RGP Donkey of the Minute - 7/12/05

One of the most controversial topics frequently brought up by the donkey population is the question of "is online poker rigged?" Most of the time some donkey loses all his money and couldn't possibly have played poorly, so he needs to blame something. Blaming your opponent is always something easy to do, but real donkeys like to blame the online poker site. Yes, all online sites rig their games so that donkeys lose their money. That's just the way it is.

So if I posted a blog entry every time a rigged conspiracy post showed up on RGP, I wouldn't have time for any other donkey sightings. I usually avoid the posts and write the particular donkey off as a loser who simply doesn't understand that it's possible to lose with a big hand, and that online sites do not rig their software. Today, however, I saw a post that deserved special attention. Poster "rgposter" (original, huh?) deserves the Donkey of the Minute award for this post:

Subject: you can prove that online poker is rigged

Just go to PartyPoker or PokerStars and keep statistics. You will notice that of the times you get all in preflop with a bigger pair (ie KK vs JJ, 77 vs 55, AA vs 22, etc) that the smaller pair will win a LOT more than could be accounted for by probability. Why? They are stealing money from the better players and handing it to the worse players in order to keep as many players in action for as long as possible and thereby maximize their rake. Shills will post and claim that it's ludicrous to say online poker is rigged. Realize that they have their own agenda. The fact is, it's rigged and it has been proven. Keep stats and you can prove it yourself. Just keep track of the times you get it all in preflop heads up vs a smaller pair or even two unpaired undercards. Then after a few hundred thousand hands compare the percentage of times that you get beat with the percentage you would expect if it weren't rigged. You will see that it is in fact rigged. It is still possible to win long-term but I doubt it would be possible to win long-term without taking the fact it is rigged into acount.

Oh boy, where do I start here? There are so many idiotic things in this post it's hard to single out any specific one. However, the reason this deserves a blog entry is for this sentence:

They are stealing money from the better players and handing it to the worse players in order to keep as many players in action for as long as possible and thereby maximize their rake.

This statement is so ridiculous it's almost hard to explain. In the world of poker, there's really only one way to rate players: money won/lost. Common sense says that in the long run, those who win money are good players, and those who lose aren't. So according to the above statement, the site is punishing the good players by making them lose. Think about this long enough and I'm pretty sure you can alter the space/time continuum.

My next favorite sentence is this one:

It is still possible to win long-term but I doubt it would be possible to win long-term without taking the fact it is rigged into acount.

Just what in the hell does that mean?

As I said, there are so many issues with this post it's hard to summarize them. One of the biggest issues I have is why this particular donkey felt the need to post this? Unless he was specifically going out of his way to try and make this blog, I don't understand what he thought he would achieve with this post. Ahh, the life of the donkey. It really is a fascinating and amazing thing.

Morphy