Rigged: The AA test

SavagePenguin · Feb 2, 2008

Here's how PokerStars generates a random shuffle.

Not only do they used a random number generator that runs off thermal noise (static), but they use five sources of information to feed the generator including the movements of players' mouses. Nobody can control all of that.

They have had two independent security monitoring companies view the source code and they both vouch for it's randomness.

In 2001, sites weren't as concerned about security. Nowdays, if it was discovered that a site was using an unfair shuffle, it would be a deathblow.

Four Dogs · Feb 2, 2008

Nice add Penguin. Where did you find that info?

ozboyy · Feb 2, 2008

Isn't this getting just a little bit old? If you really thought it was rigged would you be on it? I think not! Does someone play with the full knowledge they are going to lose or because they have a chance at winning? I wonder!!!

SavagePenguin · Feb 2, 2008

Four Dogs said:
Nice add Penguin. Where did you find that info?

I Google'd it. I've posted it on other sites before, so I knew it was out there.
I think I Googled "PokerStars Entropy" to get it, as I remembered that they used an entropy measuring device. (Entropy is the second law of thermodynamics that has to do with the dissipation of heat in a system. It basically says that everything moves from order to chaos, and the Intel machine measures chaos.)

Another PokerStars site says that if you don't have enough mouse movements they don't used your info as part of the random data they feed the machine.

mange · Feb 5, 2008

Thanks for the blog.

Four Dogs said:
I know we're all sick and tired of the on-line rigged debate. I've been trolling this site for 3 years and it just never seems to end, and the recent Absolute fiasco hasn't helped matters, never mind that what happen there actually had more to do with inexcusably loose security measures rather than actual RIGGING.

The logic behind the belief that the sites rig the game is ALWAYS the same and NEVER backed up by any facts. The belief is that the sites somehow profit from increased rakes by pitting big hands against eachother.

"Now why is it rigged...well like many people here have said, its because of the amount of rake they get...now alot of idiots dont know the bigger the pot, the more they rake...they also dont realise if there are MORE MONSTER HANDS ie, AA, AK, KK, there are going to be more all ins, the more all ins, the more you deposit once again..."

This quote is from a recent thread, but really, it's just one of hundreds and there's nothing unique about it. What surprises me is that this belief persists despite the fact that due to programs like Poker Tracker, these inane assertions are easily verified or dispelled.

So lets test it. Let's keep it simple though. I'd like any of you who actually track their HH with some sort of software like PT or Poker Office to post the number of ring hands you've tracked (no rake in tourneys right?) along with the number of times you've been dealt AA. Also, to sort the cheaters from the honest we should break the numbers apart by site. If the argument holds water then we should all be seeing hands like AA or KK more often then expected. I think the chances of being dealt AA or any pair is like 220:1 or about 4.5%

I'll start.

Site: Full Tilt
Number of ring hands: 16,901 (I've actually played about 3x that number but I lost my DB about a year ago)
Dealt AA: 68 (a little low)
Expected: 77
I am dealt AA: 1/248.5 hands = .402%

Site: Poker Stars
NRH: 5323
Dealt AA: 36 (a little high)
Expected: 24
I am dealt AA: 1/147.86 hands = .676%

Total
NRH: 22454
Dealt AA: 106 (a statistical bullseye)
Expected: 102
I am dealt AA: 1/211.83 hands = .4545%

I put alot more info in here than we need.
Just put the hands and times dealt AA and I'll do the math. I'll try to keep a running tally going, but I don't plan on being around much in the next few days so anyone may feel free to update it.

Cheers and Merry Christmas. :icon_sant

Thanks for the blog. Gives one somthing to think about.

angie

BallsASteel · Feb 6, 2008

Thanks for the update on the software. Sorry it took me a while to get back to check it. Wife had health issues... is having... Anyway, still an excellent thread. Pokerstars link is QUITE interesting. The sum of this knowledge is exponential here. I shall certainly be around more frequently. though I find it hard to post when I am reading so much.

elfmanvt07 · Feb 7, 2008

Four Dogs said:
One last thing just for fun. Remember our Royal Flushes? In order t0 recieve the same degree of accuracy using a Royal as we have achieved with AA we would need a sample size of about 780 billion hands. I douubt that many hands of poker have ever been played in all the history of the game. Not to mention that most of the time you'd need to go to showdown. lol

Are you implying that only 300 royals have ever occurred?

