I have to formulate again what I said in the initial text of the thread "I am more than 90% certain that poker rooms are rigged", as I made a few mistakes-misformulations (e.g. I said that I know I have been cheaten because the number of times my strong hands lose is higher than the number of times that they win, something which is bound to happen if more than 2 players are playing).
The proof that casinos give out fixed cards is not that I am losing, nor that I lose because of my strong hands, (strong hands which happen at the 1% of the games, and I fold anything else), as this could happen because I do not generate more profit when these strong hands win than the loss I have when they lose. Perhaps a very good player could make me fall into this trap.
I don’t notice that much the profit-loss balance stats of the strong hands, but mostly the NUMBER of the strong hands that they simply lose, and the NUMBER of the strong hands that they simply win. The proof that the casinos give fixed cards is that THE NUMBER OF TIMES these strong hands lose, is much higher than the expected NUMBER OF TIMES that they should lose (of course I have to rarely fold to observe this, to complete my experiment, and that is why I say its irrelevant if I win or lose). E.g. when the probability of winning with KK is about 50% with 4 players, (see
http://www.westonpoker.com/pokerInfo/preFlopOdds.php),
I observed statistically a probability of winning 20%, and losing 80%.
And this keeps happening for all the 1/4th of the best preflop hands.
Now why would the casinos cheat since they have this huge rake of 5%?
Greed? They want it all? There is a strong counter-argument to this argument: Since the rake is a sure 5% of the pot, then they’re gonna have it all anyway, as they would slowly crop and accumulate all the bankroll of the depositors for sure, so they don’t need to cheat with cheating software and bots, ie, fake players who are working for the casino. Well, this counter-argument also implies the reason of why they would cheat: No, they are not gonna have it all for sure, they are in danger of not taking even the half of people’s deposits IF there are a lot of very good (high-skilled) players AND a lot of very bad (low skilled) players i.e. fishes. They would take every last penny of everyone for sure, IF the skill level of all players was about the same, and this is not the case. Why all this?
if the good players have an edge of e.g. 30% against the fishes, then, in simple words, they will take the deposited money of the fishes before the rake does. More accurately, the good players will accumulate the money deposited by the fishes with a much higher rate (e.g. 30%) than the rate of the 5% of the rake. So most of the deposited money of the fishes will end up to the good players and a smaller share will end up in rake. Or more accurently, the bankroll of the casino will grow more slowly than the bankroll of the skilled players. But if the good players are cheated in favour of the fishes, then all of the deposited money will end up in the rake!
You might argue that the good players rarely have wins compared to the total number of the games played, so this 30% applies only for a small percentage of the games played, whereas the rake wins at every game (except the games with no flop dealt), so the rate of accumulation of the deposited money that rake has, in comparison to the rate of accumulation of the deposited money of the skilled players, is much higher than the ratio 30% against 5% explained above. I answer that yes, indeed, and because of that, the more probable case is that this rate of the rake is higher than this rate of the skilled players.
But the counterarguments of this, are that:
1.) why should the casino let the good players bankrolls keep growing and growing with a huge rate, money that could end up in the casino, simply by cheating them? We have seen cases that reputable casinos found excuses of not paying small profits players made, e.g. the “bonus abusers”. This is because small profits multiplied by many players, becomes much money for the casinos.
2.) and most importantly, the statistics of how many times do the strong hands (not just regarding preflop hands) win, and how many times they lose, indicate cheating.
As I said in my previous thread, I am not trying to convince you that casinos cheat at poker. I cannot be 100% certain, anyway. But my so far clues indicate that the most probable case is that they do. Dont some casinos cheat at blackjack? I know some that they do, with 99% statistical confidence, but am I allowed to say which they are in here? One of them was revealed in a post in this site a year ago.
Perhaps the most of you will find it impossible to understand all this if you are not familiar with the mathematics which explain how much certain it is that the one who has an edge, an advantage over the other, is bound to take all his money. This is an oppurtunity to give a simple fact which will wake up the common gambler:
The probability that a roulette player will lose a bet e.g. at the red or black, is 19/37=51.35% and the probability that he will win it, is 18/37=48.65%. So if he makes 100 bets, on average he will lose 51.35 bets and he will win 48.65 bets. Therefore he will lose 51.35-48.65=2.7 bets on average, for every 100 bets he wagers. That is what the "2.7% edge" means.
Simple so far. But the astonishing fact is this: Suppose a player has a 10,000$ bankroll and goes to the casino, and he is desperate to double his bankroll, and make it 20,000$. If he bets the whole 10,000$ at once, in one bet, on red or black, then he has a 48.65% probability of achieving his goal of doubling his bankroll to 20,000$. BUT IF HE TRIES TO MAKE HIS 10,000$ BANKROLL INTO 20,000$ SLOWLY, BY BETTING E.G. 50$ PER BET OR 100$ PER BET, THEN THE PROBABILITY OF REACHING THE 20,000$ IS NOT EVEN 1%!!!!!!!!!!! The common gambler ignores this fact, and thinks that the probability is again about 48%! If players knew this simple fact, then they would stay away from roulette, dont you think? Start web-searchin with the title "gamler's ruin" or "risk of ruin" etc to find the corresponding formulas if you unfamiliar with the subject.