd, while saying that the site is rigged to make losing players win not absurd?

I think it's important to be constantly vigilant to the point of being paranoid when it comes to poker.

I mean, if I said a "god mode" is a possibility 12 months ago, I'd get the same kinds of responses. Don't just accept conventional wisdom because that's all it is - convenient.

[bigslikk]

Let me tell you a little something about luck:

Not everyone can have the bad kind. If some people are losing more than they should (they're running worse then what probability dictates), then others MUST be running better. Over time, in fact, the upswings / downswings even out such that probability becomes reality; "luck" (deviation from the probable) ceases to exist.

If you dont understand, lookup probabiility online. I'm sure wpedia has some crap on it.

Now, to my argument. Bad players notice GOOD luck and not bad. Good players (you, allegedly) notice BAD luck. Okay here's an example:

You, the legendary poker pro who always gets the money in good without fail, are the Hero. The Villain will be known as The Donk.

Hand 1:
Hero is dealt

The Donk is dealt


The Donk moves all-in. Hero calls.
Okay, the aces are 80% to win, the twos are about 20%. For simplicity's sake, let's say that the above scenario happened 5 times.

Probability dictates that YOU, the HERO should win 4 hands. The Donk should win 1. Let's say that this precisely happens. The "probable" result is achieved, the exact predicted result occurs, everything is fair, all is right with the universe, etc. etc. Everyone involved with sufficient knowledge about odds and poker should be COMPLETELY UNSURPRISED.

Nevertheless, on that fifth hand, when a duece or unlikely straight comes to have the donk suckout on you, we both know that you're going to be pissed. And the donk's going to be thanking God. The thing is, you're both wrong. The most boring, predictable result imaginable was merely running it's course. After that fifth hand, you both should be shrugging your shoulders.

It's not bad luck, it's just you noticing bad luck more. Think about you having a "good" day. Let's say your Aces hold up FIVE TIMES versus the deuces during five occassions. You feel pretty good; the best hand won all the time, the world is just. You remain completely oblivous that you got the better of probability; you're hand was supposed to hold up 80% of the time, but it held up 100%.

You lucky donk.

[taipan168]

Courtny, Taipan - it may be worth to do a sticky of ' online poker is not rigged' with all the standard stuff and point to it whenever we get one of those threads (seems like any other week or so)

Good idea - I might also do an update of the stickied post in the bad beats forum, maybe titled "Dealing with bad beats". I think that learning to deal with bad beats is a very important lesson for beginners. Detroit's posts both here and in the SNG forum made me realise that.

[bigslikk]

Oh yeah- and my reply to online poker being rigged:

Complete. Logical. Bullshit.

1. A donk's ace-rag sucks out on my ace-king so that the bad player "feels better about himself." This makes him stick around so that he can pay the rake.

A: short-term luck will also make the player feel better about himself (it doesn't have to rigged up for him). Also, 95% of donks probably think they're Brunson-caliber players without the help of funny software. Also, who says whoever has the best hand is the better player? The fish can wake up with good hands too. There would be no way to rig the game in favor of certain players.

2. Big hands are generated to speed things along so that you'll pay more rake.

A: We flip shit when our KK runs into AA. "RIGGED!" Are we forgetting all the times that we're dealt

in the big blind, and then the aggro-donk table folds around to us? rofl that must happen to me twice a day. Where are the kings I ask? Where the F*** are the kings?

Next time I get the bullets, I'm going to call Stars and tell them to get their action card generator running. "Yeah, customer service? Last time I had pocket aces, no one had kings. Um... can you work on that? k thx"

And arguments ingore the THE HUGE RISK a poker site would be taking in rigging up games. Think about it- a site makes a certain minimal percentage by upping rake sizes, rake frequency. Then, if /when their rigged software is discovered, they lose a sh*t-ton of customers. Even though the chance of discovery might be slim, the magnitude of the downside is such that it's either marginal or just flat out not worth it.

Analogy: Selling everything you own, then taking all your money, and placing it on red on a roullette wheel. The downside outweighs the upside. (this didn't stop one idiot from doing it on YouTube)


Edit: (and yes, I know... but the comparison still makes sense. Lol.. lucky number seven...)

[donkbee]

Courtny, Taipan - it may be worth to do a sticky of ' online poker is not rigged' with all the standard stuff and point to it whenever we get one of those threads (seems like any other week or so)

Good idea - I might also do an update of the stickied post in the bad beats forum, maybe titled "Dealing with bad beats". I think that learning to deal with bad beats is a very important lesson for beginners. Detroit's posts both here and in the SNG forum made me realise that.

tell gabe to stop being such a lazy mod and write that sticky himself!

[biondino]

The anecdotal evidence suggests that Stars is just significantly harder for to beat than any other site.

I suspect a large part of the answer is already implicit in your statement. Think about who tells you the anecdotes in question? Players who 1) play on Stars and 2) believe themselves to be above average players. So naturally, when they find themselves losing, it is natural to want to blame either fortune (i.e. rigged) or stronger players than it is for them to accept their own play might be at fault.

Poker players, by and large, have serious egos, which often go beyond self-belief into self-delusion. Once you get beyond the omg rigged/omg donks mentality, the next, obvious excuse is to say "oh yeah, Stars has the strongest players". However, this really doesn't tie in with logic - if it has the hardest players (and, let's not forget, crappy bonuses and no rb except at the highest levels of play), people would move sites!

So, my assertion is that Stars isn't harder than other sites in any meaningful sense. There may well be the largest number of good players there, but it's the biggest site - you can be sure it has the highest number of donks as well. It all averages out.