I've had 4, so that's highly unlikely :egg:

I've been trying to work that dang egg into something relevant FOREVER, I'm just going to use it.

jstnorv07 · Feb 7, 2008

I actually started reading this thread in the hopes of finding out if there really is any gaming of the poker system. The more I read and the more I thought about it the more I realized (no offense to OP) that what this thread is measuring is a waste of time. Clearly, a program could be written to make sure that the correct proportion of hands were dealt and still tilt it to their advantage. Not really sure where I read this but someone posted somewhere that the sites have no reason to cheat because they make millions of dollars. No offense to that poster but they clearly do not understand how business works at all. Especially in this business their objective is not fairness but to squeeze as much money out of as many people as possible. The only efforts they will make towards fairness is to "appear" as fair as possible and a worst case scenario for them would be to be fair if they have to. These are not charitable organizations. I think a better use of efforts would be to find a realistc way for the poker players to get together and find a way to force the poker sites to be fair instead of all of us who should be on th same side fighting over whether or not they are actually fair right now but what do I know.

Four Dogs · Feb 7, 2008

elfmanvt07 said:
Are you implying that only 300 royals have ever occurred?

I've had 4, so that's highly unlikely :egg:

I've been trying to work that dang egg into something relevant FOREVER, I'm just going to use it.

Not exactly. Going back through my numbers I realize that I was slightly off with the number of sample hands needed to test the RNG accuracy using a 5 card poker hand to the degree we have done with a 2 card hand. In my earlier thread, I stated that the number was 780 Billion. That should have been 780 Million. And we should see about 1200 Royals. What's a few hundred billion among friends?

However! Using a 7 card hand there are 133,784,560 possible outcomes so a sample size 300 times larger would require about 40 Billion Hands. That's still a pretty big number and we would expect to see about 1.3 million Royals.

SavagePenguin · Feb 7, 2008

jstnorv07 said:
I actually started reading this thread in the hopes of finding out if there really is any gaming of the poker system.

Well, the machine PokerStars uses to generate the random cards is created by technology giant Intel (makers/designers of the Pentium processor). And as mentioned earlier, five random bits of information (like people's mouse movements) are used to feed the machine, so even if the machine didn't work properly and spat out predictable results, the numbers fed into it would be nearly impossible to predict.

PokerStars also uses two independent companies (Cigital and BMM International) to check their operation. These companies also check brick and mortar casinos like Caesar's, Bally's, Harrah's, MGM Mirage, Trump Hotel and Casinos, and many more. They are *not* puppets for the online industry and they know what they are doing.

jstnorv07 · Feb 7, 2008

Who pays those companies to do the audits?

SavagePenguin · Feb 7, 2008

jstnorv07 said:
Who pays those companies to do the audits?

In the case of government lotteries it's usually the state's lottery commission pays them. In the case of brick and mortar casinos the casino's pay for them. In the case of online poker, the sites pay for them.
And in this case they're paying lots of money to reputable companies who have a proven track record. I assume they do this because it's the best step they can take to prove the legitimacy of their system.

Are you implying that there's a massive scam going on, where the independent auditing companies are conspiring with each other and the hundreds of gaming establishments to steal? That all these hundreds (or thousands) of people are willing to risk bankruptcy and jail time an their already lucrative livelihood to make a fraction make a fraction more profit, knowing full well that if one person cracks and comes clean that it will all be awash?

jstnorv07 · Feb 8, 2008

Have you ever heard of Arthur Anderson and Enron?

Four Dogs · Feb 8, 2008

jstnorv07 said:
Have you ever heard of Arthur Anderson and Enron?

Yes, I have. Does he have any AA stats to contribute? Preferably from Full Tilt.

jstnorv07 · Feb 8, 2008

Maybe you are not so familiar so I'll give a brief refresher. Arthur Anderson was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms conducting auditing, tax and consulting services. Founded in 1913 and with a list of clients among the largest companies around the world everyone wondered why in a company like this "people were willing to risk bankruptcy and jail time and their already lucrative livelihood to make a fraction make a fraction more profit, knowing full well that if one person cracks and comes clean that it will all be awash"

Thank you for the quote by the way Savage.

