Published on January 23rd, 2005, 10:45 am EST

You've probably heard it somewhere before, or thought it yourself after taking an especially bad beat. Is online poker rigged? Are the poker rooms intentionally creating "action" hands that will have a lot of people thinking that they have winning hands, therefore creating bigger pots and bigger rakes for the poker rooms? Do poker rooms have some sort of algorithm that rewards people that deposit money and hurts people that withdraw money?

First off, let's start with the whole "that was such a bad beat, it must be rigged" argument. First off:

Your A/A getting cracked against the 7/5 offsuit probably really hurt, but you didn't seem to mind or remember when your 8/8 won against K/K and you spiked an 8 on the turn. Meaning, we only remember the bad beats. Everyone is dished out some pretty spectacular "good" beats while playing online too.

Secondly, there are countless bad beats at live poker games as well. Throw in the fact that you are going to see way more hands playing online, so the chances of getting a bad beat goes way up as well.

The main question is, are online poker rooms purposely dealing hands that create bigger pots. Like, dealing 4 people AA, KK, QQ, KA and then having a flop of AKQ. Probably everyone here thinks that they have a winning hand, and will bet accordingly.

Do online poker rooms do this? I don't know, and this is up for discussion. Having said that, I highly doubt it. Some of these poker rooms are making more than a million dollars in rake per day. It would seem silly, to this writer, that they would jeopardize this kind of money by having software that was rigged. There are just too many options out there in the poker room world, and if word got out that a room was truly rigged, they would lose a ton of customers.

Now, the whole idea that poker rooms reward new depositors, and hurt people who are withdrawing money, is a little far-fetched for me. I have a hard time imagining any computer software package complex enough to take all of this into account. I chalk a lot of this up to beginner's luck. Somebody deposits $50, runs it up to $400, cashes out half and all of a sudden their luck takes a nosedive? That's beginner's luck, not the poker room scheming against you, in my opinion.

These are just my humble opinions, your opinions are welcomed below.

--

Filed Under: Online Poker Rooms

Related Articles