I get a lot of questions and discussion on the topic of rigged online poker.
So I am going to share what I believe here.
I just read that they are closing down the UFO departement at Military Defense in Great Britain. They don’t express an opinion on whether UFO’s exist or not – but in the 50 years that they have had this department, they have not encountered one threat to the national security. So now they don’t see a need for that special branch anymore.
Every year a vast amount of people all around the globe files reports on UFO encounters. But have we yet seen any verified encounters? Yes, there are a couple of reports and photographs that seem strange and difficult to explain, but almost all of them are explainable and a lot of them are bluffs.
So do I believe online poker is rigged? In general my answer would be no, I don’t believe that any of the major rooms is rigged. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if some of the small rooms are, but for the big players I think the risk/reward is far too bad for trying something like that.
Most importantly I believe that the lack of evidence is revealing. If online poker was so rigged that so many people believe why isn’t there more evidence? Like hand histories over 100’s of thousands of hands that might actually show something? Interesting is also that most of the players who so strongly believe poker is rigged are casual players who might not even have played 10 thousand hands in their lifetime. But how you can draw conclusions from such a small sample? The fact of the matter is that you can’t.
For more on the subject, check out Bill Rini’s (former Poker Room Manager at Party Poker) interesting article Why Online Poker Is Not Rigged.
How about cheating in online poker then? That is a different matter, more on that in later posts…