Rigged: The AA test

GERAT INFO guys keep up the good work.

Looks like you guys are putting a lot of effort in to this, hats off.

full tilt

14,748 hands

expected 66.7
dealt: 69

wow i run hotter than kathy liebert

combuboom said:

full tilt

14,748 hands

expected 66.7
dealt: 69

wow i run hotter than kathy liebert

Click to expand...

I think you're the first FT contributer to have more dealt than expected. Thanks Comb, I'll update the chart when I get home.

Another 15000 hands compliments of Combuboom. It pushes Full Tilt a full 1% in the right direction. Whew! I was starting to worry.

More hands since I posted those other AA results:

Site: Pokerstars
Number of ring hands: 7962
Dealt AA: 30
Expected: 36
I am dealt AA: 1/265.4 hands
Won: 93.33%

Good stuff. Interesting statistics...

I dont belive Online Poker is rigged....

But, for arguements sake, lets say a site did want to "rig" the game in order to produce a larger rake profit in ring games.

Simply monitoring the number of times your dealt a specific hand (AA,KK,whatever) and then comparing that percentage to the actual statistical probability wouldnt show you anything. If I were the person(s) responsible for the "rigging", I wouldnt screw with something that would so easily be detectable. Think about it. Its like a magician doing tricks. While your looking here, hes doing it over there.

I would be far more interested in a more telling statistic. How many times does the actual statistical favorite hold up? In other words, does the expected percentage match the actual percentage? Im sure that the poker tracking software can tell you, but the number of hands required to get a reliable percentage, at least in my eyes, would be over a million, for a single player. Ive read several articles that claim that the stats hold up, but have never actually seen the hard data.

Ive seen some wierd things happen in online poker. But I dont think its because its rigged. I think its because its online poker and its to be expected. Factor in all the loose play, complete idiots, and radical number of hands played, and youll come to find that online poker is its own beast. Nothing controlled by computers will ever be as good as the real thing. Just ask all those porn addicts.

Simply monitoring the number of times your dealt a specific hand (AA,KK,whatever) and then comparing that percentage to the actual statistical probability wouldnt show you anything. If I were the person(s) responsible for the "rigging", I wouldnt screw with something that would so easily be detectable. Think about it. Its like a magician doing tricks. While your looking here, hes doing it over there.

Click to expand...

Right, that was I was saying earlier.
If you have AA and someone calls your raise and you get sucked out well to bad. Thats not rigged just a donky getting lucky.
Besides how much money does that get on the board anyway compared to boat vs flush vs quads.

Like I said earlier yes I play more hands online than live but it still doesnt add up.

I get quads almost everyday on Bodog, sometimes more than once. Only had quads twice in live play.

For those who play on Bodog how many times you see trips on the flop (example 888), multiple times a day right. How many times does that happen live? I seen it once.

Live play I have seen 2 monster get into it alot but not as much as online. Online 3 monsters at once is no surprise.
Live I have only seen it once. A high straight vs A high flush vs K high straight flush (I had the K hi str8 flush).

So no I dont think its rigged to screw your AA but I do have to wonder if its not tweaked for rake.

As for the freerolls when its sponsored by the site I just dont get cards.
I think Ill trfack my cards the next free roll Im in and post them.
If Im in a Cards Chat or other sponsored freeroll I get a normal range of cards.

OMG! I just spent the better part of an hour respondind to the last 2 posts only to lose it all when I switched from quick reply to advanced. This always happens when I use the laptop. I don't have the energy to re-create it now, maybe later.

Table updated for ChuckTs last PokerStars contribution.
Site: Pokerstars
Number of ring hands: 7962
Dealt AA: 30
Expected: 36
I am dealt AA: 1/265.4 hands
Won: 93.33%

Looks like you got shafted Chuck. But you made up for it with a fantastic win rate.

Crocodile King said:

Right, that was I was saying earlier.
If you have AA and someone calls your raise and you get sucked out well to bad. Thats not rigged just a donky getting lucky.
Besides how much money does that get on the board anyway compared to boat vs flush vs quads.

Like I said earlier yes I play more hands online than live but it still doesnt add up.

I get quads almost everyday on Bodog, sometimes more than once. Only had quads twice in live play.

For those who play on Bodog how many times you see trips on the flop (example 888), multiple times a day right. How many times does that happen live? I seen it once.

Live play I have seen 2 monster get into it alot but not as much as online. Online 3 monsters at once is no surprise.
Live I have only seen it once. A high straight vs A high flush vs K high straight flush (I had the K hi str8 flush).

So no I dont think its rigged to screw your AA but I do have to wonder if its not tweaked for rake.

As for the Freerolls when its sponsored by the site I just dont get cards.
I think Ill trfack my cards the next free roll Im in and post them.
If Im in a Cards Chat or other sponsored freeroll I get a normal range of cards.

