Intro
So I've seen post after post after post either directly accusing or indirectly insinuating that online poker is rigged. Though the complaints more often than not come from folks who are frustrated from bad beats, the most common theory is that the poker sites so this to encourage action and thus increase the rake at their tables. I think if we polled the regulars here at Cardschat, I bet the ote would slant in favour of "not rigged". Still, despite the fact that accusations of rigging really don't make a ton of sense coming from current players (goodness, why continue to play?), I thought it would be worth investigating.
So here goes nothing...
Logic and reason
This is my own opinion: rigging a poker site would be like a professional athlete stealing sporting goods from his or her team -- the risk of losing something good would dramatically outweight the gains from cheating. I'm trained in game theory, and I can tell you that experts in the field would suggest that this is ludicrous (hip hop afficionados might suggest that it is instead ludacris).
Thus, I personally believe that it is unlikely that major sites are in any way rigged. I know if I were running one, and I do have a business background, there is no way I would risk the mint that online poker sites make in rake just to add a few extra bucks.
Research
For the sake of argument, I decided to use Poker Stars as my research subject, though I would apply my conclusions to Party, Full Tilt, and any of the other large, reputable sites. As for flybynightpoker.com and stealingyourmoneypoker.com, I speak not for those.
So, I did something incredibly complex and comprehensive: I went to pokerstars.com and looked around. Clicking on "integrity", I found their policy on shuffling basically immediately.
According to Poker Stars, there are many ways to shuffle a deck of cards. How many? Well, picture a 5 followed by 67 zeroes, that's how many. So what Poker Stars has to do is select one of those 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ways to shuffle a deck and start dealing the cards.
How do they choose it? Believe it or not, they use us players to generate their random numbers, using "user input, including summary of mouse movements and events timing, collected from client software". In the event that there are problems with this as a RNG (random number generator), they have a backup: "true hardware random number generator developed by Intel, which uses thermal noise as an entropy source". They go on and on describing how they obtain and apply their RNG, but these details are mostly beyond me.
So why should we believe Poker Stars? They could say anything on their website right? Well, their RNG is certified by 2 independent organizations: Cigital and BMM International. I decided to look into these organizations.
Cigital: An independent software risk management organization working with such companies as Qualcomm, Visa International, Texas Instruments, AOL, MasterCard, General Electric, Motorola, Pfizer Health Solutions, and Ericsson. Why would they put all that business on the line to lie for Poker Stars?
BMM International: A global organization that provides independent computer systems assurance and compliance certification testing services, the Australia-based company is a client of the Australian government among other organizations.
My question: Why would Poker Stars lie about its 2-tiered RNG when it is immensely profitable without it, and why would 2 independent organizations risk their reputations to ouch for it?
Conclusions
To me, if this is not enough evidence that Poker Stars (and in all likelihood, the major poker sites) is un-rigged and up-and-up, then nothing is. Personally, I believe it. That's why I bother risking my money there, and at Party Poker, and any of the reputable poker sites. If I thought for a second that they might be rigged, I'd take my cash out in a flash -- and so should you.
So the next time you're thinking you've taken 1 too many bad beats, or that you seem to win more in the morning, or after you've made a deposit, or during full moons, or what have you, and you think about posting that online poker is rigged, please ask yourself 3 questions:
1 - Isn't it possible that it seems rigged to me, because when something happens in my favour or my best-hand-going-in holds up, I don't notice it as much as when I take a huge bad beat?
2 - Anyway, isn't it true that even AA s. 72o is still just a 8:1 favourite (according to this), and even here you should expect to lose once every 9 times, and no hole cards are 100% to win.
3 - Why would a poker site that is "raking it in", so to speak, bother to risk all its profits and cheat just to generate a little more action?
If you answer "no" to all of these questions, then I have gathered some additional links that you may find helpful: here, here, and here.
Epilogue
If anyone wishes to discuss this further, I would be happy to in a constructive way. I have just found that people are all too ready to blame their woes on multi-billion dollar companies rigging their operations to squeeze a few extra cents out of us. Personally, when I lose a bunch of cash on a bad beat, it's more often than not my own damn fault.
Please feel free to direct future queries about RNGs here, and I will add to it as needed.
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