I've heard that the online poker sites are rigged. Is this true?
There's been a lot of heated arguments that online poker is rigged and that there is cheating in online poker. Usually the argument is that the sites offer 'action flops', which means that it deals good hands to each person, giving all of them more reason to stay in the pot and bet more. In theory, this would make more money for the poker sites, but in reality, the online poker sites usually cap the rake at a certain amount. In this case, there is no benefit for the poker sites from having action flops.
Some people think that the sites purposely give new players "beginner's luck" which causes them to win more. The idea is that the new player won't lose immediately and become discouraged and quit. Most of the serious players think this is really is nonsense, myself included.
The thing is, humans are simply unable to detect small biases in the shuffle based on their own perception. In order to get a statistically valid analysis of the deck, there must be thousands of hand samples recorded to determine if the deck is truly random. Given this large sample size, the only way to verify the deck shuffle is either with third-party inspection (which many of the sites claim they do) or with third-party hand history tools, such as Pokertracker. While Pokertracker was not made to verify the authenticity of the deal, it does record and analyze games you have played and can come up with statistics on many factors in your game. If the sites were indeed rigged, there would be anamolies that a professional should be able to spot.
Lastly, the foremost argument in my personal opinion, is that the profit margins of the online poker rooms are so large, that they simply wouldn't need to cheat their own players. They're practically doing it already. Fairly.
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