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PokerStars Replies to Question on Audits

Posted by : Charlie River | 16 Comments

06

Apr

Categories : Online poker

I had a reply from Joanne at PokerStars.com regarding my blog about PokerStars auditing the RNG.

Thanks for an interesting post Charlie.

PokerStars certainly has nothing to hide. We commissioned this new audit, and published details of Cigital’s certificate in the spirit of openness. This study clearly gave our Random Number Generator a thumbs up, so hopefully this will reassure players.

I appreciate that you would like to see a study based on actual hands dealt, but we would point out that every hand is recorded in the hand histories, and every player regularly using analysis software like PokerOffice or PokerTracker is performing a daily review of our deal’s integrity.

bichon
Since when do cute little fur balls come with a doom switch?

A few people have performed larger studies based on many hands and published these online.

We’re not hiding away the facts of our deal. In fact a simple menu click from ‘Options’ then ‘Save My Hand History’ gives every player the perfect opportunity to look at any kind of statistics.

When players write to support questioning PokerStars integrity we always offer a complete hand history, and if they have played enough hands we’ll run some reports based on their hands.

After six years working in support I feel I’ve probably heard it all! “You deal far too many flushes” “How come my flushes never hit?” “You make short stacks win.” “You make big stacks win.” “New players always win.” “You have to play here forever before you can win.”

Of course it is all random. I wonder if the psychology of the online poker doubters is to jump to the “It’s rigged!” conclusion because it’s more exciting than the sad dull reality that poker throws out weird and unlucky hands sometimes. Maybe it’s like me seeing odd lights in the night sky, my first reaction is sometimes, “Look! That might be a UFO.”  Well who wants to think, “Hmmm, it’s probably just aeroplane lights.”

If you lost a huge pot with AA obviously you’ll be upset and this can be when players write in to say, ‘My aces NEVER win…’ and then some language I can’t repeat questioning the good name of our site.

If I’m working support I’ll write back with a report that uses facts not sweeping language, and says something like, ‘Here’s a report based on your hand histories for the last 30 days, as you can see you won 84.6% with AA, although the expectation was 85%.’

We haven’t commissioned any huge audit on millions of hands, but the support department does lots and lots of these tiny audits every single day. I’ve run so many of these statistical reports that I start typing the reply before I run the stats, this is how confident I am that any report I run based on enough hands worth of data will fit mathematical expectation.

If we ran some huge audit of hands it might be a way to convince a few more doubters, but perhaps it’s a bit like McDonalds being asked to prove they put 100% beef in their burgers? They know they’re 100% beef, most of the public know they’re 100% beef, do they need some scientific study to prove they’re all cow!? Maybe they could do this and then burger-haters would still claim they’d fixed the scientific study.

I’ve worked at PokerStars long enough to have sat in an office with the people who founded this fine company, people who are much more likely to get on the phone to make some secret charity donation, than to call up the programmers to say, “Can you up the rig levels to 6.9” or something ridiculous like that!

Working for PokerStars is a bit like being the proud owner of some friendly little Bichon Frise puppy, who you’ve taught to shake paws, and you just want to show him off, and for everyone to know him and like him like you do… But no one will have anything to do with the cute little pup because they heard a pit bull once killed a man.  Yes, really what I’m saying is that PokerStars is a white fluffy cute dog, that rolls over so you can tickle its tummy. And would a fluffy puppy deal you fixed cards? No of course not!

I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve some untrustworthy reputation, because we are in no way a Killer the terror dog!

So yes, I like my company. A lot. They’re the good guys not bad.

I work with PokerStars Twitter and Facebook which are some new ways to get closer to our players and to find out just what they want. PokerStars wants to be the best that it can be, so people enjoy playing at our tables. That’s the PokerStars way, not this idea that we do weird and freaky things to set up cards or to fiddle the RNG.

I hope that this goes some way to convincing those who doubt us that we are nice people, and a nice company, as honest as we can be. Unfortunately because of poker gods and other random stuff we can’t deal people happy cards all the time so everyone likes us and has a great time playing – that just isn’t poker.

I hope anyone who wants to know more about our site integrity will write to support@pokerstars.com, they’ll be happy to give you more facts and reports based on your hand histories. Although I can’t promise they’ll tell stories about Bichon Frise puppies.