The purpose of a business is to make as much profit as possible. Period. Anyone who does not understand this does not understand business. Maybe there are other reasons but there are only two reasons I can see that you would have to staunchly defend the integrity of these sites. The first is that you don't understand how a business operates. The second is schilling for the site for your own motives. If there are other let me know.

Four Dogs · Feb 8, 2008

jstnorv07 said:
Maybe you are not so familiar so I'll give a brief refresher. Arthur Anderson was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms conducting auditing, tax and consulting services. Founded in 1913 and with a list of clients among the largest companies around the world everyone wondered why in a company like this "people were willing to risk bankruptcy and jail time and their already lucrative livelihood to make a fraction make a fraction more profit, knowing full well that if one person cracks and comes clean that it will all be awash"

Thank you for the quote by the way Savage.

The purpose of a business is to make as much profit as possible. Period. Anyone who does not understand this does not understand business. Maybe there are other reasons but there are only two reasons I can see that you would have to staunchly defend the integrity of these sites. The first is that you don't understand how a business operates. The second is schilling for the site for your own motives. If there are other let me know.

And maybe you don't understand the intent of this thread. You could just read the OP but that might be too much of a hassle so here's a refresher.

Many people believe that Poker Sites juice the deck by manipulating the shuffle to produce more action hands which presumably increases the pot size and in turn the rake.

I postulated that were this true, we should see some descrepencies in the number of times big hands like AA were actually dealt compared to the number mathamatically expected.

I then asked members to contributen the number of ring hands they were dealt AA in relation to their total number of hands so we could use this as a benchmark to check the accuracy of the RNG at various on-line poker rooms.

For what it's worth, I'm not naive enough to blindly trust any profit driven organization. But as far as this thread is concerned I don't care about Arthur Anderson, King Arthur or Chester Allen Arthur and I don't need to be talked down to like a three year old. If you want to contribute some data to this project, or just say something relevent to its intent, then welcome aboard. Otherwise take your insulting and paranoid apersions as to my integrity elsewhere.

SavagePenguin · Feb 8, 2008

I don't think anything we say can convince jstnorv07 because the possibility will always be there. There's always one more layer.
There will always be unknown factors.

Other than getting to unrelated, independent auditors who have direct access to the source code and using specially designed equipment from Intel (another multi-billion dollar company unrelated to poker), what else would you want? You can't expose hand histories without betraying your customers. The more access you allow to your system the more likely it is for someone find a hole to exploit, and there will always be holes.

You have companies like sharkscope collecting billions of hands, and tens of thousands of people with millions of hands each using programs such as PokerTracker to examine their hand histories. If there were inconsistencies, it would be apparent. Usually when you hear complains about poker being rigged it's from improperly bankrolled players. If you're improperly bankrolled, I assume a lot of other things about your understanding of the game of poker.

To get back on track... I appreciate the effort of posting hand histories for A/A here. I'll contribute more in a bit.

jstnorv07 · Feb 8, 2008

The title of this thread is Rigged: The AA Test...my point was that this test doesn't prove anything except that if they are cheating this is not the method that pokerstars uses. I thought my point regarding the auditing of the site was legitimate and the comparison to Arthur Anderson was also legitimate. When you ridiculed it by asking him to contribute to the hands you asked for the response I gave so I apologize if it offended you. As far as reading OP the first sentence is "I know we're all sick and tired of the on-line rigged debate." This statement clearly indicates that the objective is to dismiss the online rigged debate. Further down "This quote is from a recent thread, but really, it's just one of hundreds and there's nothing unique about it. What surprises me is that this belief persists despite the fact that due to programs like Poker Tracker, these inane assertions are easily verified or dispelled. "
Clearly prior to receiving any hand information you built up a straw man and took him down. Congratulations but you didn't prove anything at all and I think it's too bad that instead of looking at this objectively and creating an open debate about it you are going to try and run this thread like a tyrant.

