If you haven't read my previous blog titled 'Is It RIGGED???' I suggest you do before continuing but you might need to schedule that into you're calendar do to its length.
So I have explained from a business perspective why I think Spade Club would not and would be foolish to create a system that was not completely random or favored new or week players. Now, not being part of the SC development team I cannot verify the true randomness of the SC software, I believe that it is. I can tell you however that they do incorporate the Mersenne Twister algorithm which is a widely used and extensively tested RNG.
Now I will finish explaining why I believe what we experience online seems to defy the odds. All of us live players feel we get and see many more bad beats online versus live play. And the truth is we do! The most common explanation is that we see so many more hands online than we do in a live game and that if we were to average it out the bad beats to hands played ratio would be equal. There is some truth in this statement but I do not completely agree (surprised?). We will get and see more bad beats playing more hands, obviously, but I believe the ratio of beats to hands played to be skewed. We definitely experience more bad beats per hand online but not do to a flaw in the software. I want all of you true poker players to think about the following for a minute. When you play live, how often do you see a river card dealt out? A turn card? A flop even? How often do you see an all in preflop bet get called? Not nearly as often as you do online! You know now that I think about, in my million+ hands played I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve seen more than three players all in preflop in a live game (when they all had a substantial chip stack). I see that happen a few times a tournament online usually. The truth is there are many weak players online learning the game. They are playing weak hands and they play them all the way. They call on draws when they are priced out and some of them just like to gamble with the worst hands just to beat you and laugh. And who is most likely to play these weaker hands and increase our potential to be bad beated… the white hands. Not to mention the lack of information we have to play with. I know I’ve escaped many traps and limited my loses in the bad beat section with my ability to read my opponents face to face. We still get reads online but we are forced to rely on card theory more heavily. We will get bad beats frequently it just comes with the success. Our true abilities as poker players are tested in new ways online. Our job as poker players is to adjust and learn how to win as often as possible regardless of our opponents. Remember, pocket aces are 80% favorite against a random hand, but that’s heads up.
Now if it’s a given we are playing on a completely fair, random software application, that doesn’t mean we are getting a fair game. I can guarantee that when you play online you won’t always get a fair game. There are many players colluding on every site. I’ve seen it happen in the casinos and it’s so much easier to get away with online. Not to mention players could have more than one account and play multiple seats per tournament. SC and the rest of the sites will do the best they can to discover and stop this. And those of us with integrity can take comfort in knowing that one, these cheaters do it because they can’t beat us fairly, and two, they are giving us odds on the money.
Now from a software standpoint I am most worried about the developers than Spade Club. I think Spade Club wants a fair service to offer all of us but there is nothing to stop a developer from creating a plug-in that would allow him to see everyone’s cards and what will come on the board. I hope this is not happening but it is always a possibility. Anyway, that’s my opinion as a software developer/poker player. I think that this site is fair, that there is no flaw in the software and that it’s not rigged. And I have one question for you non believers, if you disagree, then why are you playing?
Good Luck @ the tables
-Sleight
NicknVegas
♪♫♪all I want is to have some peace of mind♪♫♪