But it's always struck me that unlike real-world poker, where there are fifty-two cards and the order of release is strictly down to the shuffle, online it must be based on an algorithm. And I'd have thought that an algorithm can be tweaked to favour the house.

Bear in mind, however, that I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.

I used to play them and I think that they are rigged.

The amount of times I was beaten by a someone filling a house on the last card was too many to be regarded as unlucky.

Bwin was the worst I came across.

I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole now.

...I have a nephew who doesn't have to work for a living, he just sits down in front of his computer a few times a month and makes a very good living out of beating strangers from all over the world at poker.
So he's definitely not complaining.

in the 'Dumb Questions' thread.

People go on line and play cards with a website, then, amazingly, they lose and hand over real money. There really is one born every minute. It seems so transparently obvious to me that you're going to get kippered it surprises me anyone ever tries it. And as for the guy who makes a good living, this is the oldest trick in the book to draw more suckers in. "look!! He juut won loads!" Kching!

in its favour? I know next to nothing about poker so this may be a really dumb question, but I thought all the "house" kept was a % of each pot. Are the site putting up dummy hands which then take the pot?

and other betting sites--like casinos--are heavily regulated. They'd be shut down if they weren't operating transparently.

What's more likely is online poker companies using bots to fill tables.

A colleague of mine used to play, but he'd only play very late on Friday and Saturday nights--he said a lot of the other players had come back from the pub drunk and that gave him an edge.

i spent quite a few year working on the fringes of gambling industries and you'd surprised how regulated they are. Most poker sites worth their salt actively try to push inexperienced players to games with players of similar experience - their worst case scenario is to get a user on their site who gets reamed on their first game and never comes back. Also, most sites take a cut of the pot so the idea of favouring the house is redundant (unless you are playing the house - roulette, blackjack etc).

Also, the point about 52 cards and shuffling etc is redundant. Most actual casinos run 3+ deck shoes and auto shuffle after each hand to stop card counters (which is surprising easy to do) so the randomness actually favours the less experienced players.

In all probability, if you are cleaned out on a poker site, it is most likely by a better, more experienced player. Thems the facts. I mean, if you were down the pub and you'd just beaten someone on the pool table 3 times in a row and he asked you did you want to 'Make it interesting?', you wouldn't start chucking fifties down yet people do exactly that all the time online!

with one of the blokes who started 888.com. I think he owns an island now.

And they were completely legit. One of them did tell me, however, that 95% of people who pay online poker lose money, so you can see why there's a lot of noise about it being 'fixed'!

The algorithms are most likely random - the company will get paid only if you play. They don't want to put you off with bad beats.

Of course if you played on UltimateBet you might previously have found yourself playing against their employees who could see what cards you had. And if you were playing on Full Tilt you aren't getting your deposit back because that was embezzled by the proffesional players running the company.

If you are playing on a site that had an American presence the site won't be paying back those players quickly because they knowingly transferred cash in a way illegal in the states.

Still, if you are just playing for small stakes the site you are on is probably secure. But you might be playing at a table with groups of players discussing each others hands through instant messenger.

Certainly you'll be playing against someone who is playing on a dozen other tables and can look up every hand you have played with specialist software. They won't need to take risks or play optimally against you because they'll get money back from the site for playing so regularly 9not that this is cheating).

Fortunately I'm so bad at poker that none of these make a difference...

Up until I stopped playing a couple of years ago, I used to play ridiculous hours of online poker, purely because I knew in the long run, I was making some money out of it. Over 5 years, I made £18K; a spreadsheet was kept of all games played and I have no reason to exaggerate or make it up. A few of us were into it, one of them still is, and we all did loads of research, hand analysis etc to convince ourselves that in most cases, most of the sites and games are totally pucker. The biggest "cheat" you came across were players in one game colluding offline or one player somehow managing to dodge the IP checks by playing two seats at one table. All the big sites have invested a ton of money into preventing this from happening. Their business relies on the trustworthiness of their site and everything about it.

However, for players, it's long, unpredictable hours, the bad beats really can piss you off and, well, it's a bit sad isn't it?

I might have less spending money now but I'm very glad to be free of a worrying addiction and lots of very very late nights.