Click to expand...

win

Really wish I remembered stat, but wikipedia refreshed my memory. How about a test to see just how likely it is that poker is rigged.

Null hypothesis: AA(expected) = AA(actual)

Pokerstars:

AA(expected) = 1497.14
AA(actual) = 1491
Total hands = n = 330869

P = .0045063152
P(hat) = .0045248724

One proportion Z-test

z = (P(hat) - P)/sqrt((P(1-P))/n)
z = 0.159

P = .8736

In English, if we assume poker is not rigged, there is an 87.36% chance of seeing these results or stranger (further away from the mean). If this were to be under 5%, we would say it was sufficient evidence to show that online poker is indeed rigged. Since you cannot prove a negative, you can simply say that this data fails to reject the null hypothesis that poker is not rigged. There is no reason to believe that poker is rigged based on this data.

For full tilt, I'll spare all the calculations, but

P=.061, 6.1% chance of seeing data like this or stranger. This is awfully close to say we are bordering on being able to claim that full tilt is rigged by giving less action hands (or perhaps because the sample is skewed towards better players, they don't need to give action to get them to keep coming back... I'm kidding )

For ipoker:

P=0.69 = 69%.

Total:

P=.2816=28.16%

Note that for example 28.16% has nothing to do with the fact that there's a 28% sites are on the up-and-up. It's just that IF poker sites are not rigging, and we did this sample an infinite amount of times, we'd see this much variation from the mean 28% of the time, certainly not low enough to conclude the site is rigged. Full tilt's 6.1% is rather low though. As mentioned, usually 5% is the threshold of suspicion, and almost all confidence intervals (ever see the + or - after the Presidential polls? Most likely they use a 95% confidence interval, which would get a P of 5%). So it's low enough to raise suspicion.

Note that just because the number of hands at full tilt is lower does not make this number less reliable, because n is factored into the z formula. As n gets higher for the z to stay the same the mean has to get closer and closer to the expected mean.

There is also the assumption with this test of independence that p*n > 10 and (1-p)*n > 10.

The first is basically the expected is > 10 because p can be expressed as expected/n, and the multiplication cancels the n's out. All expected values are over 10, so the samples can be said to be independent. Or normal, or whatever that's supposed to conclude. Also I believe there's a restriction about the sample being a sufficiently small sample (at most 1/10 or something) of the entire population. I think we can safely conclude that CC members have not been involved in over 1/10 of all hands at pokerstars, full tilt, ipoker, or all combined.

So in conclusion there is no evidence whatsoever that pokerstars or ipoker are rigging their sites, and there's no evidence there's a mass collusion against the poker players by the sites. BUT, there is some evidence that full tilt gives less AA hands than it should. But also remember this is hardly even close to conclusive proof. If we took 17 samples of this size from full tilt, we'd expect to see this one even if they weren't rigged. More data would surely help determine if they're RNG is in fact rigged intentionally or not to give players less AA hands than it should.

Dont confuse what I posted in my first reply with a willingness to believe that online poker is rigged. Its not. I dont think that seeing monster hands go against each other more than youre used to seeing live has anything to do with the sites or the way they are run. This has to do with the high number of loose players seeing alot more flops. Seeing more "sets" and "quads" has nothing to do with the RNG or the site, its the number of players willing to stay in a hand with weak pairs that accounts for this.
A good example of this is the occurance, or lack thereof, of ace high winning a showdown. I cant remember the last time I saw ace high take down a pot in an online freeroll. It just doesnt happen very often because of the large amount of players who will see a flop with any two cards.
Not that I see it ALOT in my live play, but it does happen. When is the last time any of you played a live TOURNAMENT with more than a $100 buy in where at least 5 players saw almost every flop? It doesnt happen nearly as much as it does online. This is the reason you see all these freak showdowns, suckouts, and multiple monster hands. Its not the sites, its the players playing on them. This can account for almost every complaint or conspiracy theory Ive seen yet. Looking at the stats of hands dealt just helps to confirm this.

eh, there's not a kathy liebert's chance in hell that any site would rig their program to give out less AA hands. this doesn't take a statistics background, just any sense of practicality. from a statistical viewpoint, the fact that it can be that much less over a (not huge) sample just further reduces the probability that it's "juiced" in that particular way

additionally there's a possible response bias, because we're not collecting the data from every member of the site first hand. it's just whoever wants to do it. partaking in this sort of study and giving the results is just naturally going to be more appealing to someone who feels unlucky, because they're probably more curious about that kind of thing (and more prone to think online poker is rigged). so it wouldn't be a shock if the samples contributed are more likely to deviate to the low end of receiving AA over all their relatively short runs

Like I said, counting the number of times you get specific hands wont tell you anything. The only stat that will tell you if online poker truly is on the up and up is the expected probability of a hand winning versus the actuality of the hand winning. And even then, there are variables in the actions of the players that account for so much of this stat, that it would be impossible to prove one way or the other, without just dealing a million hands and everyone staying in to showdown. But thats not really poker is it?

