Online Poker Isn't Rigged, But Perception Is Everything

[shipitfish]

Having just this weekend had a chat box conversation with someone arguing that the river cards in the NL HE games on Absolute Poker are doled out carefully to “make sure the site makes the maximum rake every time”, I was glad to get a link from nick_marden to a blog post that expressed, more or less, the same thoughts I had about the so-called “rigging of online poker”.

(Although I don't have any links handy,) I should mention that I've seen some folks on LiveJournal doing statistical studies of their Poker Tracker databases to show that they are receiving a statistically expected distribution of starting hands, flops, turns and rivers in HE. Everything I've seen comes back on the up-and-up. There is no way to “prove” that the cards are distributed in a statistically fair way, but I suggest that a preponderance of evidence has already been collected. Therefore, this will probably be my only post ever about this, so I'll make a clear statement: there is no chance online poker is intentionally rigged. Occam's razor alone should tell us that, anyway.

My fear, however, is that there are subtle bugs in the random number generators in use. Such bugs probably don't impact anyone very much; probably something that is no worse than a dealer who shuffles a bit too lazily. I do, however, have a strong feeling that eventually such stories of mildly buggy random number generators will come out, and there will be a mass exodus from online poker.

Being a Open Source and Free Software weenie, I tend to think the best remedy to this would be for online sites to proactively publish their source code. So far, only one site, written by some friends of mine, has done so, and they are still in beta. Even if the client software isn't made fully available, at the very least these companies should be publishing the code of their random number generators for public audit and review. It would go a long way to dispel rumors and boost confidence.

Of course, they are unlikely to do it. I've found that the money-obsession in the poker world and the Free Software ethic don't usually mix. Indeed, to drive the point home, I note that almost all of the software developers and executives (a class who are generally receptive to the idea of software freedom) whom I've met in the poker world have been anti-Free Software. The self-selecting class of software people who like poker tend to be the most anti-software-freedom, pro-Microsoft ones. No wonder that it took a bunch of radical French Free Software developers to write the first poker site that releases the source to its client and server.

That being true, I'm sure that there will someday be a leak from one of the more buggy and pathetically programmed poker sites. Such a hypothetical leak will probably turn out to show the random number generator was a little less random than it should have been. When that happens, alarmists will probably clamor enough to kill online poker. That will really suck for those of us who are picking up lots of easy cash playing online. On the bright side, it might launch a new era of interest in poker sites like Pok3d, where the sources are available. If only my buddies could get out of beta and have real money games!

Anyway, I don't usually mix my Free Software politics with my poker blog. As a treat for my readers who have tolerated this rant, I'll point you at the most amusing blog post about rigged online poker I've ever read (also thanks to nick_marden).

Comments

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

I don't remember the particular site - it was before my online poker time anyway - but there was a case of a (probably inadvertently) broken RNG. The effect was drastically to limit the number of possible shuffles. Not good.

As you say, there's little competitive advantage to be gained from a site's software. At least part of the client's perceived benefits are in useability and graphical attractiveness and those are duplicable. Performance (you don't want your PC grinding to a halt when you start 2-tabling) may have some proprietary aspects, I suppose, although it's hard to imagine how client software could be that much of a resource hog.

I think there could be a little more that's of interest in the back end architecture, but the RNG is pretty much independent, and I'd have thought it would be a to a site's advantage not just to get "independent" audits of randomness but to publish the code. But what do I know?

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

Seems like it is the typical disconnect about publishing code. As patty_bush mentions above, the executives running the show at the online poker sites probably haven't encountered yet the politics of code publishing and understanding how it would help them (at least on the RNG side).

I too remember the event long ago you are mentioning. I vaguely recall it was the old Planet Poker site, back when it first launched and before poker was big enough for such a story to reach anyone's ears. It was as you describe — not rigged but a badly coded algorithm that limited the number of possible deck setups. The code was eventually published, and it was obvious that the programmer who wrote it was just an idiot; it was too poorly done to be any sort of setup and it didn't stack the deck in any interesting way.

I agree that proprietariness of certain interface aspects probably gains some competitive edge. Although, none of the site's client software is really any good. For example, there is no reason at all you shouldn't be able to play online poker with one hand! For limit, it's call/raise/fold, which Pokerroom gets right, but all the sites get NL wrong. I have to mouse to the text box, type a number, and then hit bet/raise. How dumb! I should be able to hit return twice to accept or somesuch. BTW, I am obsessed with this single-hand play because I have this grand idea that I'm going to buy an exercise bike and play online poker while exercising.

Anyway, it always worries me that the RNG's are buggy when I see how buggy the damn client software is. As I said in the post, I doubt we've got serious fairness issues. If there are bugs, they are probably hurting everyone about equally — maybe hurting the passive players a bit worse if their odds of catching draws is somehow skewed against them, or hurting aggressive players worse if the odds of drawing are accidentally better. But, there is no point for them to keep these thing secret.

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

At least we can have some Occam's Razor-like confidence that the "super-smart action-flop generators" are pure fantasy - the standard of design and implementation on most sites tells us that they're written by monkeys.

An open-source system makes a lot of sense from a quality and reliability point-of-view (look at the poker-eval code on sourceforge for an example of what smart - if somewhat tricky - and motivated programmers can put together) - the problem is that your common-or-garden Joe Pokerplayer fishy type needs to be steered to a site by marketing. If word of mouth was all that was needed, WPEX would be inundated by now.

PokerStars

[tmckearney.livejournal.com]

I use PokerStars mostly. It allows you to type and hit Enter to bet. Unfortunately, you have to click in the box to type the number. No keyboard navigation. Kinda dumb. I guess not too many of them have Accessibility as an issue.

For the most part though, I like PokerStars. PartyPoker's software is like one big banner ad. It's really annoying. All sorts of flashing crap.

My biggest issue with poker sites is their networking algos. I am on DirecWay (read: 1-2 SECOND delays). Full Tilt doesn't even work at my house. PartyPoker times out and doesn't have a good recovery scheme. PokerStars tends to recover pretty well and is tolerant of intermittent signals pretty well.

Wow, I'm in a talkative (typative?) mood today :)

T