Joanne
PokerStars.com

Comments (16)

  1. Poker Stars Daily Player   December 15, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    One day later! I was playing in a free roll this morning and low and behold I got pocket Aces. I called my wife over to the computer to watch them get beat. Blinds at 15 / 30 raised to 280 I was reraised all in by two players. One with a K-5 off suite one with 8-9 suited. Flop K-3-5, beat yet again! Come on Poker Stars, what gives????

  2. Poker Stars Daily Player   December 15, 2010 at 3:39 am

    I play on Poker Stars daily and have been playing live poker weekly for 8 years and the crap that I see on this site is nothing like real odds. Not only do I get pocket aces more frequently, but they don’t seem to hold up anywhere near the 84% that she says the study shows. The last 15 times I have started out with pocket aces (and raised at least 4 times the big blind or more) they have only held up around 4 times. I just got knocked out of a free roll with one caller 8 – 3 suited, flop one diamond, turn diamond they river….. you don’t even want to know! It has been a running joke that every time I get pocket aces I call my wife to the computer so she can watch them get beat and it happens a good 75% of the time. So in closing I play the site for fun and practice. No more real money, free rolls only! I can say internet poker does help my live game, so I guess I can thank Poker Stars for that????????

  3. Kim K   December 9, 2010 at 3:54 pm

    Nice post, kind of drawn out though. Really good subject matter though.

  4. JrMontana08   December 3, 2010 at 5:43 pm

    @ Romi: you’re a fish. You have no idea about math and most of the other people have no clue either..
    Losing players never learn from their mistakes and can’t improve simply because of their ego.

    All I can say is:
    Thanks for your money, I’m using it for good. LOL

  5. Romi   November 30, 2010 at 1:43 am

    There is no way anybody can tell me any different. Pokerstars is rigged simply because hands are not random hands. There is no way that random poker works this way. Its just a scheme. I would discourage anyone from getting involved in this mess. You just can not win! Does not matter what you do. I would take a hard look at the players that make millions on this site and see who they are and what their affiliations are. You cant tell me that where there is so much money rolling there is no corruption. It may just be that some of them see your hand before you do. I spent quite abit of money and time to arrive at this traggic conclusion. Stay away from this site! It is horrible!

  6. Doc   November 29, 2010 at 9:18 pm

    PS & FT are safe, (if any of them are). On the other hand, PlayersOnly is most definitely a rigged site…. You can take that to the bank, but not any winnings that you have accrued there.

  7. Sean   October 14, 2010 at 3:00 am

    What a bunch of propaganda nonsense…..Pstars financial books itself have never been audited by an actual independent regulatory body, just by the site itself, and they also contract their RNG out to a 3rd party, which is also super shady. How do we know that some private corporation has the players’ best interest at heart (or hasn’t developed a flawed system to cut cost)? We know what happened over at UB when they leased out their servers to a 3rd party site.

    This is why they pour so much money into the PPA, so if (when) online poker is legalized in the U.S., they can be in the in the room to write the legislation and prevent it to be too harsh on their books and services so they can save money and hide whatever they choose.

    How about auditing how often European players win over US players (which makes sense b/c it is easier, and cheaper, to pay out those players due to the fees by banks and check processors for US clients b/c of UEIGA; as well as help marketing efforts in touting those players to get more people to despoit, also easier in Europe)? Or cash games and “action flops”; flops generated to create the max amount of action to keep a high volume of max rake (i.e. 4h5h v AA on a As3h6h board)? Even Paul Phillips eluded to the fact that “action flops, it’s like online!” do occur during his WPT win in 2005….and he’s one of the smartest people in computer science I have ever met.

    This isn’t about short stacks winning all the time, or people losing 4.5 to 1 shots, or really cute anecdotes about happy cards from some blogger paid by the site…..this is serious f*cking business that has, and probably will never, be addressed b/c simply, it’s not in Stars economic interest to be. If your goal is to make profit, in a business where you can take advantage of ppl wanting action/having gambling addiction, as well as the fact it’s not 100% completely rigged b/c you can still outplay people and such, why WOULDN’T a company be tempted to pull of shenanigans to customers. Unfortunately, that question will never be answered b/c there is no independent body via online gaming regulation to GIVE that answer.