The important thing to remember is this. If its online, its run by a computer. And if its run by a computer, it can be controlled by someone, somewhere. That doesnt mean that it is, just that its POSSIBLE. Even live poker can be manipulated. But its a much harder trick to pull off when youre seated in front of the 9 other people youre trying to cheat.

combuboom said:

eh, there's not a kathy liebert's chance in hell that any site would rig their program to give out less AA hands. this doesn't take a statistics background, just any sense of practicality. from a statistical viewpoint, the fact that it can be that much less over a (not huge) sample just further reduces the probability that it's "juiced" in that particular way

additionally there's a possible response bias, because we're not collecting the data from every member of the site first hand. it's just whoever wants to do it. partaking in this sort of study and giving the results is just naturally going to be more appealing to someone who feels unlucky, because they're probably more curious about that kind of thing (and more prone to think online poker is rigged). so it wouldn't be a shock if the samples contributed are more likely to deviate to the low end of receiving AA over all their relatively short runs

Click to expand...

Ah, good point. I was thinking that since it was preflop and not dependent on going to showdown that it could be thought of as an SRS, because although I'd assume CC to have better quality players, I wouldn't expect them to get AA any more or any less. But the fact that a person's short-term luck may affect them participating in the study hadn't really crossed my mind.

Of course you know what that means. Since it must be skewed towards more, because the people who participate are the unlucky ones, pokerstars must actually give more AA than our average as well, just as in the full tilt. And you know what that means...

omg pokerstars is rigged to give action hands. Our total scientific analysis that used logic invalidating our scientific methods have proven it. Run run, get all your money off pokerstars.

lol and yes I'm joking, although this fact does show that perhaps this entire test is not free of bias and thus cannot be on its own trusted as proof or even evidence either way of poker being rigged or not.

I've added a couple of decimal places as the PS sample is now so huge that even 330,000 new hands from Zachvac (Holy Shit!) failed to produce any movement with just 2.

Four Dogs said:

I've added a couple of decimal places as the PS sample is now so huge that even 330,000 new hands from Zachvac (Holy Shit!) failed to produce any movement with just 2.

Click to expand...

LOL, guess you didn't realize what I was doing. I used the data from your last post. I didn't have the 330,000+ hands, everyone combined on the forum did. Look at your last post with the table in it (not the one you just wrote, but the one right before my post where I use the 330,000+ number) and then look at my numbers in that post. You'll find the ratios to be extremely similar .

Blah! lol. No I didn't pick up on that. I'll fix it tonight.

combuboom said:

eh, there's not a kathy liebert's chance in hell that any site would rig their program to give out less AA hands.

Click to expand...

It's not that they give out less AA hands. Could it be they just give more to the poorer players. The data seems to fit that theory of online rigging.
Four Dogs, do you hate me yet?

LMFAO

You right but its .45% chance, great post..

Alon Ipser said:

It's not that they give out less AA hands. Could it be they just give more to the poorer players. The data seems to fit that theory of online rigging.
Four Dogs, do you hate me yet?

Click to expand...

lmfaorofpimp. Very nice Alon. You sure know how to breath new life into a thread.

slightly off topic...I dont have HH....but here's my thoughts on "rigged" hands to increase rake......

the rigged argument is usually put forth by people that lose big when they were sure they were gonna win (often by people that know little about poker).......

you have to look at the game you're playing....
it's online poker....( lotta newbies playing that just dont know any better.....so they call and suckout)

if it's low stakes (or freeroll)........always callers to suck out cause they dont care

even in higher limits, many play loose because ,
-not face to face with real people.....no embarrasment over stupid play
-money is not as real when it's like a video game...same people would prob play a little tighter in person with real chips in their hand

I play at Foxwoods quite often and over the last 3 or 4 years I've seen the quality of play go down quite a bit ( a good thing !) i know the deal isn't rigged there....but there are days when the fish are running good and call their way to suckout winners time after time....

play 1000 live hands at home with pennies and you will see all the same "rigged" hands

remember that pocket AA or KK is still just 1 pair.....prob 70% hands are won with 2 pair or better..

isn't the rake is capped once the pot reaches a certain level ? (capped or close in avg. hand ?).....building the pot beyond that would hold no advantage for the sites....

why would they even rig hands to begin with ? ...risk the millions they make to increase profits by a few percent ?....I don't think so

Collusion at ring games is what you should really be worried about....people say "they catch em all the time" (nothing to worry about ?).....

the smart ones DON'T get caught.....it does go on all the time....and a few smart colluders will take all your money alot more efficiently than the occasional bad beat from a "rigged" hand

Nice post Wach. All too true. I play at Foxwoods too. See you there.
Here's the corrected table with Zachvacs 330,000 PokerStars hands removed. Good to see you actually have a life Zach.