jstnorv07 · Feb 8, 2008

Savage,

I want to be convinced but there is nothing convincing here or anywhere else that I have seen. Clearly, the number of AA hands does not prove anything of meaningful value regarding the rigged debate. Only reason I am posting here is becuase there are clearly very intelligent people on this board who could contribute something very meaningful if they put their minds to it.

pantin007 · Feb 8, 2008

jstnorv07, let me hear ur oppinion

ok hear what, if u dont believe that this test is proving anything, then what do u suggest we research and make a test about?

i honestly believe this test is showing that online poker hands occur at just about the same rate at which live hands occur

still think we need more data and we need to be testing this out with different hand variations and test the probabilty of these hands occuring compared to the rate at which they are suppose to mathematically occur

Four Dogs · Feb 8, 2008

I'm pretty thick skinned and welcome opposing viewpoints. My initial response to your dissoriented reference to Arthur Anderson was an attempt to get this thread back on track. If you wanted to make a relevant connection you should have just done so instead of tossing out a name and waiting for someone to say "Gee wiz jstnor, no I haven't. Please inform us".

Your follow up was just patronizing and plain insulting. You've been here for 4 days. You don't know me from Adams Ox. Who the F*ck are you to suggest that I'm a schill for anyone.

As far as proving anything with this thread, unless your also insinuating that I've somehow manipulated the data to support a preconceived notion or to advocate in favor of some disreputable poker site, numbers do not lie.

So go ahead and hide your head in the sand. I suppose mere facts are a shallow substitution for paranoid conjecture.

jstnorv07 · Feb 8, 2008

pantin007,

If I knew the best way to check it would have been my first post. Pokerstars sent me a list of my allin hands and I started trying to dice up the data but I am not really sure that I am using the best method or if it provides any meaningful results.

It is pretty time consuming also and I am not sure if I can continue but here is what I have so far.

70 allin Hands
33 Wins
35 Losses
2 Ties
I did not calculate any odds for the ties
I was favorite 46 times and won 25 of those hands.
I was underdog in 22 hands and won 8 of those.
My average preflop advatage on hands that I won was 59.38%
My opponents average preflop advantage on hands they won was 48.21%

If anyone wants me to forward the email from pstars with these allin hands I will oblige.

jstnorv07 · Feb 8, 2008

You took that way too personally and obv I touched a chord with the schill reference but it was not directed at anyone in particular. Hopefully we can put this behind us because I would really like to continue what I think is a very important discussion. Also, in no way was I insinuating that you manipulated the data. I hope this doesn't offend you but my insinuation was that the data you are measuring here is completely useless.

Four Dogs said:
Yes, I have. Does he have any AA stats to contribute? Preferably from Full Tilt.

Four Dogs said:
I'm pretty thick skinned and welcome opposing viewpoints. My initial response to your dissoriented reference to Arthur Anderson was an attempt to get this thread back on track. If you wanted to make a relevant connection you should have just done so instead of tossing out a name and waiting for someone to say "Gee wiz jstnor, no I haven't. Please inform us".

Your follow up was just patronizing and plain insulting. You've been here for 4 days. You don't know me from Adams Ox. Who the F*ck are you to suggest that I'm a schill for anyone.

As far as proving anything with this thread, unless your also insinuating that I've somehow manipulated the data to support a preconceived notion or to advocate in favor of some disreputable poker site, numbers do not lie.

So go ahead and hide your head in the sand. I suppose mere facts are a shallow substitution for paranoid conjecture.

pantin007 · Feb 8, 2008

jstnorv07 said:
. I hope this doesn't offend you but my insinuation was that the data you are measuring here is completely useless.

but how is it useless?
this shows that the RNG is correctly dealing out the hands as often as they should be dealt out, well AA is

Four Dogs · Feb 8, 2008

jstnorv07 said:
You took that way too personally and obv I touched a chord with the schill reference but it was not directed at anyone in particular. Hopefully we can put this behind us because I would really like to continue what I think is a very important discussion. Also, in no way was I insinuating that you manipulated the data. I hope this doesn't offend you but my insinuation was that the data you are measuring here is completely useless.

Yes I take insults personally. Useless I can handle. Please explain why though.

Rigged: The AA test

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