    Sadly, we’ll keep playing here b/c besides here, FTP, Bodog, and Cake, there are no other options that gives the player 100% piece of mind everything is on the up-and-up.

  8. كازينو   August 9, 2010 at 12:46 am

    Hi guys, tried loading this blog through Google RSS reader and got a strange error message, any ideas what could be the issue?

  9. lb   June 16, 2010 at 3:44 pm

    The argument about rigged rng use by online gaming hosts is an honest concern, IMO.

    The solution to the truth about the matter of fairness in online poker is not a difficult one.

    Scientific studies often make use of blind tests to find results that are unbiased. The placibo test is such an example.

    The solution to finding out if online poker at any site is run on an unaltered RNG is to put the owner or the face behind the site in a blind test and the way to do that is also very simple.

    Negreanu, Ivey, Hanson, Brunson, Hellmuth, or any big game tv poker star could be the subject and perhaps any pro who runs online poker sites should be tested this way for integrity.

    The blind test is about having the pro play on an online players computer while no one is aware that it is he who is making the bets.

    Sure this would be a commitment by the pro but it would also be an acid test to show the integrity of the RNG used in the poker game.

    Selecting where the pro is playing would have to be totally secret and other detail factors would have to be considered but in the end this IMO is the only acid test that would convince me that online poker games are fair and run without corruption.

    I played online for a few bucks lately and cashed out about as quickly as I bought in after seeing way to many strange hand results.

    Chance, luck of the draw, that’s poker…..maybe. For me the only way I could ever trust online gaming against pros who hustle clients by promoting themselves on national tv would be to have them perform the above mentioned test.

    Face it….5000 people playing 1 dollar hold em tables at a vig of 20 percent is the same as having a big whale playing slots and that is plenty of reason to keep them coming.

    Audit smaudit…..take the blind acid test above and prove me wrong.

    Internet poker RNG are rigged.

    It isn’t about having Dan Negreanu of pokerstars or someone else who promotes himself and his mastery of the game of poker on national tv where physical cards are in play that while running online games

  10. PokerStarsJoanne   April 7, 2010 at 9:19 am

    JamesDaBear, I meant that some people see PokerStars, and all online poker, as out to get them like vicious dogs not cute ones. I only have knowledge of PokerStars but I would trust other online poker sites to deal fair games to their customers. Apologies if it came across as anything else, there are all kinds of nice poker operators out there, I’ll leave it up to you to decide exactly which breeds of dogs they are!

  11. Charlie   April 7, 2010 at 9:00 am

    The hand histories that are made official are personal. I can only see my own hands. To be scientific you would need to study some kind of randomized selection of hands from many players.

    You’d also need more than the 1675 hands one of the posters had, and you’d need a trusted third party to perform the audit if you want it to have any effect.

    Some people will never stop doubting, that’s true. If you make a huge independent audit based on millions of actual hands and no traces of manipulation are found, doubters will still find things to be suspicious about, agreed

    But if you operate with that logic, why did you make the RNG audit in the first place?

    I think you (the online poker industry) should put your foot down and make a deeper and broader audit. It should clear out most of the haters after all.

  12. compncards   April 6, 2010 at 9:21 pm

    Apparently some of my info is outdated. It appears that most are now real beef. However, not all of them are. Some are still soy depending on your country, and there is the veggie burger.

    Online poker is going to always going to be considered rigged by some. No amount of study is going to change that. However, remember that many people consider live poker to be crooked or just pure luck.

  13. PokerStarsJoanne   April 6, 2010 at 9:16 pm

    In the UK the burgers are 100% beef. Although I don’t eat them as I’m a vegetarian, that probably explains why I like puppies.

  14. PokerStarsJoanne   April 6, 2010 at 9:03 pm

    In the UK McDonalds burgers are 100% beef. Not that I eat them – I’m a vegetarian. Probably explains why I like puppies…

  15. JamesDaBear   April 6, 2010 at 6:11 pm

    So PokerStars is a cute fluffy puppy…. and other poker sites are pitbulls? Way to turn a well-written rebuttal to the conspiracy theorists into an advertisement and opposition-bashing vehicle. You should have left that last part out.

  16. compncards   April 6, 2010 at 2:59 pm

    Ummm….one problem with her analogy with McDonalds. Their burgers are NOT 100% beef. Many are soy….

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