It's Rigged!

Was talking with a friend yesterday who is having trouble believing that online poker isn't sometimes rigged a little for more action. Saying things about having the nuts 11 times on the turn in Omaha (the biggest suck out game) and being rivered everytime.

Since I play a lot of Draw (not as much as some, I'm sure), I see a lot of hands. Today, I got the oddity of getting quads dealt to me:

Seat 5: felicialee [JS,JC,JH,9S,JD] ($28.50 in chips)

Being UTG I just cold-called. If I did this at Paradise, everyone else would have folded and I would have been HU w/ the BB. Not on PokerRoom though. Fortunately enough, there seems to always be more new players that I haven't played with that don't know that I limp only about 1% of the time, and 99% of the 1%, it's because I'm pat. Someone else had limped behind me with a straight draw and, again fortunately for me, he got there :D

So, out of curiosity, I looked up in my stats how many hours that I played in the last month: almost 40 hours on the button. I do recall that this is the 2nd time within the last 30 days that I got quads dealt... but thinking back, I hadn't gotten it at all the last month (I'm not sure that I got it at all the month before, but I don't trust that I'm just not remembering correctly; therefore, I'm not going to include the previous month).

So, in the last approx'ly 80 hours, I got quads dealt twice. I hopped back on PokerRoom to see if they said how many hands per hour that we get. Sure enough, they do. And just like on Paradise, the numbers of hands are huge for Draw since it's only 2 betting rounds and the tables are only 5 handed. The highest I saw for a 5 handed table was 136. Since this seems so high, I even did a screen shot so that you'd believe me :)



I also noted that the lowest hands-per-hour was 76 on a 5-handed table. Split the difference of 60, add that to the 76, and you have a mean of about 106 hands-per-hour per table. I played ~80 hours the last couple months, which comes to 8480 hands. I looked up in SuperSystem I the chart "Probability Of Being Dealt Specific Hands Before The Draw (52-card deck - without Joker)". It states for Four-of-a-kind: 0.02% or 4,164-to-1 against. Since I played about 8400 hands, I'd say I'm on track ;)

Of course, this is only playing Draw and only playing on PokerRoom. But I must say, just think of it! If one online poker room did influence the card distributions for higher rake, all of them would! Why would any want to be left out of getting more rake? Plus, PokerRoom just instituted a bit more aggressive rake schedule (at least on the 1/2 Draw tables). Pots before weren't raked until the pot was $5. Now, a HU's pot, no raise, is raked 10¢ before the Draw. If they were influencing the deck to get more action, they wouldn't have to do something like this.

Just my two ¢'s :D (thanks again Pete : )

Interestingly, it's over 64,000-to-1 to be dealt a straight flush. Of all my recorded time playing, approximately 700 hours for at around 70,000 hands of Draw, I have never been dealt a straight flush. (Somebody better look into the software.. they're slacking ; )

Posted by Glenn