[Kenny Lingus]

On this topic, I agree with both ThodorisK and Keyser to some degree. While I do believe that some card rooms do not fairly deal the cards, I don't think that it has anything to do with helping certain players over others.

As Keyser has stated, the total amount of money bet is the key to how much the house will win, not who wins the pot. Even if a couple of sharks dominate over a bunch of fishes, the cardroom knows that the key is to have enough players around to keep that money in play. A winning shark is probably not going to leave the site, and, as poker can be streaky, they will likely put some of their winnings back into play.

On the other hand, I have played way too much online poker not to have witnessed some very peculiar tendencies. By far the biggest is how often the river will hit and give some fish three sixes to beat my aces up, or something to that variety. There just seems to be way, way, too many good hands, and "lucky" river hits.

All considered, my theory of how cardrooms cheat players is simple: the hands that are dealt are "juiced". In other words, the better hands come up much more often than they should, to encourage more betting, bigger pots, and to keep the fishies hanging around until the end.

This tactic would greatly increase the room's "take", especially on the lower limit tables (where most of the players are); by inducing more betting & less folding, the bigger pots would ultimately mean more rake.

This type of an arrangement would probably be neutral; i.e., it wouldn't favor any particular player(s) in terms of getting good cards, but the number of good hands would increase, and it would also follow that the number of times a hand would improve would also increase.

This would explain why it would seem to some that the poorer players are getting the benefit. Good players might wisely (assuming a legitimate deal) fold 2 pairs to a made flush if the bet is too much (like a $50 bet into a $5 pot); a fish would chase the full house, and if the draw is skewd to favor better outcomes, they will probably hit the river more often than one would think possible.

If anyone out there thinks that this type of thing is BS, and that all poker rooms fairly deal the cards, just look throughout this web site; if casino operators by the hundreds continually try and cheat the average Joe out of his bankroll, what makes you think that a cardroom would never try it? All it would take to make my theory happen is a slight alteration of the deal when the site is put into use - just a simple algorithm to slightly affect the deal - and who would know? Poof, the cardroom could raise their profits by 50% or more, in a way much more difficult to detect (and almost impossible to prove)than most of the ways that casinos cheat us players.